Is Redemption in Sight?

I read two full (ok they were short) books this week! I feel that this somehow/somewhat makes up for the fact that the last two books I read took up almost two months. This week I read A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym and The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield. Both authors are darlings of Virago Modern Classics and their books are centered around parochial life in 1950s London and 1930s English Countryside respectively. Lots of wry British humor and unfulfilled women. Reviews to follow.

Why is it that all newly on-the-wagon former (?) slackers feel the need to advertise their every accomplishment? LOOK AT ME, I used to spend hours watching Miss Marple on Netflix play-instantly, but Today I did my laundry, read a real Book, and wore matching socks because I am now a Responsible Adult. This attitude is never wise and will inevitably lead to Falling Off The Reading/Accomplishment Wagon, more Miss Marple, and Tears.

In fact, the effort of putting my Completed Book back on the shelf and selecting a new one and, in the process, contemplating the staggering enormity of my literary accomplishments has left me in desperate need of a nap...

(Note: must seek to acquire less self-congratulatory sense of discipline like Saint Jerome, who you can tell got a lot of reading done. Also I want a lion friend. Painting by Jan van Eyck ca. 1435.)

Covergate 2010, or, Should You Judge a Book by Its Cover?

One of my new favorite authors, Lauren Willig, has a new book coming out in January. The giddy excitement I feel when I think about this is actually kind of embarrassing. Will Eloise and Colin continue to exist in a state of romantic bliss? Will the Pink Carnation and her League of Awesome Spy People continue to thwart the Evil Frenchies? Will Eloise be able to give her adviser a finished chapter complete with footnotes? Will Dear Reader survive until January without turning into Veruca Salt and screaming "I want it NOW!" in the middle of Borders?

But I digress. The big excitement today was that the cover art for the new book, The Orchid Affair, was unveiled on Willig's website. Previous Pink book covers were comprised of painted portraits from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, giving the books a romantic but distinctly historical feel. Imagine my shock when I saw that the cover for The Orchid Affair not only sports a new, Romance Novel curlicue font but has replaced the fine arts portrait with a contemporary (original) photo-realistic drawing of a bare shouldered, headless woman:



Sure, it's pretty, but, as a friend remarked, all that's missing is Fabio and his flowing locks. To me, this doesn't say historical novel featuring espionage, quizzing glasses, and a dash of romance, it says Generic Trashy Bodice-Ripper featuring either a weak-willed, wilting flower or an overly-pugnacious firebrand and the requisite rugged, brutish male. Without, I hope, being flippant or overly critical, this cover looks cheap and down-market. (A scan of the comments on her site showed that I was not alone in these sentiments.) It also looks a bit...how to say this correctly...unsophisticated? Unintelligent? It's the kind of cover I wouldn't want people on the subway to see me reading.

And that's just not who Lauren Willig is, nor is it what her books are. (Let me be clear: this is not meant to be a critique of Willig, who stated on her site that the makeover decision was made by her publisher. She is fabulous.)

More to the point, several commentors on Willig's site said that if they did not already know her work and saw this cover in the store, they would pass right by it. Would I do the same? Probably. Would you? To borrow from Carrie Bradshaw, I couldn't help but wonder to what extent we judge a book by its cover. What kind of assumptions do we make about a book's content based on its outward appearance? If, for example, the heroine's shoulders were covered, would I assume the content was more "elevated?"

A cover is a book's calling card. Like an actor's headshot or a job applicant's resume, it is the first thing we see and what we use to form a first impression. We expect a headshot/resume/cover to tell us something about who or what the person/book represented is and what they're about. My thespian brother recently told me about a friend of his whose choice of clothing in his headshot had typecast him in the stereotypical "Asian" roles--doctor, scientist, lab tech (thanks, America...). This friend is actually a very fine actor with a tremendous dramatic range, but the way in which he presented himself on his calling card meant that directors formed a very narrow, rigid picture of him, with the result that they never saw his other talents.

So what does The Orchid Affair's cover say to me? The fountain in the background, writing in the sky, and blue palette suggest that the overall mood of the book will be contemplative, sentimental, and chick-lit-y (but not as much as pastels/pink). Let's assume the woman depicted is the main character. The lack of face shifts the focus away from her psyche and onto her body. That her dress appears to be slipping from her shoulders further emphasizes her sexuality and promises the reader lots of seduction but, probably, not much plot, certainly not a complex one. In addition to presenting the main character as a Body rather than as a Person, the lack of a face also allows her to function as an avatar for the reader, who can insert herself in her place and, through her, live out the romantic fantasies that cannot be fulfilled in her real life. The flower she holds promises romance (so not just ravishing) and probably a happy, matrimonial ending.

