The Book Bucket List

Another rift in my reading schedule. Last time, I decided to read ahead. It was beneficial, but the pages caught up with me again. I have it under control for the upcoming week, mostly due to this little thing called Veteran’s Day. Gee, East Coasters get the *weirdest* holidays… So I could read ahead to a week from Monday, but by the sheer grace of the God of Children’s Literature, I’ve read Locomotion (that Jackie Woodson) and Octavian Nothing (twice!). I don’t feel a need to get a jump (those of you who’ve read Octavian can laugh at that).

I do feel the need for that little rush associated with the opening of a new book.

My boss asked me yesterday if I was sick of children’s lit yet.

Decidedly, no. As long as I can keep opening new books and finding new stories, it doesn’t matter if it’s children’s or adult, classic or contemporary, trashy or weighty. I’ve always been a reader, but this is a quality learned in grad school for certain. I just want more. It’s the impetus that drives me through 6-7 books a week – the thought that if I finish, I can start another.

So I’m going off-canon for the weekend.

But then I’ll be back on. I’m not even sure I’ll be able to finish this bad boy in time to resume my regularly scheduled reading…

so that’s why I invented

• The ones mentioned in class that I can’t CAN’T remember reading
• The ones I remember reading but want to read again with new eyes
• The ones I see in the bookstore and think “Hm. I should read that when I’m not reading 7 books a week”
• The books that look good but you know you’ll forget if you don’t write them on the last page of your planner

1. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

2. Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

3. Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

4. Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

5. The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert

6. This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff

7. Atlas: Poems by Katrina Vandenberg

8. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

9. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

10. My Life in France by Julia Child

11. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

12. The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

13. A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith

14. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

15. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

16. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, vol II: The Kingdom on the Waves by M.T. Anderson

17. These Is My Words by Nancy Turner

 

So far, the list is manageable. I’m sure it will grow to be unwieldy and useless, but for right now, I’m excited for my Christmas break, in which I will be free to read read read whatever I want (whatever I want!!) and I hope to knock a few off the list.

Says she who has read 100 books in 10 months.

I’m a sick, sick individual.

sweet life

I don’t want to tell you a terrible amount of information about my job. Not because it’s “sensitive” but I do work for the school, I work with students and faculty and professors. Anything interesting that happens, I probably shouldn’t tell you. The kind of stories you tell your Mom or your boyfriend, but not The Internet.

I will tell you this:

My job is pretty weird.

Yesterday was definitely a weird one. I did the prepwork for a small event. Due to my own silly interests, it was determined that we needed cupcakes for this event. And not your average, Betty Crocker mix, Rainbow Chip frosted cupcakes. Gourmet cupcakes! From the cupcakerie! Last week, I invited people, collected RSVPs, and ordered a dozen. Yesterday, I had to pick them up.

I was planning on taking the T. But the morning of, I had this terrible image of myself, carrying a great box of beautiful, expensive cupcakes. A huge box. And then an old man sticking his foot into the aisle. Or the seats full and the train lurching ahead, sending me sprawling. I couldn’t risk a 36 dollar investment.

So I walked, and got lost. Not terribly lost, but when you are walking to a part of town you’ve never been to, not familiar with ANY landmarks, it was frightening to walk on a sidewalk that takes you over an expressway. Where am I! I’m lost. I’m lost. I’m lost.

This story isn’t as interesting as you might think. I wasn’t lost, really. I called Lance during his Professional Development day, he gave me directions home. The cupcake lady gave me a HUGE bag, so I didn’t have to walk the 1.3 miles back to my school if I didn’t want.

But my job is nice too. I brought my book with me, and while I walked, I finished my 100th book of the year.

I usually read about a 100 books a year.

I don’t usually read 100 books by November 2nd.

And then I staged a blind cupcake tasting for eight.

It was weird.

But the cupcakes were good. Still are good, this afternoon, actually.

falling back

Last night was fun. A good proportion of my classmates hold a weekly therapy session at a rotating bar. I had another Magners and some fries for dinner. It made me feel sick, and I went to sleep overstimulated, classmates and their lives and stories swirling around in my head, and I had to sleep on the futon at some point for indeterminate reasons, but it was fun.

And I love Daylight Savings Time.

I got up when my alarm went off at 6:40. SIX FORTY A.M.! And I carried out my morning routines. Eggs. Oatmeal. In Treatment (I love In Treatment) Getting dressed and make-upped and lunch packed.

By then it was 7:45. I had a grand old half hour before I had to leave. Which was exactly my intention.

I sat on the futon in my dress and tights, listened to a Genius Playlist (I love Genius), and wrote. 700 words or so.

If it’s sunny out, I can probably do anything.

things to do and people to see

I forgot today was daylight savings time, so really, I woke up at 7:30 this morning.

