norton anthologies

Freshman year, I sold my Norton Anthology of British Literature 1800-Present.

For $20 at textbook buyback.

If you want to yell at me, please do. I've been yelled at for this before (by fellow English majors) ... and I yell at myself whenever I remember. I'd just spent four months in Brit Lit. I'd romanticized nature with the Big Five (Wordsworth's Preface, anyone?), totally fallen in love with Keats' Odes. I'd discovered Matthew Arnold. I'd learned all about Elizabeth Barrett Browning's crazy father and secret romance with Robert. I'd shivered at Christina Rosetti's "Goblin Market." And then Tennyson. I'd always thought of him as a cliche for some reason, but no one can call him that without reading "In Memoriam A.H.H." from start to finish. Including the magnificent epilogue hymn.

The Lakes District

Wordsworth's cottage

And then I'd wrestled with the twentieth century modernists, those boundary-pushing and difficult guys and gals like TS Eliot (yes, American, but also British enough to make the canon cut), Virginia Woolf, Gerard Manley Hopkins, WB Yeats, James Joyce.

V-Woolf herself in Tavistock Square, London

Yeats' Tower, Ireland

So I'd taken all these margin notes, in tiny pencil scribbles, and underlined all my favorite lines. Made sarcastic comments about the things I didn't like. This Norton was my treasure, worth its weight in liberal arts education gold.

Then the end of Freshman year came, and somehow I'd accumulated way too much stuff. I shipped a box, packed my suitcases (3 of them) bursting full of clothes and random things that freshman think they might need at college. At the very last moment, I realized I had no room for my Norton. Literally no room. Now, looking back, I probably could have shipped it. Or carried it onto the plane. But I was stressed: it was finals week, it was boiling hot outside, and my suitcases were already overweight. So I booked it down to the bookstore on move-out day, stood in a long line in 95 degree sunshine, and sold that Norton for $20.

I cried later. And when I think about all the stuff I'm going to take away from college this May, I wish I had that Norton. It taught me how to sit with a poet for a while, count their meter and consider their form and taste their language like ... something old and rich and deeply human.

All this brings me to two things. One, an article on NPR about the tarnishing of the reader/book relationship by marginalia (or all those things I scribbled in the Norton): http://m.npr.org/programs/all/2/134342235. Or an alternate take in the Seattle Times: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2014295345_bookmargins22.html.

And two, what books would you buy back if you had the chance?

going to bed at 10

http://www.slmetalworks.com/tree%20bed.jpg

So I've kept a variety of sleep habits throughout college. Freshman year, I went to bed around 12:30 (I think? that was a long time ago...) and napped every day. Being a freshman is just exhausting. Sophomore year, my roomie and I made a pact to go to bed earlier, but I think we turned out the lights anywhere from 11:00-1:00.

The doozy (aka "the big one" -- is that a normal word? my friends use it all the time, but I'm starting to wonder if we're the only ones) was studying abroad last semester. Ask my family: I'd call around 1:30 or 2:00 a.m. some nights to talk, and they'd basically tell me to hang up and go to sleep. I guess I went to bed anywhere from 12:00 to 3:30 a.m., but never any earlier. The average was 1:30. The weird thing is that I almost never napped -- there was no time.

http://www.busyboo.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/cradle-bed-okooko.jpg

I dunno how I did it. This semester, I can barely make it to midnight. Like right now, it's 10:00 p.m. and I'm getting groggy. But the thing is, I feel so much more rested when I get less sleep. Does that make any sense? I got ten hours last night and woke up exhausted. But when I get like six or seven hours, I wake up feeling pumped. Well, not quite, but definitely more pumped than this morning.

In case you're wondering, this post has no purpose other than to ramble about bed-time and pose the question to the peanut gallery: what time do you go to bed? And wouldn't you like to sleep on the beach in that bed-boat?

the future-train

From the Financial Times, an awesome and forward-looking quote about the future of the publishing industry (and it's not doom and gloom, I promise! It's hopeful!):

"Josep Lluis Monreal, founder and president of Planeta, Spain’s largest publishing group, seems undaunted. The rise of new technologies, he says, “confirms to me the good health of books and the excellent health of the publishing sector.” Publishers, he believes, are simply creators of content: “Should we worry, then, about being offered the chance to present those contents through new platforms and transmit them through new channels? We ought to worry, instead, about being short-sighted and missing our train to the future.” "

Here's a link to the rest of the article (bottom of post). Pretty sure you have to register with FT to read it, but if you don't want to, don't worry, the gold is in that quote. I'm a recent e-book convert - my iPhone allows me to download library books and basically store them in my pocket. So cool. I haven't read that much this semester because I'm too busy and the books keep expiring when I'm only halfway through them, but the concept of having a book available all the time (in line at the cafeteria, on the bus, anywhere!) is kinda revolutionary.

Let's not miss the future-train!


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bf30b998-535b-11e0-86e6-00144feab49a,s01=1.html?referrer_id=yahoofinance&ft_ref=yahoo1&segid=03058#axzz1HFh0seUr

graduation

The nearness of graduation (May 7!) is making me nostalgic.

About weird things like JSTOR and research papers.

Before you laugh, consider this. I've spent the last fourteen years of my life doing school. And getting really good at it. If school was a career, I'd be at the top of my game right now. I've spent hours writing papers on so many topics: most recently, Irish Poetry and Shakespeare, the contrasting concepts of god in Hinduism and Christianity, and symbiosis in Steinbeck. I've learned my study and writing habits -- and okay, while I wouldn't advocate them to anyone else, they work for me. I can do this thing called school.

And today, as I finished up my World Religions paper in a coffee shop and logged out of JSTOR, I got swamped by a wave of nostalgia. What am I going to do when I have no more papers to write?