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Posting a Sunday Summary on Tuesday morning is quite appropriate, given that my boyfriend and I interpreted our move-out date of last Friday to mean… also Tuesday morning. I hope to cod that by the time you read this, my move is finally, finally over. On to the summary:

Finished last week:

• Only THE HOT ROCK, the first DORTMUNDER book by Donald Westlake. If you can get past the datedness (let’s just say the female characters are not ones I recognize as human), it’s a really fun caper novel. And I love clever caper novels, especially ones filled with many non-obvious reversals of fortune. THE HOT ROCK fared excellently on that score.

Reading this week:

• I’m hoping to finally get my latest batch of LGBT teen romance novels today (due to the move, I had them sent to me at school; what better use of a departmental mailbox?). This weekend was Madison’s Pride — I had a great time marching in the parade and celebrating the mass wedding ceremony — so it’s particularly fitting.



• In the meantime, I have been working on my inaugural Read or Die! pick: Trotsky’s MY LIFE. Every time I read anything by Trotsky, I am struck by how excellent he is at characterization. It comes out in very enjoyable fashion when he recounts his school days:

The percentage of freaks among people in general is very considerable, but it is especially high among teachers. [... Here he starts describing his headmaster, Kaminsky] He was a physicist by profession, a humanity-hater by temperament. He never looked at the person with whom he talked; he moved about the corridors and the classrooms noiselessly on rubber heels. He spoke in a small, hoarse, falsetto voice which, without being raised, could be terrifying.

…He goes on from there, on Kaminsky and all his other teachers (none of whom come across hugely well). One of the things that makes it a great memoir is that Trotsky applies the same skill to himself; he judges himself, including his limitations and the changes in his ideas, very thoughtfully.

My status as a sociology grad student compels me to quote one more passage:

Casting about for activities, we decided to organize a university on the basis of mutual instruction. There were about twenty students. My department was sociology. That was high-sounding. I prepared for my course with all my powers, but after two lectures, which came off satisfactorily, I suddenly realized that my resources had been exhausted. The second lecturer, whose course was the French Revolution, became confused as soon as he began and promised to deliver his lecture in writing. Of course he failed to fulfill his promise, and that was the end of the enterprise.

The two of them then go on to try their hand at playwriting (”We had, it must be said, no shortage of monologues.”). I recognize myself all over these quotes, and feel immense gratitude that my own early writing and teaching efforts have been largely forgotten.

Cooked last week:




Pattypan squash, light of my casserole, fire of my stew. (Image from Potomac Vegetable Farms.)

• I’ve become obsessed with pattypan squash. I made a squash casserole (layers of squash — and zucchini, but I liked that less — and cheese, topped by bread soaked in milk and baked); when I fried some leftovers with an egg every morning for breakfast, it was like eating French toast with buttery squash. Delicious.

And I put a ton of squash into a shepherd’s pie inspired by my new favorite comment thread. I used blue cornmeal for the polenta topping, which was also quite beautiful: red tomato sauce, yellow and green squash, and purple crust. I kind of wish I hadn’t eaten it all day so I could eat more right now. *

In this week of packing and procrastinating…

Books finished:

• Only HERO, which I raced through. So fun!

Reading this week:

• Have begun the first Dortmunder book, HOT ROCKS. So far it is highly enjoyable.
• Many more teen LGBT books are making their way from Amazon’s warehouses to my home… please keep the suggestions coming!

There’s nothing like having to put all of my books into boxes to drive home the perils of being a book fetishist. I did better this time around about putting a bunch aside to give away, but I have also committed to a new Read or Die plan. That is, I’m taking a bunch of books I own, unread, yet deemed worthy of schlepping to my new home because, “I’ve always wanted to read that!”, and putting them on their own shelf. Every month I have to read the next one on the shelf — or I have to give it away. (I can mess with the order.) This month? Leon Trotsky’s autobiography, MY LIFE. It comes very highly recommended; time to see what all the fuss is about.

Best part of my new home? My roommate has a dog!!!!!

In other news, I have begun cooking. This is hugely exciting as I have always loved to eat, but have had limited skill at procuring my own foodstuffs except via parking myself at the local pub, where not only does everybody know my name, I know theirs, and we stop and talk when we see each other on the street, because I am there all the time like it is my home.

