Shelf Life: Books Abounding

 “I am often asked a stock question: 'Have you actually read all those books?' To this I have my answer ready: 'Is there anybody who has read all the books in his library?' That would be like claiming to enjoy the incredible luxury and good fortune of being able to accomplish everything in this life that one would wish.”
― Konstantinos Staikos

Books as literal bulwark!

It is a fact that I buy books faster than I can read them. It is also a fact that my instinct to be careful with money in all other areas fails when it goes up against my instinct to acquire more books. Somewhere, deep down, I think that I imagine that they form a bulwark against the sharpest edges of reality; they're the trap doors I've installed to duck into and hide out from anxiety and pain. So I am here, today, to talk about the texts that have recently joined the ranks! (I should note: this isn't so I can keep track and shake my head and say, "Oh no, I'm buying too many and should cut back. That's crazy talk.) And because I have something curatorial in my nature, I'm putting them into groups!



Part One: Books that came into my life because my husband has access to interlibrary loan

At his current post, my husband has access to Interlibrary Loan books, so I asked (very nicely) if he would use this new superpower to allow me to read some titles that I definitely cannot afford. The following titles dropped in for a visit!

 I'm not finished with this one yet, but it includes the revelation that most American Zoos are quite secretive about their history and processes (suggesting that some unfortunate happenings have probably occurred). An interesting contrast to the show The Zoo, which allows viewers behind the scenes!

 Can someone please explain to me why Routledge titles are so bloody expensive? Is the ability to purchase them some sort of sign of academic status? This slim volume costs $140 -- and I only really wanted it for the mythical cat chapters anyway!









I've been extremely interested in the wildlife trade lately and in wildlife crime in general. This is promising new title in that area!







Part Two: Thor

I want to begin this post by noting that I was never into the Marvel movies (or superheroes in general) and somehow this snagged me. I'm certain it's not my fault. So I recently developed a Thor obsession. Or, more accurately, a Loki obsession. And, being me, I am incapable of passively enjoying a thing. I have to live in it and write about it and read everything about it... so these books happened! #muststopfallingforvillains...

If you're going to develop unusual obsessions with nonexistent peoples, it helps to have an understanding husband. Mine bought me this huge (700 pages) graphic novel for Easter after he caught me pining over it. 

 Since Thor is the hero (and name of the series) it's difficult to find Loki-centric books. This is one of them that had good reviews. I'll let you know how it all turns out!

 Not that I'm discriminating against the wielder of Mjolnir. This book also joined the collection courtesy of my husband and I'm excited to see Thor's evolution from God to superhero (is that being downgraded or upgraded? Both simultaneously?)

 As a writer and reader of fan fiction, I'm usually against gender bending characters, but people had so much good to say about this one that I had to order it.

I've actually completed this one and I still have mixed feelings. The characters were lifted above the one-dimensional superhero writing of some comics, but the art was not to my taste and the story didn't exactly grip me.





Tune in next time for Books about the Victorians and The Library made me do it!

Catching Up: the evolution of a modern reader

I've been away awhile -- again -- because life, it turns out, is sometimes full of unfortunate events that wear you down and leave you needing to recharge. But, today is a perfect day to return. The wind is high in the first forsythia blooms, intermittent rain is knocking against the glass as if to be welcomed out of the weather, I'm here with a cozy nest of cats, and I've created a homemade cherry coke (also known as an excuse to eat maraschino cherries.)




In the back of the cherry coke picture, you'll no doubt note a pile of papers. Those are notes on my reading and the fact that I'm reading enough books to require a list to keep track of them is the subject of today's post! I've been thinking a great deal about reading platforms - how we read and on what devices - and on how my reading has evolved dramatically from the early days of graduate school (2007) to now. (I harbor secret hopes that the next evolution will allow me to inject books into my brain. If it does, I might actually make it through my To-Be-Read List).

Book Evolution

I will wear out and you will have to purchase me again - bwah ha ha! 

In some ways, I think my generation is lucky when it comes to technology. We started out placing the needle to LPs and spooling cassettes when the boombox ate our favorites. We understood albums as coherent works rather than 99 cent downloads. We got to grow up alongside Amazon. (If only my parents had let me buy stock in it when I was in high school. I would so have an Arabian horse right now.) We got to learn actual computer skills (many of which went obsolete as we went) before phones became the mini computer everyone carries around.

On a personal level, I've been known to be tech-adverse. I think it's the Victorianist in me. Just as those 19th-century travelers were overwhelmed by the goods on display in the Crystal Palace and the speed of trains, I wilt before the ever-changing landscape of twitter-snap-insta-verse. Until my husband got me a "modern" phone I clung to my flip-phone in defiance of the I-universe.

But, it seems, the future is here. Just as the Victorians eventually traded in their carriage wheels for train travel (and, eventually, cars) I have found myself trading the vanillin-smell of old books for Epubs and PDFs. Here is how my quest for books goes these days:

I love goodreads, even though my profile there is usually incredibly inaccurate because I am always trying and discarding books, then (eventually) logging in to catch up. I mostly use goodreads for the review function. Plenty of readers have plenty to say about most titles and they help me decide if the unconquerable feeling of need I have attached to a given title is justified or not!

