When I go to the library, which I do every month or two, I scrounge up recommendations that people have made to me. Sometimes I get them from some review in the New Yorker, sometimes I write something in my planner that someone told me, sometimes I get an idea from an e-mail or livejournal entry. I make a list, look up all the call numbers, and go to the library to get 6-8 books out (in general). I go back to the library when I don't have many left, or when I hear about a book that sounds so interesting I want to get it immediately.

The problem with this system is that it is haphazard. I don't have a centralized list anywhere, so a lot of recommendations slip through the cracks, and I am the sort of person that would love to keep a long list (like a Netflix queue!) so I don't forget about anything.

So! That list will be here. Please recommend books to me! I have found that getting recommendations from people is a great way to be exposed to a variety of ideas. It can be something fun or something serious and life-changing, fiction or non-fiction, anything you have enjoyed for one reason or another. I can stomach really long books and very dense writing, and am open to most styles. Don't worry about if I've read it or not; if I have I just won't put it on my list. Recommend as many books as you want!

Go!

Bruno Bettelheim - The Uses of Enchantment
Heinrich Zimmer - The King and the Corpse
Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveler's Wife
Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials trilogy
Christopher Buckley - Thank You For Smoking
Julio Cortazar - Hopscotch
Patrick Hamilton Grim - Slaves of Solitude
Patricia McKillip - The Tower of Stony Wood
Italo Calvino - The Castle of Crossed Destinies
Haruki Murakami - Hear the Wind Sing
Joe Haldeman - The Forever War
Wu Ch'eng-en, Arthur Waley (Translator) - Monkey
Ramayana
Mohandas Gandhi translation - Bhagavadgita
Ludovico Ariosto - Orlando Furioso
Charles Maturin - Melmoth the Wanderer
Nicholas Wade - Before the Dawn
Robert Kegan - In Over Our Heads
Thomas Kuhn - Structure of Scientific Revolutions
J.D. Salinger - Catcher in the Rye
Sri Aurobindo - The Life Divine
Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities
Italo Calvino - If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
Hergé - The Adventures of Tin Tin
Alfred Jarry - Ubu Roi
Franz Kafka - The Castle
George Orwell - Animal Farm
Pliny the Elder - Natural History
Raymond Queneau - Exercises in Style
Boris & Arkady Strugatsky - The Roadside Picnic
Amos Tutuola - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Roger Zelazny - The Chronicles of Amber
Padraic Colum - The King of Ireland's Son
Julio Cortazar - Hopscotch
Philip K. Dick - Radio Free Albemuth
Percival Everett - Erasure
Max Frisch - Homo Faber
Max Frisch - I'm Not Stiller
Martha Grimes - Inspector Jury series
Jerome K. Jerome - Three Men in a Boat
Martin Luther King Jr., - A Knock at Midnight
Ursula K. Leguin - Earthsea series
Edith Nesbit - The Magic City
Patrick O'Brian - Post-Captain
Robert B. Parker - The Widening Gyre
Quintus Smyrnaeus - The Fall of Troy
Rainer Maria Rilke - The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
Connie Willis - Bellwether
Banana Yoshimoto - Asleep
Chuck Palahniuk - Choke
Robert Kegan - In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life
Richard Brautigan - Trout Fishing in America
Janine M. Benyus - Biomimicry
Daniel C. Esty and Andrew S. Winston - Green to Gold
Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder - Clean Tech Revolution
Michael N. Nagler and Arun Gandhi - The Search for a Nonviolent Future: A Promise of Peace for Ourselves, Our Families, and Our World

I read two fascinating books recently. I would bet that you have all heard of one (and I know at least one of you has read it), and that almost none of you have heard of the other (I told one of you, though).

The book you have heard of is The Feminine Mystique. I learned about it in high school, but never read it until now. I learned a lot from it about conditions for middle-class women in the fifties and early sixties, and what really surprised me is that while some arguments in the book could be looked back upon with a mentality of "I'm so glad we don't do that now", other arguments Freidan brings up are still being debated. Despite the flaws in the text, it gives a good perspective on both how far we have come and what challenges remain, and the advice near the end of the book is constructive for anyone.

