Books I've Read This Year

For class:

• The Art of Fiction - John Gardner
  
• The Night in Question - Tobias Wolf
  
• Notes of a Red Guard - Eduard Dune (in translation)
  
• The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (in translation)
  
• The Complete Works of Isaac Babel (in translation)
  
• Quiet Flows the Don - Mikhail Sholokhov (in translation)
  
• The Exchange and Other Stories - Ivan Tirfonov (in translation)
  
• Stories from a Siberian Village - Vasily Shukshin (in translation)
  
• Hurramabad - Andrei Volos (in translation)
  
• Night of Denial - Ivan Bunin (in translation)
  
• Constructions of Devience - Patricia Adler, ed.
  
• Sand County Almanac - Aldo Leopold
  

For fun:

• Firefly Rain - Richard Dansky
  
• Jane Austen Book Club - Karen Joy Fowler
  
• Grow Up, America! - Michael J. Hurd
  
• I am Legend - Richard Matheson
  
• Wit's End - Karen Joy Fowler
  
• A Winter's Tale - Mark Helprin
  
• Sin in the Second City - Karen Abbott (nonfiction)
  
• The Baum Plan for Financial Independence - John Kessel
  
• The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
  
• The Fairy Rebel - Lynn Reid Banks
  
• The Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum
  
• The Book of Three - Lloyd Alexander
  
• The Spirit Line - David and Aimee Thurlo
  
• Wicked Lovely - Melissa Marr
  
• Lincoln's Dreams - Connie Willis
  
• Neuromancer - William Gibson
  
• Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z - Debra Weinstein
  
• The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch and Jeff Zaslow (nonfiction)
  
• Redwall - Brian Jacques
  
• Chess for Dummies - James Eade
  
• Deadeye Dick - Kurt Vonnegut
  
• Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
  
• The Mind Has No Sex?: the Origins of Women in Modern Science - Londa Schiebinger (nonfiction)
  
• The Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt
  
• Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
  
• The Descent of Woman - Ealine Morgan
  
• Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn - Stephanie Meyer
  
• Uglies, Pretties, and Specials - Scott Westerfield
  
• The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
  
• Tales of Beedle the Bard - J.K. Rowling
  
• Pagan Christmas: an Ethnobotany - Christian Ratsch and Claudia Muller-Ebeling (nonfiction in translation)

Betrayed by the Golden Age at last

To the Fair Clarinda

Who made love to me,
Imagin'd more than woman.

Fair lovely Maid, or if that Title be
Too weak, too Feminine for Nobler thee,
Permit a Name that more Approaches Truth:
And let me call thee, Lovely Charming Youth.
This last will justifie my soft complaint,
While that may serve to lessen my constraint;
And without Blushes I the Youth persue,
When so much beauteous Woman is in view.
Against thy Charms we struggle but in vain
With thy deluding Form thou giv'st us pain,
While the bright Nymph betrays us to the Swain.
In pity to our Sex sure thou wer't sent,
That we might Love, and yet be Innocent:
For sure no Crime with thee we can commit;
Or if we shou'd - thy Form excuses it.
For who, that gathers fairest Flowers believes
A Snake lies hid beneath the Fragrant Leaves.

Though beauteous Wonder of a different kind,
Soft Cloris with the dear Alexis join'd;
When e'er the Manly part of thee, wou'd plead
Though tempts us with the Image of the Maid,
While we the noblest Passions do extend
The Love to Hermes, Aphrodite the Friend.

--Aphra Behn, 1684

We generate sparks in our wheels and our hearts

You be my princess
I'll be your toad
I'll follow behind you
on rainbow road
Protect you from red shells
wherever we go
I promise.

Noone will touch us
if we pick up a star
If you spin out
you can ride in my car
When we slide together
we generate sparks
in our wheels and our hearts

The finish line
is just around the bend
I'll pause this game
so our love will never end
Let's go again

The blue shell is coming
so I'll go ahead
If you hang behind
it'll hit me instead
but never look back
cause I'm down but not dead
I'll catch up to you

Don't worry about
Bowser or DK
Eat this glowing mushroom
and they'll all fade away

to the mushroom cup
and the flower cup
and the star cup
and the reverse cup

walalalalala
walalalalalawaluigiiiiii

It's official

You know your hair has gotten long when there's enough of it that the women at the mall kiosks want to demonstrate products to you again.

I'm not the only one

I took guitar lessons when I was twelve.

My teacher, Terry, was like a Beatles disciple--he remembers being there. He told me that when John Lennon got shot he wasn't able to get out of bed for the better part of a week.

I think about that a lot.