Now, if you know Lauren Willig's books, you know that they are so much more than that. This heroine, for example, happens to be a smart, educated girl--a governess and a trained spy--and the plot goes beyond heaving bosoms to include espionage, double agents, and a Royalist conspiracy. But, based on this cover, who could tell?

Being the photoshop wiz (read: total novice) that I am, I decided to try my hand at cover designing and see what I could come up with in the fine arts genre. These are my two best:



Compare these two to the official cover: which one would you be more likely to pick up? Why? What different conjectures would you make about the plot? What kind of book would you think it was?

It is frustrating that the good people at Dutton decided that Willig's books need to appeal to the lowest common denominator in order to be successful. This kind of thing happens a lot: much has been made recently, for example, about the Brooklyn Museum's unsuccessful attempt to boost attendance through making themselves more "popular." Guess what? It doesn't work. When you don't trust your audience, when you say "oh, you couldn't possibly like or understand all this stuffy Art and Literature--it's so dry and complicated and you have to Think. Look at this picture of Mick Jagger or watch Twilight instead," when you say that, you not only alienate the part of your audience that wants art and literature, you ensure that the other part of your audience won't even give it a chance. By dumbing down your content, you dumb down your audience. Why should anyone even buy a book if reading is just So Hard?

I also think it's frustrating and sad that, in today's publishing world, the author--the generator of the product--has so little say in how that product is presented. As I noted above, Willig says on her site that she would have preferred to stick with the fine art covers. An earlier news post reveals that the change in the title format (the original title was The Intrigue of the Silver Orchid, mirroring the other titles in the series) was instigated by her editors as well. Now, I grew up with two parents who were book editors, so I know how tricky the world of book publishing is. But surely the creator of the work should have more say in what it's called and what it looks like? And why the sudden need to "makeover" a series that regularly appears on the bestseller list? That, however, is a subject for another entry.

Of course I will buy, read, and love The Orchid Affair and all the other books that Willig puts out. But I'm still really disappointed that my beloved Advanced Escape Reading (bodices AND bibliographies, bitches) has been re-branded as trashy romance.

Your thoughts?

Procrastination is the Greatest Nation

Well, this hasn't gone so well, has it? Some weekend soon I'll sit down with the stack of books I've read and actually write the reviews I said I was going to write, thus escaping from the cloud of ignominy and disgrace that my procrastination has cast over my lazy head.

Shortly after the beginning of the new year (when I blithely resolved to read 50 books and review them for the Masses), I did both a very good and very foolish thing: I resumed work on my dissertation. Good because it's important to have a career and spark your passion; foolish because it significantly cuts down on blogging time. It is probably also decimating my self-esteem and giving me carpal tunnel/a hunchback, but that's another story.

My days now look like this:

1. I get up and procrastinate with the internet and NPR
2. I go down to the library to expand my mind/footnotes; I manically refresh my favorite gossip blog to see if Lindsay Lohan/Miley Cyrus/Mel Gibson has done anything shocking
3. I eat a sandwich in the park with brazen and predatory pigeons and read a novel (see, I'm trying!)
4. Repeat library
5. I go to the gym in an attempt to make my clothes fit
6. I negate good works at the gym by eating dinner
7. I put lotion on my feet, watch one of the several Masterpiece Theater/BBC dvds that I have checked out from the public library, and marvel at the fact that my long-distance relationship has turned me into a total spinster. At least I do not crochet and have only one cat.
8. Exhausted with Library and Spinster-ing, I read a chapter or two of the above novel and think despondently about my lack of blogging before drifting off into fitful slumber.

So there you have it. And I'll let you in on a little secret: this is not the first time I've had a blog and not the first time I abandoned a blog after just a few posts. But this time is different, this time I will not walk away, this time I will finish. It will happen!! (That nifty little rhetorical device of pairing three parallel statements is called a tricolon, by the way, and Cicero thought they were totally sweet.)

Here's a list of the books I've read so far this year. It's a poor substitute for reviews, I know, but I hope it will satisfy for now.