The book I doubt you have heard of is Covering, by Kenji Yoshino. The author is a Yale law professor and a former poet, and as a result the book is one of the best syntheses of fluid, beautiful prose and solidly reasoned argument that I have ever read. The main thesis of the book is that the acceptance of a minority group into the mainstream is in three stages: Conversion (what you are is inferior and that's all there is to it), Passing (don't ask, don't tell), and Covering. Covering as he defines it is hiding parts of yourself that are not accepted in the mainstream, which applies to both minority groups trying to fit in and non-minority groups in unusual situations (a nice example of this is single dads). He sees the acceptance of gays, women, and racial minorities to be in this Covering stage, where people are often asked to hide parts of themselves or be subject to consequences. There were positive messages about the importance of accepting others and the need to not be required to cover--Yoshino sees this as the new stage of the civil rights battle. But what was alarming for me about the book was the examples he gave; as a law professor he gave many examples in the form of legal cases, mostly in the last 15 years but many from the last five years. I did not know that the court has helped people lose their children or their job teaching children for not hiding their homosexuality, or upheld the firing of women for refusing to wear makeup, or the firing of blacks for not changing their hairstyles to traditionally "white" hairstyles. In general until quite recently the idea was that if you are being asked to cover and you possibly can, the court would rule that you are obligated to do it. This was really shocking to me, especially how recently this was.

What was also really interesting is that when he discussed women, he said they were the only group covering that he knew of which was subject to both covering and anti-covering demands from the majority group. What that means is, while for a racial minority they are asked to act white by the majority white group, but lambasted by their minority if they act "too white"; women in careers are asked to hide parts of their gender identity (for example, not take too much time for pregnancy/childbirth and hide evidence of parental responsibilities) but are also taken to task by the same people for not being feminine enough (women will often get passed over for promotions if they are perceived as being too aggressive or frigid, which basically means not being a pushover). What I liked about hearing this was that it put a categorical description to behavior I've seen a lot of times, from many different sides. And I've said it before but I'll say it again--legislation to help women in the workplace helps some men as well, men who have outside interests or want to actually be fathers or any number of other things. The basic idea of the book was that we should be accepting diversity, which will make everyone more productive and capable of pursuing what they want, and it was presented in such an eloquent and well-reasoned fashion that I wish everyone would read this book. Really.

This is sort of a cool meme, or at least one that makes you think, to list a book you like for an author corresponding to each letter of the alphabet. I noticed some letters where I have lots of favorites--M, P, K--and in some places there wasn't that much choice and it was more a book I liked ok but had some problems with. There was one letter where I could only think of an author who I dislike. But still.

A - Allende, Isabel: Portrait in Sepia
B - Bradbury, Ray: Fahrenheit 451
C - Chabon, Michael: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
D - Dostoevsky, Fyodor: The Brothers Karamazov
E - Ellison, Ralph: The Invisible Man
F - Faulkner, William: The Sound and the Fury
G - Gibran, Kahlil: The Prophet
H - Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
I - Ibsen, Henrik: A Doll's House
J - Joyce, James: Dubliners
K - Kawabata, Yasunari: Snow Country
L - Lem, Stanislaw: The Cyberiad
M - Murakami, Haruki: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
N - Nabokov, Vladimir: Lolita
O - O'Connor, Flannery: Collected Works (short stories)
P - TIE Proust, Marcel: In Search of Lost Time, and Pynchon, Thomas: Gravity's Rainbow
Q - Quinn, Daniel: Ishmael
R - Rand, Ayn: Atlas Shrugged
S - Stephenson, Neal: Snow Crash
T - Tolstoy, Leo: War and Peace
U - The only author I can think of that I've read is some short stories of John Updike. I don't like his writing style, on top of which his book reviews in the New Yorker always give away the plots of the books. Sorry, Updike, I just do not like your writing.
V - Vonnegut, Kurt: Cat's Cradle
W - Woolf, Virginia: The Waves
X - Xingjian, Gao: Soul Mountain
Y - Yeats, William Butler: Collected Poems
Z - Zukav, Gary: The Dancing Wu Li Masters

For the purposes of this meme, it's lucky that Ron loaned me Soul Mountain back when I lived in Berkeley.

