There are two things worth talking about today. No, three. Three things [insert laugh of Sesame Street's Count].
- Topic the First: book shopping, and why it makes me minorly panicky and majorly brain dead.
- The Second: my dissertation, and why I need to explain to my family what I’m up to these days.
- The Third: my writing skills, and how terribly poor and disorganized a writer I’ve become (and tangentially, why this spells doom for the upcoming work).
I might post one really long entry, or I might split these up. I don’t know what I’ll do yet (see Topic the Third: disorganization). Oh, and you might want to read this first.
On Book Shopping: I justified my lack of work over the weekend by shopping for books. The partner and I (I need a bloggy name for him, don’t I? Okay, so that I don’t have to refer to him by gender- or legal- specific terms, he shall henceforth be known as “Mr. Wizard,” which IS gender specific, I admit, but not as government-approved as “husband,” a term I wouldn’t ever use except that my academic department is so fucking heteronormative that it has warped my brain).
You thought I was shitting you about the disorganization thing. Clearly I was not. Also, I just looked up “garden path sentence” and found this. Dear lord that’s cool.
So anyway, Mr. Wizard and I went to a used book store to find me some dissertation books. “Do you know what you need?” says he. Says I, “um…”. I drew a blank. I had no idea what I needed other than a few random authors (no titles) and a few random titles (no authors). I don’t think I’m alone in my bookstore paralysis. Being faced with a mountain of cheap used books is overwhelming (if only because the cheapness means you don’t have to limit yourself to your arbitrary list, thus rendering the list itself obsolete, or in my case, completely forgotten). So I browsed the fiction while he went off to find me some books about time.
Since I don’t talk about him too much, here’s the thing about Mr. Wizard: he is quite possibly the smartest person I have ever known. Smart in a genius sense. Smart in a “his brain uses so much power on the genius stuff he has trouble tying his shoes” sense. Competitive me probably would have had a problem coping with this fact were we not both smart in utterly different ways. It also helps that, unlike most science types I know (by which I mean, his colleagues), he appreciates the work I do. I don’t need this approval from him, but neither could I be in a relationship with someone who thinks humanities Ph.D.s are “for girls” or that people who study literature traffic in opinions rather than knowledge. Thus he can teach me things I do not know without the taint of condescension. Or in this case, find me some books about time (specifically stuff about relativity) that I might find useful.
Meanwhile, I poked about the stacks, navigating mostly by intuition. Intuitive book-buying works like this: without a list, and without a target in mind, you go around pulling things off shelves because the title strikes you, or the author sounds familiar, or the cover display catches your eye. As a result, I ended up with:
- another Italo Calvino book I don’t need but which reminds me that, when thinking about time, Calvino might not be a bad person to check out
- a copy of Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love, which I knew about before but which I rejected from my official list on grounds of “not relevant” only to buy because it was four dollars and seemed kind of interesting after all
- John Fowles’s Wormholes, which I bought mainly because the title seems relevant to my new interests but also because The French Lieutenant’s Woman is pretty effing brilliant in its treatment of my favorite science/scientist: evolution/Darwin (it turns out that it’s not that relevant after all, and it also smells strongly of formaldehyde, so I probably won’t read it)
There were other things of note, but my budget has its limits, and what with the science books that came recommended by a physicist Mr. Wizard talked to, I had to resort to taking pictures of the other books I wanted but couldn’t buy just this second.
Topics 2nd and 3rd to be discussed later (or not at all).