The Betrayal of the Blood Lily - Lauren Willig
The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn - Robin Maxwell
Mademoiselle Boleyn - Robin Maxwell
Great Cases of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Excellent Women - Barbara Pym
Lush Life - Richard Price
The Lady and the Unicorn - Tracy Chevalier
My Cousin Rachel - Daphne du Maurier
The Power of One - Bryce Courtenay
The Talented Mr. Ripley - Patricia Highsmith
An Instance of the Fingerpost -Iain Pears
The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown (yes, I know...I am heartily ashamed)
Through a Glass Darkly - Donna Leon
Willful Behavior - Donna Leon
Dressed for Death - Donna Leon
A Sea of Troubles - Donna Leon
Possession - A.S. Byatt

I also read about 6 issues of Real Simple but I don't think that counts.

Reviews to come I swear!!

(Image: Caravaggio, The Penitent Magdalene, ca. 1597, oil on canvas)

Review: The Betrayal of the Blood Lily, Lauren Willig

My very first book review! I haven't written a book review since elementary school. Now I'm nervous.

The Betrayal of the Blood Lily is the sixth installment in Lauren Willig's delightful Pink Carnation series, which chronicles the romantic adventures of Napoleonic era British spies and the romantic misadventures of modern-day Harvard doctoral student Eloise Kelly, who is researching said spies for her dissertation.

At the very beginning of the series, Eloise is struggling to find sources--any sources--for her dissertation on super-spies the Scarlet Pimpernel (in the series, a real person), his successor the Purple Gentian (Willig's own invention) and the elusive Pink Carnation (ditto), whom Eloise hopes to finally unmask. Eloise is about to throw in the towel and write about espionage and constructs of masculinity (ugh...) when the academic equivalent of manna from Heaven appears: a previously unseen archive in the home of a fairy godmother-esque descendant of the Purple Gentian. What Eloise finds in these archives, and those that follow, are the plots of Willig's novels. Did I mention that there is also a Prince Not-So-Charming? Eloise's benefactor's surly but strapping great-nephew, Colin, makes his entrance in the first book as a foil to our heroine, and their inevitable courtship forms the basis of the series's secondary plotline.

The Betrayal of the Blood Lily is a departure from the other books in the series in that its heroine is already married at the beginning. If you have read the other Pink books (recommended but not required) then you have already made the acquaintance of Penelope Deveraux, bosom friend to the Purple Gentian's younger sister and one of the most incorrigible flirts of the ton. Penelope has finally succeeded in ruining her own reputation. "Compromised" after being caught canoodling with the loutish Lord Freddy Staines, Penelope finds herself rushed to the altar before the book begins. Blood Lily also departs, quite literally, from the series's familiar setting of Franco-British courts, assembly halls, and country estates for the wilds of colonial India, where Freddy and Penelope are packed off to allow the scandal surrounding their marriage time to die down. Several of her friends express optimism that exile could be the making of their relationship...

It isn't.

This revelation should not be news to anyone who has read the book jacket. Penelope does not find marital bliss in India. What she does find is a decidedly extra-marital romance in the shape of the dashing Alex Reid, a captain in the British colonial forces charged with escorting Penelope and Freddy to Hyderabad, where Freddy is to assume a diplomatic post at the court of the Nizam. Their romance is one of Willig's finest yet, hard-won, even-handed, and utterly believable. It helps that Penelope is no wilting flower. Like Mary Alsworthy, Penelope is a "difficult" heroine--willful, world-weary, but whose hard-armored coquettishness hides a desperate desire to be loved and understood. Penelope shoots cobras, dives into rivers, and matches words with politicians. She is also horribly lonely, having been sent away from all her friends to a strange country with a husband who treats her with utter disregard. Her romance with Alex, who hasn't had the easiest time of it either, is very much a meeting of the minds. That they are first friends before they become lovers is a testament to the deep respect and regard that they have for one another. I'm a believer!

As for the rest of the plot, this is a Lauren Willig novel so naturally, spies are involved. Our villain, a French spy called the Marigold, was introduced in the last installment, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine. While the Marigold's political treachery isn't fully realized until late in the book, his (or her) personal threat to Penelope, Freddy, and Alex is keenly felt from the first broken girth. Willig does a good job with the suspense and we spend as much time looking over our shoulders as we do straining our bodices. She also does a superb job rendering the elaborate world of colonial India and its intrigues. Many of Blood Lily's juicier elements--the mad Nizam, the leprosy-ridden Prime Minister--are culled straight from history and rendered in perfect detail.