I just started reading Covering by Kenji Yoshino, and I'm sure I'll want to write about it later. But I did recently read Snow Falling on Cedars, after years of hearing what a good book it is. I liked it... but most of the best elements reminded me of other books, like Farewell to Manzanar or To Kill a Mockingbird. I did love the setting though, which was beautifully described and made me lust to eat strawberries.

I recently watched two romantic movies, one that made me feel lovey and happy and one that made me really depressed. The one that made me happy was Before Sunset (I watched Before Sunrise last summer), and I immediately ordered Before Sunrise to make Ben watch them both. :) Such unique movies, and really romantic. We watched Conversations with Other Women last night, which was excellent in a lot of ways. In the end I found it really depressing though, I think because it tapped into a fear I've mentioned before that relationships can end even if people really love each other, for complex and tricky reasons (see: my parents). This has got to be my biggest fear with marrying Ben, not that he is somehow wrong for me, but that I will somehow manage to lose him anyways. It's not a very rational fear, and at this point we have analyzed our compatibility far beyond what's necessary anyways. I think the strongest impetus to take marriage seriously is to watch people very close to you get divorced. Anyhow, the movie was excellent but sort of disturbing because of how it made me think of that. I'd still recommend it, though.

Awhile back I loved the PC games Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic I and II (though II was obviously not really completed). Ben played Mass Effect a couple months ago and loved it and kept telling me how it was like KotOR but bigger, with better graphics, better storylines, and overall a lot more innovation and enjoyable gameplay. I finally started playing Mass Effect recently, and it is a lot of fun: a huge universe to explore but in a single-player game. I am maybe halfway through? There's a huge number of side quests, a lot of good gameplay, though some flaws in the game. I also recently played Portal (I got it for Ben for his birthday), which is a much shorter game and in my opinion, a nearly perfect game. It is clever, interesting, has very innovative gameplay, and is incredibly funny. I can't overrate it; it is so fun I wish it had been longer, but that is part of its perfection. Especially the very last scene, with the cake.

And I bought three CDs recently and overlistened to them a lot. I continued a fine, storied tradition of mine of stealing music recommendations from other people and loving them so much I spread the music to my friends. I got CDs of Ekova, Octopus Project, and Federico Aubele and have been loving them. Spread the love!

Yes, I have turned in to someone who posts about their cats, but I think you should know that ours are getting along really well now. I was worried about this, but we emptied out a spray bottle and started leaving them together but spraying them with water when things got too rough. They spent a day very wet and now play a lot but get hissy and growly a lot less. And we'll find them curled up together asleep on the couch, or on the cat bed Ben put under his monitor to steal them from me. At some point he apparently found them sitting together, licking each other's faces, which is very cute.

The first paragraph was a ruse; this entry isn't entirely about cats. I finally finished the last fellowship application I was working on, in a flurry of signatures, paperwork, and express mail. Which means I applied for three, all national and all really competitive. I have to admit that I don't expect to get any; it's just too reminiscent of the first time I applied to graduate school. Some of them, this is the last year I am eligible, and there are some especially for women that I will still be eligible for next year. But applying to them is so very unpleasant, and sort of expensive with all the transcripts and things that you need. It seems like a waste of time that you could be spending on research, but then I wouldn't sneeze at the extra money. There is a Penn fellowship I would be eligible for except that only one person in each research group can have one, and someone else in my lab already has one. But maybe in a few years I can steal it from her.

I like reading pop neurology books, like Phantoms in the Brain, and I just finished Oliver Sacks' classic The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. It is a series of case studies, and one of his comments really took me aback. He mentioned that Shostakovich was examined by a Chinese neurologist who found a metal splinter in his brain, embedded there no doubt sometime during his military career (from which a lot of his best work comes). He apparently refused to have it removed, and claimed that when he tilted his head to the side, he heard melodies which he made prolific use of in his composing. I was unable to find much confirmation of this on the internet, though, which seems weird for such a cool factoid. The same fact is referred to in a 1998 New Scientist article, though. Apparently Sacks has a new book about the neurology of music, which I should really get from the library.