A pleasant surprise after a not-so-pleasant night. For future reference, Self, you do not like Halloween, and if you would like to enjoy the holiday at all, you should really try a little harder. Or take the train instead of drive.

I have accomplished a number of things today, and I have a number of things left to do. Which is a good feeling, I think, for a Sunday afternoon. I have written 2,000 words toward my NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000. I overshot my grocery budget, but have food and toilet paper. I have completed all of my “hard” reading for class tomorrow. I have eaten both breakfast and lunch.

I would like to finish the following before the 10 o’clock hour:

• Rewrite my Narratological Analysis of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian at least once
• Finish reading The Graveyard Book and Rabble Starkey (my “easy” reading)
• Put away my laundry, a week after I’ve washed it
• Do up some Daily and Weekly goals, a la Zen to Done. My life needs some more Next Actions and Goal Lists, I think.
• Spend a little more time with the budding novel. Hopefully doing things that will give me something to write about tomorrow, since my preparation for this year’s book can be described as “Type and Pray”
• Do my management assignment that I keep forgetting about.
• Finish watching this week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy
• Procure contact solution

About seven hours to accomplish these tasks.

I feel confident.

I also feel confident that I should quit procrastinating and go-do-it!

Anyone else having a Super-Productive Sunday?

Lois Lowry Helps Me Write A Paper and Other Exasperations

I haven’t written one of these literary criticism papers in weeks, and I can’t decide if it feels easier now, or harder.

Easier, because, my grades, while somewhat disappointing, haven’t been so low that I need to Buck Up And Get Some 4.0’s Already. I know that if I do as good a job as I did last time… well… I’ll be passing.

Harder, because I’m out of practice. Maybe this is an easier tactic, but yesterday, in order to squeeze a draft out of my lazy, afternoon self, I tried something new. After writing and deleting the same opening sentence a few dozen times, I gave up on trying to sound academic. I took a cue from Lois Lowry, who said in a lecture (I don’t remember to who or when, my professor quoted it in class on Wednesday), that in order to write a book, she has to pretend she’s writing a letter to a friend. This frees her up from the pressure of CREATING FICTION and writing feels like telling a story to a friend.

So I pretended that I had some whack-job friend who was REALLY interested in a Narratological reading of Sherman Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

Easier.

But now I have a paper with following eloquent opening line:

“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie is a strange novel.”

Harrrrddddeerrr!

I find myself longing to crack open my gigantic Literary Theory book and just read. To forget about Narratology, move on, leave it behind! I’ll never understand it! Please please just let me forget about you and bury myself in endless chapters of difficult theoretical text!

And then, Lois Lowry returns again, these words simply flying off the page at me this morning while I rode the T to work -

One thing I’ve observed is that people whose parents want them to get all A’s all the time get nervous and fidgety if they have to use their own judgement about stuff. Because they worry that their own judgement might be a B instead of an A.” ~ Lois Lowry, from Rabble Starkey

Sigh. Say it, Lois.

P.S. Another bit of Grad School Loveliness: an ongoing assignment for the semester is to keep tabs on Ms. Lowry’s blog (which is awesome, if you’ve never visited) and comment on her topics and writing style as we read her work. Yes, this is the kind of stuff I get graded on. That and impossible papers about difficult literary theories.

single can

Can you believe that, 6 days out of 7, this is my only caffeine fix?

One single can.

This is Jessica, speaking. Jessica. Jessica who orders a triple shot if she’s feeling extra groggy in the a.m. Jessica who could drink two Rockstars in one day. Jessica who was identifiable at the gas station on the corner, the Beaners, the Starbucks. Jessica who could drink three Rockstars in one day.

I haven’t had a little canned Starbucks Doubleshot since August.

Oh, so much has changed in so little time!

I’m getting tired just thinking about it.

sad sack

I’ve never been one who could control my tears. I cry in class about once a year. I’ve cried during work hours at every job I’ve held. I used to cry a lot in my car, while I was driving and now occasionally find myself wanting to bawl as I walk home. 

But I’ve also never been one who could cry at the drop of a hat. Most of my tears are shed during times of exhaustion, confusion, stress or sadness. Books, movies, commercials with puppies? I’m immune.

Or I was.

For awhile I said “hormonal,” and got on with my day. But then week after week, month after month I’m crying at the end of EVERY. SINGLE. GREY’S. ANATOMY. EPISODE. and then yeah, it’s not hormones. Unless I-Don’t-Know-That-I’m-Pregnant, or something. But that is unlikely, being that I am not a complete idiot. (Although my periods HAVE always been irregular….)

Stress is the logical factor. Yes, I feel stress in my every day life. The back aches, the shoulders twinge, the jaw clenches and the migraines ensue. But I’m crying over commercials with puppies. I’m crying walking down the street because suddenly I can’t stop thinking about my mom dying, and yes, she will die, and how awful that will be. Or how I’m going to get cancer. Actually have to go through chemotherapy, lose my hair, my livelihood, be sick and weak and then die myself.