The drive to begin cooking was partly financial (I am trying to get my finances in order — part of the impetus to move — also encouraged by my having calculated that fully ten percent of my post-taxes-and-donations salary was going to wine. That does not, in fact, match my sense of what my priorities are.). I’ve also found that I feel an immense sense of accomplishment when I eat things I made. Ordinarily, I cook in enormous proportions and eat the leftovers for many days, but some friends and I are starting a group cooking night with leftovers exchange so we get some variety. I’m pretty sure this is the best idea I’ve ever had, after starting this blog.

Cooked this week:

• Curry, based on this recipe, except I added a lot more vegetables — eggplant, summer squash, mushrooms — and I kind of messed up the proportions, but it was delicious and fed me for six meals. Oh yeah, my cooking is very experimental, partly because I lack normal instruments of cooking (although during my move I located the measuring spoons… in a file cabinet!).
• Vegan chocolate pudding. I’ve been making lots of chocolate pudding lately; this was for one of the friends who aided my move. Secret ingredients? Cinnamon, cardamom and cayenne pepper. I should mention that I add cinnamon to more or less everything.

Learning to cook is only the latest in many respects in which I am growing up — though, some would say, a tad late. (In re: that link, I am 26.) I am getting over my spider phobia. I am becoming more organized and more chill. I am sorry to say that I have not, however, learned to drive.

I finally finished some books, and I’m going to pretend that it isn’t made much less impressive by having skipped last week. So in the last two weeks:

Books finished:

• SEXUALITY AND SOCIALISM. I loved this. I am proud of Sherry Wolf, the author, who is also my friend. I was very familiar with the U.S.’s history of homosexuality and homophobia through the early ’70s, and with many of the debates in the LGBT movement today, but almost totally ignorant about the period in between. So my favorite parts of this book were about the rise of queer theory (which the author has an interesting and, to my mind, convincing critique of as “militant defeatism”) and the connections between the LGBT and labor movements, from the 1930s to today. Fun stuff.
• DIARY OF BERGEN-BELSEN by Hanna Levy-Hass. This was fascinating: Levy-Hass writes about the starvation, the diseases, etc. but what seems to pain her the most in her concentration camp experience is the collaboration of her fellow Jewish prisoners. A committed communist before her imprisonment, she helps to lead resistance in the camp: she is chosen to represent 120 women when they organize to demand control over the food distribution (to take it out of the hands of corrupt relatively ‘privileged’ prisoners and make it equitable).

  Her ability to keep her thoughts lucid in these conditions is remarkable, and she expresses immense frustration with her fellow prisoners and pain at seeing their servitude, even while acknowledging that her own relative physical health (and it was relative: the descriptions of all of their bodies are chilling) is likely what makes it possible for her to keep hold of her senses. At one point, she writes that for the rest of her life she will judge people not by how they act in “normal” conditions, but by remembering how they did, or imagining how they would, act in conditions of inhumanity.

  Levy-Hass was the mother of Amira Hass, who remains the only Israeli journalist to live in the Occupied Territories so she can report in honesty and solidarity with Palestinians. Hass’s introduction and afterword, substantial essays about her parents’ lives before and after the camps, contribute enormously to the book. In particular, she draws out the personal and political implications of her mother’s subsequent disillusionment with the USSR, whose Soviet Red Army had liberated both of Hass’s parents.

• Most excitingly, I am back to reading kids’ books! Yesterday I finished ONE-EYED CAT by Paula Fox, a lucky find at a used bookstore, and GEOGRAPHY CLUB by Brent Hartinger, which kicks off my LGBT teen book reading series. Reviews of these two are coming.

Reading this week:

• The LGBT reading continues — others I purchased are Perry Moore’s HERO and Peter Cameron’s SOMEDAY THIS PAIN WILL BE USEFUL TO YOU. More recommendations very very welcome!
• I also bought THE HOT ROCK, the first DORTMUNDER book by Donald Westlake. There’s a long and sad history here, because Emily lent me the Dortmunder series years ago, and I left them in my boyfriend’s car, and it will tell you a great deal about the state of his car that they remained there, lost, until he had to trade in his car a few years later. Emily spotted the books in one of my apartment’s many random book piles this past May, and justly took them home; as penance (and ’cause I usually trust her recommendations) I’m going to make this the first of my mystery reading kick after Mieville’s CITY & CITY.

That’s the plan — it remains only to be seen whether the fact that I’m moving these next two weeks (uck!) means I read less ’cause I’m packing, or more ’cause I’m putting off packing…

Posted in Sunday Summary

…because even though I skipped last week, my Sunday Summary is really embarrassing. Meaning, I continue to start many books, and finish very, very few. I once had a professor who (twice!) sent me a long quote from Trotsky about how the problem with the young comrades is how they skipped from topic to topic instead of having the focus to really learn anything. That professor knew me better than people in positions of authority over me ought.