And also, we received our wedding invitations in the mail and they are beautiful; I'm very happy with them. We also got some quasi-engagement photos in the mail, which were a present from my dad, and I want to see if I can scan them in before giving them to people. I wish I could still ninja Chih's scanner.

Book: The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss. It is a book about... a book called "The History of Love". It's really beautiful, interesting, well-painted, and painfully sad. I read it basically in one sitting today and was moved.

TV: The Wire. We started watching this in the fall, after a stellar review in the New Yorker and hearing a lot of good things about it, and now we're halfway through the second season. Wow, what an amazingly well-done show! The acting, the story, the music, the realism.... I can't recommend this highly enough.

Music: Did you know that Yo Yo Ma did a series of recordings of Central Asian/Turkish/Silk Road music? I found out about this recently, after loving his album Obrigado Brasil for a while, and I just love what he does with the music. The recordings are When Strangers Meet and Beyond the Horizon, both listed under Silk Road Journeys.

And there are some things you can keep yourself busy with if your tastes are anything like mine.

It is a good thing to keep track of something that you want to do more of. Thus, the book list.

1. Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
2. Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent
3. Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
4. Raymond Chandler, The High Window
5. Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead
6. Philip K. Dick, Ubik
7. Haruki Murakami, Wild Sheep Chase
8. Samuel Florman, Existential Pleasures of Engineering
9. Orson Scott Card, Xenocide
10. Philip K. Dick, Valis
11. Joseph Campbell, Hero with a Thousand Faces
12. William Gibson, Count Zero
13. Philip K. Dick, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
14. William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive
15. Octavia Butler, Fledgling
16. Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man
17. William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
18. Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
19. Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind
20. Paul Theroux, The Old Patagonian Express
21. Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
22. Frederick Forsyth, Day of the Jackal
23. Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
24. Don Delillo, White Noise
25. Ralph Ellison, Juneteenth
26. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
27. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
28. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
29. V.S. Naipaul, A Home for Mr. Biswas
30. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
31. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
32. Jose Saramago, Blindness
33. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
34. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
35. Natsume Soseki, I Am A Cat
36. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow
37. Charles Kee, The Green Flag
38. Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow
39. Natsume Soseki, Ten Nights' Dreams
40. Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea
41. Levitt and Dubner, Freakonomics
42. Marvin Minsky, Society of Mind
43. Julien Gracq, Chateau d'Argol
44. Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions

Barely more books than last year, and more of a sci-fi fantasy theme than past years. Borges was a good way to end the year.

I got my NSF application in on Friday, after a lot of help editing my essays from Jen and my dad. It was interesting reading Jen's essays and seeing some of the amazing outreach things she's done, and talking about how we wanted to represent ourselves in our essays. In our initial drafts, we were both too hesitant to blow our own horns. It reminded me of a study I read about a long time ago, asking high school students who had been accepted to good schools how they got in. The guys were all, "I got in because I'm really good and the school knew I'd do well," and the girls said things like, "It must be a fluke, I'm not really good enough to go there, etc." Women also tend to share credit more, though successful people also do this because they know they can. But I digress.

I feel I have a better chance at actually winning this time, just because I understand better what they want and have a stronger record. It didn't occur to me as I was doing it, but the WISP (POW, whatever) revitalization speaks strongly for my efforts at outreach, which is very important to the NSF. Of course, it's something like 17% of applicants who actually win in physics, so it's unlikely. But at least I tried, and I'll try for the NDSEG and NASA GSRP too.

