springtime reading!

December is long-gone. So too (hopefully) is the snow and the cold and the frozen-over puddles.

So...

What are you reading now that you can leave the house without fear of frostbite?

I'm reading issue 10 of Kachorrit@s, a punk parenting zine from Argentina. My friend got off the plane from buenos aires, came to the anarchist bookfair and gave me two rumpled issues. China and I were both superpsyched to find out that yay! There ARE punk parenting zines (or at least one) in Spanish! Even if neither of us had the focus to try to read and translate it in the chaos of the bookfair.

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mostly i have to read for

mostly i have to read for school, but...
- i'm re-reading harry p. books 5 & 6 to get ready for book 7 / movie 5
- kind of meandering through From A to Zine: Building a Winning Zine Collection in Your Library
- kids (could be young end of YA) chapter book called Diary of a Wimpy Kid - funny, fast, might be good for male reluctant readers (middle school age)

in the spring i took a YA course so y'all have one more person to talk YA books with! :) one of my favorites was Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist. forgive me if it's already been talked about, but has anyone else read it?

another of my favorites was Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay, which i'm not entirely sure could really be called YA, but was awesome anyway.

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tenderfoot zine * mamaphiles!

Yay! I've been meaning to

Yay! I've been meaning to read that one!

after not finding Octavia Butler at the local library

even though the library catalog SAID they had it and the librarian refused to get off her chair to help me, I found Poppy Z Brite's "Soul Kitchen" (and a couple of other books).

Some of it is goddamn funny. I think my co-worker (who doesn't mind if I read on the job as long as I do some work too) thinks I'm a little bonkers cuz I keep laughing out loud.

It also makes me want to go back to New Orleans (although maybe not in June this time).

I really like Octavia

I really like Octavia Butler. I own a couple of her books, but I keep forgetting that I want to read more of the books related to Patternmaster. I'm planning to buy, since she is, as you say, difficult to find in the libraries. Besides, as my current volumes prove, she's definitely good for a re-read.

never start an Octavia Butler novel

at 11 at night. I did that with "fledgling" last night and stayed up till 3:13 in the morning until I finished it.

Also, her constant talk about feeding made me really really really hungry.

Sometimes paper is the only thing that will listen to you.

China's book

I have been reading China's book. AWESOME!!!! :-)

Regina
"Karma is a boomerang"

Octavia Butler

I've been meaning to read her for years, but never got around to it.

Yesterday, feeling restless but not motivated to actually DO anything, I meandered around the library wishing there was a Neil Gaiman book there that I had NOT yet read. And then I remembered that I had always meant to read Octavia Butler.

So I checked out "Kindred" and tore through it last night and this morning.

Now I'm finished with it and wishing that it wasn't a 3-day weekend so I could go back to the library and borrow more of her books.

Sometimes paper is the only thing that will listen to you.

I've just picked up Solstice

I've just picked up Solstice Wood, by Patricia McKillip. It's sort of a sequel to her book Winter Rose, but set in a modern time. I don't know what to expect of it, since I've barely scratched the surface, but I love McKillip's writing -- she's one of my favorite authors -- so I expect good things.

well i'm on a doctor

well i'm on a doctor prescribed "time out" until the end of june. my reading goal is to make it through "don quixote". i do however, have about 6 books i'd like to get through this summer:
chick flicks by b.ruby rich
flagging patriotism by robert stam and ella shohat
a book about zelda fitzgerald
another called "infidel" and one other i can't think of right now.
we'll see..

know when you ought to read & when you ought not to

so said C. Wright Mills in 1978, according to a literature by someone named Hart in 1993 which was excerpted in a book on doing a literature review in 1998.

I have to admit, I am intimidated by the idea of ever having to do a literature review. And I am not enthused at all about the prospect of ever having to do one.

Still, the potential publisher noted that I didn't do any sort of thorough literature review in my introductory chapter. Instead I just "covered all bases." After reading that statement several times, I realized I had no idea what she meant and so I asked a couple of my radical librarian friends.

One of them was nice enough to Interlibrary Loan a book on how to do a literature review for me.