But the plot itself, I'm sorry to say, is at times not quite up to her usual standard. I did keep guessing until the end who the Marigold was (a first for me), but the reveal was something of a letdown. I can't say much more without spoiling it, but we do not get the sense here, as we do in her other books, of the villain's drive. Instead of the mastermind behind a great conspiracy, we find someone who seems to have merely stumbled into a great conspiracy. She also leaves several very blatant loose ends. Chekov famously said that one should not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it. In other words, objects introduced in a story must be used later on or else not included. There are two loaded guns here--big ones--that are never fired, and whose lack of use definitely contributed to my feeling not quite satisfied when I turned the last page. A debt that is never repaid? An enemy who never strikes? To say more would reveal too much so I'll just say that a red herring is one thing, a dead end is another.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed this book. It's actually a testament to how far Willig has come as a novelist that I'm nit-picking and griping about the spy plot, which in her first few books served more as a backdrop to the romance than a principal player. As accomplished a writer as she now is, I can't help but feel that she should know better.

In terms of the writing itself, however, Blood Lily is Willig's best yet. Her prose, which I'll admit I found charming but light when I read her first book, has become nuanced, rich, and elegant. Her characters are vibrant and pointedly realized, her atmospheres are lush, and her descriptions--one in particular of a bloated corpse--at times approach the poetic. Her dialogue, always a strong point, is pitch-perfect and sparkles with echoes of Waugh and Wodehouse. And like Waugh (and occasionally Wodehouse) her writing is also earnest and poignant when called for. We may laugh when Penelope lays into Freddy but we cringe when he sets her down and betrays her trust. There is style, but there is also real emotional substance.

This series is one of my favorite guilty pleasures. It's light without being too light--the intellectual's answer to the dime-store romance. Perhaps it won't come as a surprise that the series came about as an escape for Willig from her own dissertation research. It is by definition escapist literature, the perfect getaway for those of us who want to take a break from the real world and fall blissfully into the past where the men are swashbuckling and the women run the show.

Pierre de Ronsard, the French Ariosto, wrote in the preface to his epic, the Franciade: "History only recounts things the way they are, or were, without disguise or ornament,...the Poet contents himself with the plausible, to that which could be." This is what I see Willig doing. She loves history, really loves it, to the point where she has to make it come alive and imagine what these people could have said, could have thought, could have done. Her books are impeccably researched down to the type of knee-breeches Lord Freddy would have worn and impeccably imagined down to what Lord Freddy would have said at breakfast. You can't help but feel that these characters must have lived and, what's more, you wish that they did. And that is what historical fiction is all about.

A merry romp and a surprisingly evocative and accomplished book. Grad students past and present especially ought to dive in, as here at last is a heroine (and author) who Understands. I can't believe I have to wait another year for the next one. Highly recommended!

"Danger" Is My Middle Name...

If anybody besides my mother is actually reading this, you're probably wondering what is so "dangerous" about reading a bunch of books over the course of a year. What could be safer than sitting inside, alone, away from harmful UV rays, bad drivers, and loaded firearms reading inanimate words on a page? The Year of Running Across Subway Tracks--that's dangerous. The Year of Reading is for agoraphobics, invalids, and unathletic nerds (although, for the record, I played sports. Take that, stereotypes).

Nor could "dangerous" really refer to what I'm reading; with a very few exceptions, none of the books I've chosen are particularly subversive. I did find, when I googled "the year of reading dangerously" to see if this blog popped up (yes, I am that lame), a blog/online book club called "My Year of Reading Dangerously" dedicated exclusively to "dangerous" (i.e. subversive, banned, challenging, etc.) works. Imagine my horror and chagrin when I realized my blog title was not at all original! I thought I had been so clever.

No, the "danger" in reading a book a week for fun is purely ironic. And that's classical, actual irony, not Alanis Morissette irony. I dare myself to be a rebel, to live a little and put down The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d'Este and pick up In The Company of the Courtesan. And I dare you, whoever you are, if you're out there, to do the same: put down the Blackberry, the laptop, the stack of exams, pick up a good book, and take a few moments out of your day for yourself. Thrill-seekers might also pour themselves a glass of wine or have a second piece of cake. Oh, the humanity!

When it comes down to it, the danger is not really picking up a book. The danger is that in a world where we are more and more expected to be working round the clock, to be available 24/7, and to always be on top of the Dow report or proceedings of the latest RSA meeting, we run the risk of losing ourselves and losing what makes us human. We lose art, we lose music, we lose poetry, we lose beauty. And what's the point of living in a world without beauty? The danger is not picking up a book.