Then Saturday morning, I got up really early and drove Ben to the airport for his trip to Japan. I'm excited for him, very much so. But I do miss him, especially late at night. This is a little silly, but for a long time now I've liked to talk a little to him just before bed. When we were long-distance, before moving here and over this summer, I always called him when I went to bed and talked a little. And of course now that we're living together and I still go to bed earlier than he does quite often, I make him come hug me before I go to sleep. It's sad not doing that. On the other hand, being the only person in a bed and comforter large enough for two, with twice as many pillows as usual, is extremely cozy in its own way. And I can have a week of eating lots of granola, salad, and salsa.

I read a really interesting short book, called Ten Nights' Dreams by Natsume Soseki. It's ten short stories, all of dreams, and each is beautiful and thought-provoking. Anybody else reading anything interesting?

I went with Ben to the Flying Fish Brewery, in Cherry Hill, on Saturday to get a tour. It was pretty cool, sort of like the Scharffen Berger tour, to see how they make beer in a smaller brewery. Everything was slick stainless steel tubing and containers, but then there was a hose running into a bucket overflowing with foam. Ha. I saw one of my former students there, who was one of the other 8 people on the tour. But I couldn't (still can't) remember his name.

Last-minute, one of my friends from high school and Berkeley decided to come out to the East Coast to visit, to celebrate having gotten a job. She'll be here this weekend with her boyfriend, and I'm very excited. Plus Ben and I are planning to go to Cape May on Saturday.

I've been reading The Green Flag, which is a detailed history of Irish nationalism from 1600 or so to 1925. It's really interesting reading, and it's embarrassing how familiar I am with England's history in the same time period, but not at all with Ireland's. (My mom's family is Irish-American, emigrated during the potato famine, so I also have some personal connection to the topic.) Things of note that I have learned:

1. Some Irish republicans tried to induce Germany to help Ireland during WWI, offering that they could invade England from Ireland. The Germans were interested until they found out how little popular support there was for Germany over England.
2. Winston Churchill was a huge jerk. I knew he was a big jerk about India (when someone sent him a telegram saying that Gandhi was hunger striking, he responded something like 'hasn't he died yet?'), but I did not know he was also a huge jerk about Ireland. Very imperialist, I guess.
3. There were many, many Irish rebellions, and most of them were pathetic failures. This mostly seems to have added pathos to the national character.
4. France tried to help Ireland revolt, many times. But it never really worked because most of the Irish people, despite producing fine goods for England and living in abject poverty, were fiercely loyal to the crown until the 20th century.
5. I never before knew what a Black and Tan was, other than the drink.

The reading has been slow going but fascinating. I should read nonfiction more.

I was really sorry to see that Madeleine L'Engle died yesterday at the age of 88. I really enjoyed her books when I was a kid; they had this great mix of science, love, the universe, and purpose, and incredible imagination. I read a lot when I was young, being an only child, and much of what I read was different sorts of storytelling drivel that all blends together when you look back at it. But some books I read, and reread, stand out, and the images, events, and ideas from her books are some of the strongest memories of anything I read during that time.

What books made the strongest impression on you as a child?

Things that weren't so great about this weekend:

1. Our water got turned off Sunday evening, because of a leak somewhere in the pipes along our block. It was right before we needed to run the dishwasher, having few dishes, and before Ben had taken a shower, so he was still sandy from the beach. At least there was water in our Brita pitcher, so we could brush our teeth. The water is on now, but there is jackhammering on our street and it may go off again.

2. I found Saturday morning that I had yet another UTI. I get these chronically, and I really hate it. I had an extra antibiotic series from the one I got right before going to Europe last summer, so now I am fine. And the way that I get them is... unfortunate.

Things that were so great about this weekend:

1. Calabacitas Sunday night! It is really easy to make, and really delicious. Plus, Ben recently insisted we get a tortilla press, so we had it with fresh corn tortillas. Yum.

2. Fresh ground beef Saturday night. I love eating raw hamburger, assuming it is low fat content and recently ground enough to ensure safety. We got a steak of some kind from the grocery store, ground it with the meat grinder attachment for our Kitchenaid mixer, and I ate mine just with salt. Ben did the more traditional thing with raw onions and egg yolks, but I prefer just to taste the meat. I love this dish so much.