Sometimes tears well up because I’m just so freaking satisfied with myself and my life. I’ve done well. I’m doing fun things in an interesting place. I cry because six months ago, I was crying every other weekend when I had to leave Lance in his driveway, and now, even when I try, I can’t remember how I like to sleep when I have the bed to myself. 

Sometimes I cry after he goes to bed because it feels tense and hopeless between us. And I am exhausted, stressed, and sad to no longer be a child in my parents’ house.

So I think it’s just a new personality trait. I am now Girl Who Cries At Puppies. 

So much can change in 12 weeks.

 

I miss these people. I miss the girl I was twelve weeks ago. I miss the way my life used to run and sometimes I cry because we all have to leave and readjust and it’s not fair, can’t we all stay in our homes forever? Can’t we grow and be independent at home? 

So I bought a plane ticket. On December 23rd, Lance and I will drive home for Christmas. On January 3rd, Lance will drive back to Boston so he can go back to work. 

I will have until January 11th to recapture my lost youth.

I hope I won’t spend the whole trip crying.

Phillip Hoose

Phillip Hoose is a nonfiction author of eight books for children and adults. He lived in Indiana, has a degree in Forestry and Environmental Science from Yale, is a founding member of the Children’s Music Network, and now lives in Portland, Maine. He just got married and bought a house with a view of the Atlantic. He is also National Book Award nominee for 2009- his second time being honored.

Mr. Hoose spoke to my class yesterday, after we’d read all of his books, and it was really great to chat with him about his books, about writing, and about what it’s like to be a career writer in such a rapidly changing world. His editor also joined our conversation.

Some things I learned:

• Although a sensational story might seem like an easy path toward a successful book, topics such as racial injustice and other “finger-pointing” stories are shyed away from in the publishing world. This was the case with his book Necessities, which was a commercial failure, but an AWESOME, saddening book about racial issues in sports.
• Mr. Hoose chooses his books based on the story he can tell – it has to be personally compelling, important to children, and fairly untold. For his latest title, he learned about Claudette Colvin and was immediately interested in her story – she was a teenager when she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, was sent to jail, and later testified in the seminal Supreme Court case, Browder vs. Gayle. But she’s not a hero. In fact, nobody had heard of her. According to history, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, not Claudette Colvin. Hoose was interested in the woman’s bravery as a teenager and how her story was lost over the years, from her point of view.
• The tenets of writing great nonfiction is the same as writing great fiction, in Mr. Hoose’s eyes. Strong characters, interesting problems, and important relationships. His editor agreed. When asked if, when researching stories for his history text, We Were There, Too!, he chose some stories over others, he answered, “I am only interested in narrative tension.”
• His writing process starts a little like this: What is my thesis and what kind of stories and format can sell this thesis? His first book, Hoosiers, started off dry and journalistic, but when he decided to tell his story in stories, anecdotes, and narratives instead of essays, he managed to convince even some of our sports-hating classmates that yes, Indiana basketball is crazy and amazing.
• He emphasized writing about topics you are passionate about, but from our discussion, I interpreted this comment a little differently than you might think. I don’t think you – or Mr. Hoose – should write only about things you love in your life. I don’t need to write a book about baking or reading or Arrested Development or whatever. It seems that Mr. Hoose chose a topic that touched his life in some way, and sometimes the research inspired the passion. Or sometimes, the passion lies in the book’s larger implications in the world – he admitted that We Were There, Too! was a very difficult book to write but he was passionate about providing a historical narrative for young people in society, which is why he wrote it. You can be passionate about a person’s story, passionate about conservation, or just passionate about opening discourse on a certain topic. Yes, you need passion, but it need not be something you are ALREADY passionate about.
• It’s hard to get ahead writing nonfiction for children. All of chidren’s literature is very award-driven. If only 10 or so books can be awarded any large honor in a year, hundreds of other books then go under the radar. And nonfiction is even worse. At the National Book Award ceremony in 2001, Hoose said he met his nominators and they acted as if nominating his book was a very bold move on their part. His reaction? It was a great book, whether or not they were ‘bold’ enough to nominate it, and why didn’t it stand a chance of winning.
• His most commercially successful book is his only picture book, Hey, Little Ant!. He wrote it in an hour with his nine-year-old daughter, Hannah, and it has sold over a million copies.

Mr. Hoose is remarkably grounded and humble for his recent success, but not afraid to challenge the book-world, discussing how it sometimes fails many authors. He is anti-Kindle. He is a mix of creative and business-saavy that is probably a marker of a successful author. Even though we imagine authors as dreamy and devoted, offering pithy sentiments about stories and characters and blah-blah-blah. He wasn’t like that at all. He didn’t have answers to some of our questions, because he’s too busy writing and researching to sit around and analyze his own work.