In my defense, my ongoing roommate search is taking way more time than I ever expected which kind of sucks, and also, I’ve been kind of obsessed with reading things related to my (new! improved!) MA thesis, which kind of really doesn’t suck at all, except it’s taken up my reading-for-fun-especially-about-teenagers-falling-in-and-out-of-love-with-each-other time. And come to think of it, the fact that I now read about unobserved heterogeneity distributions instead of cliques and monsters at bedtime may explain why I’ve been sleeping really poorly.

Anyway. Books finished and yes that is an inaccurate use of the plural:

• FROM A TO X by John Berger. This is one of the best love stories I’ve read. It’s made me reconsider the fact that I never read adult fiction. There was really no way I wasn’t going to love this one, seeing as how it’s about love:
  

  I was clinging to you hard, not with my arms, because it was not your body I was clinging to, we were both sitting well back in our seats, very calm, I was clinging to your intentions, your exact intentions. What they were I couldn’t tell because I knew nothing about flying, but the way you intended whatever it was, was deeply familiar to me, and inseparable from my love for you.

  And war:

  What I admired about Fernando was his capacity to persuade people to be honest with themselves, for when this happens they gain the advantage of surprise. An incomparable tactical advantage in any insurrection. It’s the lies we tell ourselves that make us repetitive. Fernando understood this.

  And prisons. It’s about prisons.

Reading this week:

• SEXUALITY AND SOCIALISM by Sherry Wolf. I put this down before finishing it when I was dealing with some other things, but I’m very excited to get back into it. Especially because the last few chapters are on the stuff I know less about. I particularly want to get more into her critique of the turn to queer theory in the academy.
• I’ve been thinking about going on a mystery kick. Lenore’s been reviewing some promising books I want to read, but I believe I’ll start with China Mieville’s new detective novel, CITY & CITY. It’s exceedingly rare that I shell out for a new hardcover, as I did with this one at a book fair last month (damn you for placing it by the register!), so I’ll feel lame if I don’t read it while it’s still new.
• I’m also thinking about going on an LGBT young adult reading kick, because it’s been a while since I’ve read much of this lit (not in any large quantity since I was in high school, when there was a lot less of it). This was inspired by reading in the NY Times Book Review today about the promisingly-titled THE VAST FIELDS OF ORDINARY, which is so new that I’m going to try to get my hands on a free copy for review (in a political periodical), which means I won’t be reading it this week. So: LGBT teen/kid book suggestions welcome!
• My boyfriend went to the American Library Association conference (he was exhibiting for Haymarket Books) and brought me back some freebies. They’re short enough that I can review them this week, so I’m keeping them a surprise…

Imagine this expanded and surrounded by coffee cups and wineglasses, and you will know how I live.

Besides the usual crap for school (I took a math test! I read things about old people dying!), last week I…

Finished:

• EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT BEING A GIRL I LEARNED FROM JUDY BLUME, ed. by Jennifer O’Connell.
• …and nothing else. Hence: series.

And am now reading this week:

• FROM A TO X by John Berger. Adult fiction, which: break from habit! It’s a weird story — told in letters to an imprisoned insurgent from his lover, with the insurgent’s odd marginalia — but I’m enjoying it. I like the lover’s character; that’s the only thing I’ve gotten a feel for so far.
• SEXUALITY AND SOCIALISM by Sherry Wolf. Brand new and totally awesome, but then, I’m biased because it’s by a friend. But I’ve been waiting for this book for years (years!), and now it’s here and I’m glad.
• LABOR WARS by Sidney Lens. This one’s for a book club. I’ve read a lot of labor history, but this one is still filling in gaps in my knowledge and is a lot livelier than many an academic history I have been fed.
• Notice what’s not on this list? Kids’ books. That’s because I’m having an unfortunate issue with Madison’s libraries involving their decision to send a hit man to break my legs for unpaid fines, which really I found rather ungenerous. Luckily, my advanced ninja sleight was able to put them off… for now. It’s possible I should resolve that situation. Alternatively, I could just scour my shelves again. Or (whispers) simply accept that despite all my determination not to buy so many books, some situations call for a visit to the bookstore… maybe the one right by the ice cream shop downtown… Already I am seeing a new path for my tomorrow afternoon.