Once I have decided that a book must be part of my day (right now!) I log into WVReads - the amazing library site that connects me to thousands of titles (and lets me recommend purchases!!) The only occasional hiccup is that if a book is popular enough, I get stuck on the bottom of a wait list for it and by the time I get the email saying I can read it, I have sometimes completely forgotten why I wanted to read it in the first place! (My initial desire for books is burning... but sometimes fickle.)

Thanks to my amazing sister, I don't always strike out if WVReads isn't the answer. Her location allows her to be a member of another library site - hoopla - and she lets me log in and browse her titles. They have a great range of graphic novels (WVR has almost none) so I've read quite a few pricey titles this way!

For work, I usually teach my students out of the Norton. Some semesters, I'm working from multiple Nortons (English Literature and Shakespeare this semester) and these are dense titles - on both the literal and metaphorical levels! To avoid hauling them back and forth every night, I turn to Project Gutenberg for books that have gone out of copyright. I can quickly load them to my Nook and go on my way without the Norton giving me a forearm workout!

When I'm doing research, I often turn to Internet Archive. They've digitized thousands of nineteenth-century manuscripts and I've downloaded hundreds of hunting manuals and sporting diaries to track tigers across pages rather than through the jungle!

Sponsored by Internet Archive, Open Library requires a subscription, but is free. It supplements WVR for me, because sometimes it has older (less popular?) works. I love its mission of bringing more books to more people and I constantly recommend it to my students for their papers.

When I need to purchase a book (need is being used loosely here...) Google Play is my first stop. On one hand, it keeps the house free from yet another physical book -- which is a good thing in a family of professors! On the other, the ebooks on Google Play tend to be cheaper than those sold on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Furthermore, they sometimes, randomly, drop in price - leading me to the Faustian rationalization: "It's so cheap now. I must buy it."

When digital books aren't available, BetterWorldBooks used to be my go-to. It's been supplanted recently by the cheaper Thriftbooks, but it does such good work in the world that I felt it deserved an honorable mention for its mission -- and for free shipping!

Thriftbooks is my favorite place to shop for physical books. Their prices are great, they have free shipping, and you earn cash toward a gift certificate with every purchase (also known as the dangerous loop!)

I signed up for a trial of Scribd a month ago and initially thought that I would leave after my trial expired. Now I'm addicted. Scribd lets me read on my phone. Not only does it have a better selection than the library sites mentioned above, it has no limits on how many books you can read at one time and it forces me to rethink moments I would otherwise be playing with pinterest (I could be reading!). It does cost $11 a month, but I think I'm getting my money's worth with the size of my reading list!

My husband just introduced me to five books. It's a series of interview with authors in which they choose the five best books about a given subject like The Enlightenment or Iraq. Five Books makes for interesting reading, but my one critique is that many of the lists are too intellectual for the average reader (as if the interviewees want to prove their own intelligence) and several are downright predictable. Despite this, I found several titles I'd never heard of to add to my list and I'll continue to check back. If nothing else, the interviews do allow you to engage in a sort of debate about whether or not you agree with the authors' choices and why or why not -- not a bad practice for the curious reader!

Of course, actual physical books haven't been banished from my life! I received piles for Christmas, I have more preordered as we speak, and the pile under my nightstand is a sight to behold! However reading happens to evolve, I'm grateful to have books in my life! Wishing you happy reading on rainy afternoons!

School Books - Fall 2017

I'm late to posting - and behind! So without any ado at all, here are the books I taught last semester!

I used this as a sort of primer for my graphic novel class -- which turned out to be a very good thing, since none of my students had ever read a graphic novel before! Although it is a textbook, it presents its argument in comic strip form, which was a shock for my students. However, once they got used to it, it made the works that came after a good sight easier for them to navigate.

Alongside McCloud's work, I also taught Watchmen. I enjoyed the way that it used juxtaposition (one of the characters in the work is reading a graphic novel and the frame events and events in the story overlap and sync up) but it proved a very taxing read for my students and I doubt I'll be quick to teach it again.

The students liked V better than Watchmen, but the somber ending troubled them (and me, a little). I had hoped it would spark discussion about recent political events, but they were more interested in finally seeing a woman take the role of a hero -- which was also a good discussion topic!

I actually taught ElfQuest only up to book #4 (Quest's End) but I enjoyed it so much that I had to go back and re-read those books that followed after. Like all of the books that I love and have been deeply impacted back, I take something different away with each reading!

I taught this slender title during a guided study that focused on Sports and Field Sports and I was pleasantly surprised by how much the author was able to get into the small text. Anyone interested in hunting should spare the short time it takes to read this one!

This was a fun one! I had the students read Doyle, then watch "A Study in Pink" from the first season of Sherlock. Some of them enjoyed Cumberbatch and Freeman so much that they kept watching!


 

I was fortunate enough to get to see this production at WVU with an awesome colleague and the Honors students from school. It started off gaily enough, but I should have seen the nihilism coming in those last lines (it is Chekhov). Nonetheless, plays always seem like miracles to me and this one made wonderful use of birch posts for a forest and a series of pipes/frames to become windows or walls.