Phillip Hoose’s website

It’s Our World, Too is a collection of true-life child activists, both from history and today. It also includes a handbook for how young people can start a revolution social change themselves.

We Were There, Too! is almost an alternative history text, covering Christopher Columbus all the way to the present, featuring so many interesting stories about kids. It was spurred by a girl telling Hoose that she felt like she wouldn’t even be a person until she turned 20, or so, because anything she did would never be in a history book. This is almost a reference text, and would be a great gift for a brainy elementary schooler who is a budding history buff – or just one you’d like to persuade into becoming a history buff. This was a National Book Award nominee and featured a blurb from Studs Terkel.

The Race to Save the Lord God Bird is a book about extinction – in particular, the extinction of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. The book follows the bird’s history back to our nation’s start, and slowly unfolds the various ways that humans revered and abused the bird to its probable extinction. Really good book, even for those not interested in birds or conservation. A Boston Globe – Horn Book Award winner.

Phillip Hoose is the cousin, once removed, of Don Larsen, who pitched a perfect game in the 1956 World Series. Perfect, Once Removed is Hoose’s memoir of his childhood as a baseball addict who was crappy at baseball, an admirer of his distant cousin, and growing up in suburban Indianapolis. Think A Christmas Story, with the humor but not bawdy humor, and if the movie was called A Baseball Story.

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice is a biography of an unsung civil rights hero – a teenage girl who was thrown in jail for refusing to give up her bus seat, but who fell out of history books all together. Although civil rights books have been done and done again, this book gives a fresh perspective by including actual commentary by Colvin herself, presenting her teenage-girl perspective, and really showing both sides of Jim Crow in a way that gives the civil rights leaders a respect I never saw, even reading more seminal texts on the historical period.  A National Book Award Nominee for 2009.

dream life

Already scheduling for next semester. Collegiate 16-week calendars are fun like that.

And I love what I’m seeing, on both sides of my dual degree.

A semester spent learning about Reference Services? Youth Media in Libraries? And top it off with The Picturebook? Yes, please. 

Adjusting to grad school life after being away from academia for so long has been rough, but come ON, my schedule for next Fall may very well include courses on Information Organization, Library Services for Young Adults, and Fantasy and Sci-Fi. I don’t even LIKE Fantasy and Sci-Fi that much and my heart’s fluttering.

Even now, as I scramble every week to read, struggle to remember how to write, and come home many nights ready to weep, there is something awesome about learning from professors whose passions are my passions, and who have made respectable careers out of pursuing them. I am reading so many books they are coming out of my ears – 40 or so books so far in the semester – but I am so happy to be FORCED into reading these books that I would have overlooked, that I always “meant” to read, that made those awards lists so many years ago. I’m meeting with authors. I get emails informing me of publishing internships available.

Even if I’m in debt until I’m 50, unemployed until I die, I will look back on these intense years and think “DAMN I learned what I wanted to learn and it was awesome.”

And for two years, my life was difficult,  but in a glamorous kind of way.

nanowhoknows

I’m unsure if I should try to write a novel next month.

All of my reasons for not writing are complete bs. I don’t have time (well, when will I EVER have time?), I need more time to prepare (well certainly I can make SOME time), I will fail and feel bad about myself (but I won’t fail if I committ myself to success), I am a crappy writer and I shouldn’t even try (this may be true but is not particularly productive).

Other excuses cycle up. I will feel some sort of latent Shame for participating, because I haven’t tried to write a book since LAST November (which I never completed) and haven’t completed one since the November before that. I am, therefore, an impostor writer who only writes books when it’s November and should give up the dream already. It’s just not working out. And the implied “You Are Not a Serious Writer Because Serious Writing Takes More Than 30 Days” is lurking around.

I do hear positive  notes whispering in my ear. NaNoWriMo is FUN. It is Productive. It is Possible, Useful, and Better Than The Alternative (which is to not write a book in November)

I guess I want to.

There is a large possibility that this will be a painful, painful experience. I do have priorities that NaNo Can. Not. Supercede. I have a few thousand pages to read, a handful of papers to write, and I’m getting my 8 hours of sleep every night so help me God.

I’m flying on false confidence here. Yes, I’m having a few easy weeks. Yes, I am ahead in my reading. Yes, I rocked my 90 minute group presentation on Marxism and I came home to a 3.6 on my Archetypal paper (A 3.6! I’m not getting worse! My stingy-with-praise professor even used the word “excellent” to describe something within it!). I woke up yesterday with a chest-cold thing and felt like crap all day but I made it. I didn’t lose consciousness in front of my classmates and I came home to some shrimp scampi cooked up by my one and only.

So I’m feeling like the impossible could be within reach.

Maybe.