3. I finished reading Flow. It was a somewhat similar experience to the first time I read Atlas Shrugged ages ago, where it had lots of ideas that already guide how I am trying to live my life, but better articulated than I had managed thus far. Great read.

And a random story from this morning: shortly after waking up, Ben asked me why I was pouncing his feet last night. I had no recollection of anything like that, and he explained that he was suddenly awakened by something hitting his feet in the middle of the night. I was apparently sitting up in bed, prodding the covers at the foot of the bed with my hands shaped into claws. When he asked what I was doing, I responded that I was "looking for where the feet are". I completely do not remember this.

IT WAS SO GOOD! SOOOOOOO GOOD!

Since I spent the previous two weekends either travelling or having a guest, and since the weather here has taken a decided turn for the hot and humid, I spent last weekend inside doing things for myself, including lots of chores I'd been meaning to do for awhile but never quite found time for, but also more enjoyable things.

I had summer plans for piano and sports, and those are actually going well. I'm practicing piano more than I did during the school year, at least, and what I really need to do is either magically find my metronome that I've searched several times for, or just buy another one. I'm working on some Mozart, and I think it's essential. It was inspiring to hear Martha, my Berkeley piano teacher, play Mozart. She did it with a brilliance and clarity that I felt were both impressive and entirely appropriate. I've also been running some, weightlifting some, swimming some, and doing yoga some. So at least thus far, I haven't lost anything I gained for my knee during physical therapy. I found it interesting, actually, that my therapist told me that even if I stopped exercising, I'd still be much better off knee-wise than I was before this round of physical therapy, because I've changed some ways of moving that were unstable.

But what I've really spent a lot of my spare time on the last few weeks has been World of Warcraft and Harry Potter. I know, I know, but it's been really fun and I'm enjoying myself immensely. I got my first heroic key for my main in WoW, and finally some cool-looking gear. What I really need are the Pauldrons of Wild Magic, which look awesome and have lightning playing around them. And I've been rereading the HP books, in preparation for the last one, and... I forgot how wonderful they are. I love the stories and the detailed world so much, and I had also forgotten how difficult those books are to put down. This led to also rewatching the movies, and the result is that I'm now really excited for the fifth movie and just dying for the last book. I know, I'm imitating the summer activities of adolescents everywhere, but it's such fun.

I had a nice weekend. My flight out to Los Angeles was seven hours delayed, due to some clouds 50,000 feet high which we had to wait to settle down, so I got in at 3:30 AM. I was really excited as I was going to the airport, but I guess cross-country flights are less straightforward and less clear-shot than just hopping down the coast. Plus the time zone really did make a difference, since I wasn't there long enough to adjust. But we had a lot of fun: ate breakfasts at a sunny coffee shop, went to the beach with Erin and Josh and Ben's roommate John, watched Police Story, played Carcassonne, had sushi in Santa Monica, cuddled while watching The Empire Strikes Back.

( ways in which this weekend was different )

And now I'm back, and I'm making progress in my work, and trying to get caught up on my chores. My favorite pair of jeans ripped while I was in LA, so maybe I can mend those... and I want to finish Juneteenth, the other Ralph Ellison book, so that I can start rereading Harry Potter. :) I should also clean up... when I came back yesterday, I noticed that one of our mouse traps had moved onto a vent in the dining room... then noticed the tail protruding from it. A mouse got its leg caught in the trap, tried to go down the vent, and died there. I was concerned that the mouse would be stuck in the vent, and I would have to take drastic measures (or have a professional take them on my behalf) to remove it, but it slid right out. But now things feel unclean.

Our garden grows slowly, in fits and starts, not nearly as fast as our weeds. But we have pea-vines!

I'm in Berkeley! I was supposed to be here yesterday but that didn't quite work out, so I came out today on a different flight. There was a massive amount of fog that stopped flights from landing yesterday evening and early this morning, but mine was late enough to take off on time (although it was apparently oversold and they had the next available seats free Thursday). And I managed ten minutes talking to Daria in the Albuquerque airport, which may not sound like much but we thought we'd miss each other completely. So I made it here, in the mean time discovering that Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is not just a sci-fi classic, it's also a really good book.