So that's what I'm reading now. It's slow and dry and full of long words (i.e. "The phenomenological scrutiny of the methodological assumptions of sociological studies to date on advertising were followed through leading to some of the works of major social theorists...") so I've assigned myself a chapter a day.

If any academic/grad school/post-grad school mamas have suggestions for easier-to-read books on doing a literature review (preferably doing a literature review for the non-academic), please let me know!

In the meantime, I'll keep slogging through it. One chapter a day.

Sometimes paper is the only thing that will listen to you.

Susan's the real expert

Susan's the real expert searcher but here's a few things i came across online:

The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It

Conducting a Literature Review (that one's australian but it's got to be pretty universal, right? eh, what do i know, i've never done one!)

CONDUCTING A LITERATURE SEARCH

Write a literature review

the term i used to google with was "conducting a literature review" if none of those are what you're looking for.

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tenderfoot zine * mamaphiles!

Well done grasshopper

Well done grasshopper tenderfoot!

"Do not forget. Remember and warn."
-- Plaque fixed to the hollow shell of Sarajevo's National Library

Just finished some GREAT YA

Just finished some GREAT YA novels about kids dealing with some important social issues in history. The Loud Silence of Francine Green by Karen Cushman I read aways back -its about McCarthyism, then recently My Mother the Cheerleader by Robert Sharenow about the women who persecuted Ruby Bridges in New Orleans and Summer's End by Audrey Couloumbis about draft-dodging during Vietnam.

What's the book called? I

What's the book called? I should probably brush up, too.

The book is "Doing a

The book is "Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination" by Chris Hart.

Still slogging through it. I've been trying for a chapter a day.

Usually, I don't succeed.

I'm reading My Life As A

I'm reading My Life As A Furry Red Monster, by Kevin Clash. Clash is the puppeteer who handles Elmo, from Sesame Street. He was incredibly lucky in a lot of ways -- not a struggling-to-follow-my-art book at all. And he's almost offensively cheerful and optimistic. To be honest, it makes me want to whack him and say, "You do realize that not everyone sails through the tough parts as easily as you do, right?"

I have Are Cops Racist? in the library basket, but I can't decide if I can face it or not. The jacket makes it clear that it's a defense of racial profiling, and I'm not sure I can take the bullshit. It's good to know what the other side is thinking, but this may be a bit much.

I'm reading one of Tony

I'm reading one of Tony Hillerman's Chee/Leaphorn mysteries, Skeleton Man. I also just finished About Alice by Calvin Trillin and Sixpence House by Paul Collins.

Anyone who loves books should race to the library for Sixpence House. Writer guy and his wife and baby move to a town in Wales that's full of bookstores. But it's so much more than that. Musing on writing, picking out cover art for your book (haven't we all imagined this?), old books, new books, family. Really, it's terrific.

Miranda: a zine about motherhood and other adventures

I'm glad you like Tony

I'm glad you like Tony Hillerman--love the Jim Chee/Joe Leaphorn books (but not the awful PBS Mystery dramatisations...could they have gotten the Leaphorn character more wrong...although the actor who plays Chee is yummy...I think he was in Smoke Signals too). Anyhoo, I'm working my way through a stack of books I picked up at the library booksale last summer. Just finished EM Forster's Room With a View--love those Victorian love stories. Now I'm reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which is interesting because I was in Savannah for a few days not long after it came out, and it was in every shop in town, but I was a poor college student, so a hardcover book was not a luxury I could afford time- or money-wise. I feel like I should be apalled and bored with the lifestyles of the rich depicted therein, but the characters or so bizarre, that I can't help feeling fascinated. Also I find it strange that the book was displayed so prominently (proudly) in Savannah, when it makes everyone who lives there sound like a total nut-job. And I like that I can actually picture the townhouses and the azaleas blooming in the squares. (can you tell I don't get out much). Also it's nice to have a break from anything to do with kids (except, every time I read about an unpleasant or despicable person, I can't help picturing him/her as a baby/child and what kind of life he had...and worrying about my own kids' future.)

GEMINI Mama

Well, The Future Generation,

Well, The Future Generation, of course!!!!