Kate McDowell on Storytelling

Life goes on, and, for anyone who is awake, the list of losses grows over time.  So does the list of joys and wild moments of freedom, if you're paying attention.  This is the space we take up in the world, sad and joyous and all states in between. In the midst of late winter, our little cat died.  He brought us over twelve years of great joy, and saying goodbye was so hard.  I miss him everyday.  He was not just our cat, he was our clown, our cranky old guy, our sweet companion.  He was an amazing jumper, a selective nose-rubber, and always an enthusiastic friend at the food bowl. Three things I read helped me tremendously. First, Mary Oliver's words from the poem "In Blackwater Woods" (http://www.panhala.net/Archive/In_Blackwater_Woods.html and also in her Pulitzer-prize-winning collection American Primitive), p articularly the last few lines: To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it ...

This poem by Naomi Shihab Nye is so remarkable for waking its readers up to the realities of a finite world, difficult choices, and the price that comes with not having any solitude: http://undertowmagazine.com/the-art-of-disappearing-naomi-shihab-nye/ It makes me think of another famous poem, One Art, by Elizabeth Bishop, which starts with the line "The art of losing..."  http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212 Of course, on a day when bombs went off in Boston, losing feels poignant in a different way, even if the loss is just another perceived loss of safety.

These are quick reviews; they have to be done now so that we can return these library books and leave for an international spring break adventure!  Very exciting.  So here are some books I read during the last few weeks: Wasteland by Francesca Lia Block I heard about this at the ALISE conference, when my fellow professors were talking about the kind of YA fiction that would really push some buttons and provoke conversation.  In Block's signature poetic style, she dances over and around the complexities of incest between a sister and a brother.  The scene itself is never shown, and the lead-up to this one sexual encounter is intertwined with tales of its aftermath.  Specifically (BIG spoiler) the aftermath of the sister's experience is overwhelming grief and loss, because now her brother is dead.  In the end, the two "siblings" turn out not to have been related, and, while it's easier to stomach their attraction that way, the revelation comes so late in ...

I've mentioned it before, but it's worth saying again:  this blog is not about promoting books or authors or attempting to break into the blogosphere in some public way.  It's not particularly about my academic life, although what I read certainly fuels my academic life.  It's also not about my life or sharing news, except those friends who are devoted readers themselves and understand that what we read often is the news of our lives.* This blog is about what I read.  That's all.   I'm not fishing for merchandise or debates.  It's a record that I keep for mostly personal reasons, but I'm always glad when my reviews of particular books lead someone to a reading discovery, for themselves or for their libraries.  Who I am is so tied up with libraries and the ideals of librarianship, from intellectual freedom to public service, that it is inevitably relevant to almost any aspect of my way of reading that I'm thinking about to whom a book might appeal a...

I learned in late high school that the way for me to survive long, stressful days of testing was to read fantasy novels.  During the two-week period when I and my classmates were subjected to AP and IB exams--oral as well as written--I read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, and to this day I think having that parallel fantasy world through which I was imagining traveling allowed me to do better on those tests. Being up for tenure this year is a similar test, only with a much longer period of endurance.  I have passed the test of documenting my accomplishments effectively, with the help of a supportive committee (October).  I have passed through the second gate, the test of school-level approval (December).  I await the final test, approval or denial by the campus-level tenure committee that looks at all tenure cases in the university, results to be announced on May 15. As I wait, I read fantasy, and over this winter I was looking for a really long and hearty ...

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate won the Newbery Medal for the 2012 publishing year with good reason.  Written from the perspective of a gorilla named Ivan whose life is circumscribed by his glass cage in a rather grimy shopping mall, the story moves along in miniature chunks and very small chapters, bit by bit.  At first, there's plenty of time to get used to the voice of a gorilla as narrator; not much happens for awhile except the dour and repetitive life of the main attractions in a failing shopping center, and Ivan's companion Stella the elephant also begins to fail physically in her old age.  But then, with the introduction of a new baby elephant, Ivan's wistful loneliness as he longs for gorilla companionship turns to urgency.  Mack, the owner of the place and Ivan's one-time human "dad" (before he grew to be an enormous silverback), begins to threaten to abuse Ruby, the new baby elephant.  These are difficult issues, and, despite the fi...

While the tenure papers may not be done (I've thought they were twice, and more revisions came back each time), I have moved on to refreshing my research brain.  Refreshment, in this case, has involved travel to public libraries.  So far, I've been to about 10 different public libraries in the general region (east to Indianapolis, north to Chicago, west to Bloomington-Normal, and south to Tuscola) big and small, rural and urban, and it has made for a fascinating set of informal conversations. The first goal of my trips has just been to look, with fresh eyes, at public libraries as spaces.  I go into buildings and explore websites, seeing how physical and virtual spaces relate to each other and to me, a stranger on the road just stopping by.  Several times, because of professional connections, I have quickly become *not* a stranger on the road, but in fact a colleague.  That happened in Forrest, IL, and even moreso in Tuscola where I know the soon-to-be-former ...