Of course, if you asked Dick Valentine of Electric Six, he'd tell you that danger is caressing your beloved. That's why you keep starting fires.


Go figure.

Entering The Lists

In medieval tournaments, the "lists" or "list field" was the arena in which jousting (or other tournament fighting) took place. To enter the lists, therefore, meant to accept a challenge or engage in a contest. In more general and contemporary usage, a list is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, a "catalogue or roll consisting of a row or series of names, figures, words, or the like."

In this case, both definitions strike me as fitting. I am accepting a challenge, although perhaps not one that comes with a risk of losing my eye to a splintered lance. My prize upon my successful completion of this feat will not be gold or the favors of the fair princess, only a handful more books on the shelf and a somewhat depleted checking account (and possibly a mild case of eye strain). But I am, with this "catalogue or roll," entering the lists, ready to bravely combat my notorious procrastination and the occasional dragon of obtuse prose. I can do this!

I think.

Incidentally, "list" can also refer to "the flank (of pork); a long piece cut from the gammon." Who knew? The OED never ceases to amaze.

Before we engage in mortal combat, the rules of engagement: Books, even with The Strand, Amazon, and Powells, are expensive. The library is amazing but sometimes unreliable and those overdue fines will get you every time. So, I will be sticking primarily with books I already own but have not yet read. This will not be difficult, as I cannot walk away from any used bookstore or "bargain" table and always feel the need to spend $25+ on Amazon to get the free shipping. My shelves are like a Russian orphanage, overflowing with wonderful, unexplored tomes begging me to take them down and love them.

Of course, all rules have exceptions. Book club selections (when not my pick) will be outside of my control. Likewise, the parameters of the Tournament of Reading dictate that I complete two new volumes each of history and medieval literature, emphasis on new. I own many medieval books (thanks to school), but being the good little student I was, I've read them already. So those will be new, too.

Enough with the definitions and details. To the tiltyard!

*****

The List (alphabetical by author):

1. Lucrezia Borgia - Maria Bellonci
2. The Decameron - Giovanni Boccaccio*
3. Possession - A.S. Byatt
4. The Lady and the Unicorn - Tracy Chevalier*
5. Great Cases of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
6. My Cousin Rachel - Daphne du Maurier
7. In the Company of the Courtesan - Sarah Dunant
8. The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco*
9. Leonardo's Swans - Karen Essex*
10. Dracula, Prince of Many Faces: His Life and Times - Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally*
11. Howard's End - E.M. Forster
12. Incarnadine: The True Memoirs of Count Dracula - R.H. Greene
13. The Weight of Silence - Heather Gudenkauf
14. 84 Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff
15. Gentlemen and Players - Joanne Harris
16. The Aviary Gate - Katie Hickman
17. The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century - Ibn Battuta*
18. Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery - Eric Ives
19. The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
20. The Swan Thieves - Elizabeth Kostova
21. Lady Chatterley's Lover - D.H. Lawrence
22. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
23. The Lais of Marie de France - Marie de France*
24. Mademoiselle Boleyn - Robin Maxwell
25. The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn - Robin Maxwell
26. The House at Riverton - Kate Morton
27. Cluny: In Search of God's Lost Empire - Edwin Mullins*
28. Going Rogue: An American Life - Sarah Palin (thanks, gag xmas gift!)
29. Bel Canto - Ann Patchett
30. The Dante Club - Matthew Pearl
31. Lush Life - Richard Price
32. A Glass of Blessings - Barbara Pym
33. Crampton Hodnet - Barbara Pym
34. Excellent Women - Barbara Pym
35. Some Tame Gazelle - Barbara Pym
36. Immortal - Traci Slatton*
37. I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
38. Tales out of School - Benjamin Taylor
39. Affinity - Sarah Waters
40. The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters
41. The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn - Alison Weir
42. The Betrayal of the Blood Lily - Lauren Willig
43. Book Club TBA
44. Book Club TBA
45. Book Club TBA
46. Book Club TBA
47. Book Club TBA
48. Book Club TBA
49. Book Club TBA
50. Book Club TBA

(* denotes a Tournament of Reading selection. The rules of the challenge define the medieal period as anything from 500 to 1500 A.D. Several of my picks are really more Early Renaissance than Medieval, but they are set before 1500... Am I cheating? Maybe just a little.)

The gauntlet is laid. Let us begin.

"Miss Eliza Bennet," said Miss Bingley, "despises cards. She is a great reader and has no pleasure in anything else."