More recently, I discovered to my great sadness that the Phoenix Pastifico closed, and the Cheeseboard won't be open during my stay here. But tomorrow I'll likely go up to LBL, and I had great Portuguese/Brazilian food for dinner with interesting people, and overall I'm happy to be back even if it's not for long.

I did not read as many books this year as last year. I attribute this primarily to a summer spent travelling and a fall spent in graduate school. But still, here are the books I read (excluding textbooks) this year.

1. Life of Pi, Yann Martel
2. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
3. Embers, Sandor Marai
4. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
5. The Trial, Franz Kafka
6. Collapse, Jared Diamond
7. Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi
8. Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
9. A Dictionary of Maqiao, Han Shaogong
10. Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain
11. Seize the Day, Saul Bellow
12. The Age of Reason, Jean-Paul Sartre
13. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
14. Understanding Movies, Louis Giannetti
15. Selected Plays, Oscar Wilde
16. Nightmare Town, Dashiell Hammett
17. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
18. Paris Trout, Pete Dexter
19. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
20. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
21. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
22. The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
23. The Naive and Sentimental Lover, John Le Carre
24. V., Thomas Pynchon
25. Fingersmith, Sarah Waters
26. The End of the Affair, Graham Greene
27. Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham
28. The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran
29. Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey
30. The Horse's Mouth, Joyce Cary
31. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
32. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
33. Travels in the Skin Trade, Jeremy Seabrook
34. Farewell My Lovely, Raymond Chandler
35. In the Country of Men, Hisham Matar
36. Wicked, Gregory Maguire
37. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
38. Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai
39. The Sea, John Banville
40. The Accordion Crimes, Annie Proulx
41. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

Nuts, I'm even short my number of books from 2004. Oh well, some of these were really good; if you're curious about a specific one just ask. I am nearly through the colossal number of books that Douglas and Nancy loaned me, too, which is cool.

From The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran, which I recently read.

'And a poet said, "Speak to us of Beauty."
Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she
herself be your way and your guide?
And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech?
The aggrieved and the injured say, "Beauty is kind and gentle.
Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us."
And the passionate say, "Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.
Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us."
The tired and the weary say, "beauty is of soft whisperings. She
speaks in our spirit.
Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in
fear of the shadow."
But the restless say, "We have heard her shouting among the mountains,
And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings
and the roaring of lions."
At night the watchmen of the city say, "Beauty shall rise with the
dawn from the east."
And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say, "we have seen her
leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset."
In winter say the snow-bound, "She shall come with the spring leaping
upon the hills."
And in the summer heat the reapers say, "We have seen her dancing with
the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair."

All these things have you said of beauty.
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you
hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.

People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.'

Well, five days later, here we are in Philadelphia. Or more precisely, in Levittown, thirty minutes outside of Philly, staying with Nancy's parents while we look for an apartment. We have until Thursday to find one, then we leave for Europe.

The drive here was mostly uneventful... we stopped in Bryce on the second day, which was fantastic. I have some photos which I may try to upload. We did a rim hike and the Queen's Garden hike, and wandered around looking at stuff and being impressed. It was beautiful there, and relaxed. The driving has been boring; we took the 15 to the 80, and thus we drove through California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. We stopped at Jeanine and Andrew's in West Lafayette, and man was it good to see them. I read a couple books during the driving, Paris Trout by Pete Dexter and The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Both were very good. I also read some of this architectural history of Paris, and I've started Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. I don't know if I'll finish it before we get to Europe. For the plane ride I picked up a couple of used books that I plan to ditch. One is A Concise History of France, to help me remember all the things I learned when doing French history in high school French. The other is The Tale of Genji, which I've always wanted to read and which is sufficiently long and thick that it should last the plane ride over. I felt like a bit of a snob looking through the literature section for fat books with tiny text which I hadn't already read. But I really have always wanted to read it.

