In which I win something unexpected

Despite my eternal optimism, I almost never win things. Recently, though, I won a prize in a contest I didn't even enter. I've been a user of LibraryThing for several months now, and it turns out they ran a Harry Potter Review Contest. Since I reviewed The Deathly Hallows, I was automatically entered and I've won myself a one-year full membership and a fancy barcode scanner (to scan all my books with...mwahaha).

I wonder if I really will scan all the books on our shelves. Or only the ones I've read? And liked?

Summer Muggles

Rereading the Harry Potter books is putting a serious crimp in my already mangled summer plans. I had great, idealistic goals in mind, like finishing all the work I was supposed to have done last year. And learning Spanish. Not to mention getting a head start on next year.

Teaching this summer has definitely taken a lot of the zip out of my line. It's fun but quite time-consuming. And here I am, barely resisting the urge to flop into the easy chair with several hundred pages of magical easy reading.

I am doomed.

What have I been doing instead of blogging?

Well, blogging elsewhere, for one thing. And reading! Isn't that the point of grad school?

I've started an account on LibraryThing, a simple but somewhat addictive book-cataloging service. They really try to lure you into the stygian depths of bibliomania--they literally sell barcode scanners to speed up your cataloging process. I'm not there yet, but I have been adding things to my library. And they make widgets--I'm adding one to the sidebar. Whee!

A Screaming...

Yesterday was a momentous day--I finished Gravity's Rainbow. It took all of 2007 (to date) to get it done, but I did enjoy the ride. The book confirms what we all know to be true--Pynchon is one weird dude. One thing I'm quite excited about is something I heard from my friend Sam. An artist named Zak Smith has illustrated every page of Gravity's Rainbow.

This is really interesting to me because the book is so graphically visual to begin with--in the sense of arresting, occasionally alarming, graphics, that is. Perhaps I should not be surprised that Zak Smith "also performs in pornographic films under the name Zak Sabbath." All of this is entirely appropriate, considering Pynchon's predilection for sex, nasty sex, and really freaky rocket-metonymy sex.

So now I only have, oh, three more Pynchon novels to read before I get up to his new one...I think I need a break.

Wedding poetry and the sands of time

Anna and I are working on picking out some poetry readings for our wedding ceremony. It's an incredibly fun thing to do, but also quite difficult. I find myself tempted to page through whole volumes looking for that impossible, perfect poem just around the corner. Clearly I need to write the damn thing myself.

But in the meanwhile, I also keep reaching toward the shelf for some book that I then realize is lost somewhere among the boxes and crates of multiple international moves. It could be in Tel Aviv, Princeton, or in a sweltering warehouse somewhere outside Washington. Or maybe I gave it away or tossed it accidentally in flustered moment during one of the nine moves I've made since 2002.

The task now--aside from composing a masterful hymeneal ode--is to dig those lost children out of the sands of time. I do have a very personal feeling about my books (the ones I like, that is, not the ones I resell on eBay). It pains me to think of them sitting out there somewhere unreachable, and perhaps unknowable. Now that we finally live in a home with room to move your elbows in, I'm really looking forward to reuniting my riches and treasures.