My apologies...

I'm here to say sorry. Sorry for quitting the blog when my computer quit. Sorry for neglecting you all when you did nothing but love me and post to my delight. There was a subconscious tie between the computer and the blog and I just couldn't bring myself to create new posts on foreign computers.

But good news! CZF bought me the best Christmas present to date. A very pretty new lappy top top. And with that I'm back.

So, it's that time again, I want to know what you are reading. Any good history books I should know about. Or amazing fiction that I've never heard of. I want it all!! Gim'me! Gim'me!!

Can you name this man?

Is it:
A) Father Time
2) Saint Nick aka Kris Kringle
D) Old Man Winter
or)Walt Whitman


p.s. God I'm bored.

Forster v. Dickens

As many know, I have been on a little crush of Charles Dickens since reading Bleak House. So any mention of Dickens (usually they are negative, I find) peaks my interest.
While reading a chapter from Anatomy of Criticism, by Northrop Frye, I came across this delightful jab at the anti-Dickensians while Frye was talking about the comic use of repetition.

"Mr. E.M. Forster speaks with disdain of Dickens's Mrs. Micawber, who never says anything except that she will never desert Mr. Micawber: a strong contrast is marked here between the refined writer to finicky for popular formulas, and the major one who exploits them ruthlessly."

That's it. Just a little note since the blog has been a bit slower as of late.

A Reading List of My Own-unless you care to join me

So. As AZF and ScarlettZ and a few others embark on the pleasures of reading The Last Temptation of Christ, I will be spending my holiday break reading for MA Comprehensive Exam. As far as reading lists go, it's not too many pages and it's not too much new material. But there is one book on the list that I will be embarrassed to have read, let alone to read it for my comp exam. See if you can pick it out.
The theme of the exam is romantic comedy--definitions and discourse on love, meanings and constructions of lover and beloved, the stakes of marriage, socially sanctioned form of affect and relationships. So. That's okay.

The List:
Much Ado About Nothing-Shakespeare
Songs and Sonnets; Elegy 19-John Donne
Pride & Prejudice-Jane Austen
Importance of Being Earnest-Oscar Wilde
Complete Love Poems-May Swenson
The Boyfriend School-Sarah Bird

Yeah.
There's also a handful of scholarship to read. Stanley Cavell, Nancy Vickers, Hawthorne, Henry James, Northrop Frye.

Seriously. You want to read my comp list with me. You know you do. When will you ever get another valid reason to read the Boyfriend School?

Clack-Clack

Now that my quarter is over, my final papers are written and the worlds of Milton/Lillo scholarship are one step closer to perfection I have decided to read Buechner's Alphabet of Grace one more time. The rest of my winter break will be the reading list for my comp. exam. But for right now, I am loving Buechner.

You wake up out of the huge crevasses of the night and your dreaming. You get out of bed, wash and dress, eat breakfast, say goodbye and go away never maybe to return for all you know, to work, talk, lust, pray, dawdle and do, and at the end of the day, if your luck holds, you come home again, home again. Then night again. Bed. The little death of sleep, sleep of death. Morning, afternoon, evening--the hours of the day, of any day, of your day and my day. The alphabet of Grace. If there is a god who speaks anywhere, surely he speaks here.

Don't mean to get all heavy-handed and dramatic. It's just so lovely a book.

Don't forget to Vote (for jesus)

Taking a break from books to remind those who are not too stupid to register before the deadline to vote. Those of us who are too stupid will remain nameless.

I know we've seen this picture before, but i still think its hilarious, and it's been cleaned up a bit since I last came across it.

The Last Temptation of Christ

If any of y'all want to join Amber's and my cozy little reading club (and when I say cozy, I mean very, very intimate-- probably just Amber and myself in the end), we are planning on reading The Last Temptation of Christ for the end of December. So, start reading and you, too, can be part of that discussion. Yeah!

Greatest. Title. Ever.

We are reading the "She Stoops to Conquer," written by Oliver Goldsmith in 1771. He was desperate for cash, frantically wrote this play (as I've come to understand it) and everyone thought it would be a disaster. Instead, it was an un-rivaled success, becoming the most popular non-Shakespeare written play in English history. It has been in production every season since it was written.
Can you fucking believe that.
And, the title kicks ass.