My Nightstand

I'm a one book kind of gal. My nightstand houses all the books I want to read. But I only read one book at a time. And right now that book is book three in the twilight series. I know there are a billion jillion problems with this series, not the least of which is that it right now it feels pretty sexist--the kind of sexist that makes my neck hurt, that makes me want to burn my bra and never let anyone help me carry something heavy and unwieldy, the kind that makes me want to take care of myself and never rely on anyone else. What I like about it, what I'm learning as a writer, is the same thing that I like about all series books and shows. I like that the world becomes more detailed that suddenly there is a whole history and mythology to this other world. I felt that way with the Harry Potter books too. I started for the love and for the monsters and now, now I want to know more about how Jacob's great grandfather became a werewolf.



So mostly what I keep next to me on my night stand are short stories and articles. Lately, I've mostly been reading articles.

Is Google Making Us Stupid is the article my reading students read for today. We then looked at non-academic texts--cheese it boxes, assembly instructions from IKEA, credit applications, recipes, sheet music, hoodia diet pill testimonials from magazines, advice columns, etc--and talked about how we read these texts. And then we talked about which of the 17 different texts our grandparents would have encountered when they were 18. I think the reason why I like d this, is because it makes me feel a little better about my totally unoriginal fascination with famous writers' processes. It also makes me wonder if I'm blocked because I'm not writing in longhand anymore or if it is because everything in my world is new. And it oddly made me miss being a grad student. Getting to sit around a big table and talk about technology in this weird detached way.

And this
is that I'm about to read. It comes courtesy of Tina and my colleague Matt.