I am tired of driving and tired of fast food. I had a lot of fruit and yogurt parfaits and sub sandwiches. The first few days, there were waves of alertness for both of us, times when we felt 'drivey' and times when we napped. Today we were both out of it, tired, and sick of driving. At least we're here, though, and safely.

I hope you are all well!

This is the most I've updated in one day in like, years.

Top 20 Geek Books (bold the ones you've read)
1. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams
2. 1984 -- George Orwell
3. Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- Philip K Dick
5. Neuromancer -- William Gibson
6. Dune -- Frank Herbert
7. I, Robot -- Isaac Asimov
8. Foundation -- Isaac Asimov
9. The Colour of Magic -- Terry Pratchett
10. Microserfs -- Douglas Coupland
11. Snow Crash -- Neal Stephenson
12. Watchmen -- Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
13. Cryptonomicon -- Neal Stephenson
14. Consider Phlebas -- Iain M Banks
15. Stranger in a Strange Land -- Robert Heinlein
16. The Man in the High Castle -- Philip K Dick
17. American Gods -- Neil Gaiman
18. The Diamond Age -- Neal Stephenson
19. The Illuminatus! Trilogy -- Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
20. Trouble with Lichen - John Wyndham

I think my favorite books on this list were Hitchhiker's Guide, I Robot, Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, and American Gods. I have to say, I didn't like Stranger in a Strange Land that much. It was great to begin with and then got really bizarre. And like Juhi said months ago, I'm really surprised not to see Ender's Game. I also haven't heard of 12, 14, or 20 at all. And I really want to read Philip K Dick, especially 4. But I still have to get through the bag of books that Ben's parents loaned me.

I got an MRI Monday night but have still gotten no interpretation of it from my doctor. From an e-mail I sent my parents:

I called my doctor after the MRI last night to see if I needed to come
in, or if someone could just drop off the film for me, or what. They
said to come in and that he'd go over the report with me, and gave me
an appointment today. I finagled a ride there and went in with the
MRI film. The doctor then told me that the MRI place compiles a
report within 1-3 days, and he would call me and tell me what the
result of that was, and that's the thing that will really say whether
I have a tear or a strain. Then he said that the knee isn't his
specialty, and that I was about as qualified to look at the images as
he was, and then we went through them and he'd say things like "This
looks asymmetrical, that could be bad, or not, I dunno". So basically
there was no point in me going there, except that he ok'ed starting
very cautiously to use and stretch my injured knee.

Since then I've been using it a little. It can bear weight okay, but it hasn't got the full range of motion... I can bend it a little past 90 degrees, and I can nearly straighten it (though only when I'm 15 minutes into a hot bath). I came to work today and it's doing okay, though I didn't realize how hard it would be to walk from my house one block to the bus stop, or from my office to the cafeteria. I'm walking without crutches, a little unevenly. We'll see tomorrow whether or not I overdid it. I'm trying not to limp, but to walk slowly and correctly. It's sort of working. It's really nice to be out of my apartment, though.

As you might guess, I spent a lot of my convalescence reading, watching stuff, or playing WoW. I'm now halfway through Understanding Movies, which Ron lent me awhile back. It does a nice job of synthesizing storytelling and composition knowledge that I had from writing and photography and putting it in a film context, and it also is teaching me a lot. It really makes me want to watch more movies, too.

I obtained the miniseries that ends Farscape, and I watched it. I now proclaim that Farscape is the best sci-fi show I have ever seen. I really loved it, pretty much from beginning to end. There were episodes I didn't like as much, but no seasons I'd write off (which there were in other tv shows I've watched recently). A lot of it was just brilliant. I also got the first season of the new Doctor Who, from Ben, and watched it. It was really funny and enjoyable, although not fantastic stories or believability. But it was really fun to watch. This stuff makes me want to try Firefly or Battlestar Galactica and see if I like them. I've heard so many good things.

And yeah, I still love WoW and am glad I installed it before spending nearly two weeks at home not walking. It's a really fun way to pass an obscene amount of time. Those of you that play should tell me your characters and servers, so I can feel a sense of fellowship with you. :P