It is a truth universally acknowledged that those who read for a living will never pick up a book on their own if they can possibly help it. Diane Setterfield, one of my new favorite academics-turned-authors, lists the erosion of her private reading time as her primary motivator for leaving the ivory tower. "I was plagued," she said, "by the feeling that by some absurd mistake I was leading someone else's life." Imagine my horror when I realized that, three years into my graduate degree, I could list the books that I had read for fun on one hand! (Harry Potter doesn't count.) It would not do. I had gone from being the type of insanely bookish child that teachers and librarians dream about (and other children think is Weird) to being recreationally illiterate.

How had this happened? Anyone who is or has been a student or an academic will understand: you arrive home in the evening, tired from hunching over some very large, thick book (with inevitably tiny type) at your library carrel only to remember that you still have to read over an article to prepare for your section the next day and make a handout for your students. You eat some depressing dinner that likely came out of a box, wishing desperately that you could just watch some CSI or Law and Order instead of making vocabulary lists. You finally finish just as bedtime approaches and fall gratefully into your pillows. The light goes out instantly. The stack of books you have hopefully placed on your bedside table will only move in the morning when you knock them over trying to get to your alarm clock. Pathetic.

It isn't that you don't want to read--the horrible part is that you do want to read--but that you simply can't bear to look at any more words on a page than you have to. The worst sufferers of Academic Illiteracy go beyond mere aversion to guilt: how can you justify spending a half an hour of consciousness (and brain power) on a novel? You should be working! Any time not spent sleeping, eating, showering (occasionally), teaching, learning, meeting, or studying should be spent reading Art Bulletin, not The Portrait of a Lady.

I returned to reading completely by accident two years ago when I started seeing a guy we'll just call A. A is not an academic, so he reads. He reads voraciously, every night before he goes to sleep he'll knock out fifty pages. When bedtime arrived, the light did not go out instantly. Instead, I lay awake, bored to tears, for at least twenty minutes while he happily read Graham Greene. One day, as we were getting ready to decamp to his house for the evening and I was stuffing the usual next day's clothes and research book in my backpack, I grabbed a novel from my bookshelf and stuffed it in there too. It was The Hours by Michael Cunningham, which my brother had given me years before and had lain gathering dust ever since (although I'd loved the film). Later that night, when we got ready for bed, again the light did not go out instantly. But this time I did not lie awake resentfully wishing for something to do; I read about Virginia, Laura, and Clarissa and I was happy. Maybe one day I will write and post a review of The Hours. All I'll say for now is that it's one of those books that is so good it's unfair.

Two years later, I still don't have my Ph. D. and I still read for fun. Shortly after my Hours Revelation, I left school for a while to rethink my dissertation topic, get some real world experience, and sort some things out for myself (why am I on the planet, is my self-worth wholly reliant on footnotes, etc.). Sound familiar to anyone? One of the first things I did when I arrived back in my hometown to take a teaching job was join a book club. A book a month, I could handle that. A book a month and some new friends--I was desperately lonely with A and my school friends 500 miles away. My rehabilitation was slow and I'll admit that I didn't finish several of the first books we read. (Old habits are hard to break--what was I doing reading for fun when I had powerpoints to make and papers to grade? Bad! Lazy!) I got better, though, and now I'm proud to say that I not only do I finish each book club book, I read extra books on the side! Lots of books. In fact, I can't stop. I am like Amy Winehouse with a library card (and no crack). It's awesome.

Which brings me to the point, if you're still reading. Are you? One of my favorite book review blogs, Medieval Bookworm, announced a challenge for 2010: A Tournament of Reading. The challenge is to read nine (at the 'king' level) books about the Middle Ages, at least two each in historical fiction, medieval literature, and history. In the spirit of the New Year, I have decided to expand the challenge: fifty books this year, about one book a week. Some of them will be medieval, most will not.

Before you write me off, this is not a Julie & Julia thing (though that movie is wonderful, I love you, Nora Ephron!). I don't expect this "project" to change my life, I don't expect to wind up in the New York Times, and I sure as hell don't expect to get a book contract or be played by Amy Adams on the silver screen. This is just me, fifty-two weeks and fifty books, reading and reviewing in the hopes that somewhere out there--a grad student, teacher, or anyone else suffering from Academic Illiteracy (or any other kind of Acquired Adult-Onset Illiteracy)--will want to pick up a Fun Book and join the party.

So here's to a year of reading dangerously!