Lit Bit

Next week is spring break, which luckily means no school. I still have to work sadly, but that’s okay I’ll deal. You want to hear the realy bummer though? I’m sick. I woke up yesterday morning feeling kind of icky, my throat bothering me and my tummy a bit quesy. This morning as I got up at an ungodly hour for work, I was feeling even worse and it has persisted throughout the day. Can’t I get sick when I’m in school and not when I’m supposed to be enjoying extra time off? Like I said, total bummer. I guess I’ll just have to plan on getting a bunch of sleep, especially tomorrow since I don’t have work or school. Hopefully this won’t hinder any other plans I had for break.

    I haven’t written a review in a few months at least. This fact makes me sad. It isn’t that I haven’t been reading, or don’t want to write any reviews, it’s simply that as soon as I finish one book, I’m moving on to the next. If you’ve been keeping up with the Journal Entries I have been posting, you’ll have a bit of an idea of what I have been reading. The problem with the Journal Entries is that they include my responses to the memoirs I’ve been reading rather than making them entirely accessible to people that have not read these books. For that reason, I want to review the memoirs I have been reading in class. Here’s a quick list of what we have read or are reading:

    Jarhead by Anthony Swofford
    Hypocrite in a pouffy white dress by Susan Jane Gilman
    Goat by Brad Land
    Name All the Animals by Alison Smith
    and Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn

    We just started reading Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, so my review for that one will be at the bottom of the list. I’m hoping once summer comes around, I’ll have more time to read more books, finish ones that I haven’t gotten around to yet, and review ALL of them. A girl can dream, can’t she? I also have some books of poetry that I need to finish reading and give reviews on. Oy, it feels like summer is already screaming past with all these plans I have, and it hasn’t even started yet. And if anyone would like, I could also review some of the Shakespeare plays I’ve been reading in my Shakespeare class. I must admit, it hasn’t been anywhere near as awful and dull as I had expected it to be. The credit goes entirely to the professor. His enthusiasm in the classroom and over Shakespeare make the subject bearable, at least for those of us that are not huge Shakespeare fans. I wonder, are Shakespeare plays one of those things you either love or hate? Are there any shades of grey when it comes to Shakespeare? I haven’t decided yet.

    Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I will get at least one review posted. I’m quite ashamed of my slackerism. Well, next week is spring break, and seeing as how I intend to spend my time between work and home, I should have more time to get some Lit Bit work done. Stick with me, I’ll get there.

    Like I mentioned in my March Screenshot post, I have been crazy busy lately. And sadly, this has reflected in my blogging. I’m not around nearly as much as I would like to be. But the blogging craze is finally filtering back into my blood and I really want to catch back up with it. I have so many books to review and so many things just to hash out with you. One major thing I wanted to talk (*cough*brag*cough*) about is that I made a new purchase with some of the money I got back from my tax return.

    I’ve been having issues with my cell phone for months now. The reception in my apartment is absolutely dreadful. I basically stopped trying to make calls in my apartment, because they were constantly dropped and there is nothing as annoying as being cut off in the middle of a sentence. Also, my cell phone is my only phone. I don’t have a land-line. I don’t talk on the phone nearly enough to justify a land-line and a cell. I didn’t do too much about it because I was still under a contract with my provider and for the time being, my roomies had a couple of phones that they were always nice enough to lend me when mine crapped out on me. But then they moved back to California and I was living solo again. It just didn’t feel right having a phone that wasn’t reliable and live by myself. Only problem was that I could only think of one other phone I’d want….so I sucked it up and shelled out the bucks and bought this:

    Yup, that’s right. I bought an Apple iPhone. I was so excited when it got here that I took some pretty crappy photos and very few at that. I just wanted to open it up and play with it and get my service started. I’ve had it now for a couple of weeks and I love it. I even get reception in my apartment. It hasn’t dropped a call for me yet. I can even walk around without having to stoop or bend awkwardly or just stand in the middle of the apartment to get reception. Nope, I can go into any bedroom and it works just fine. It makes me so happy. So this was my little indulgence with my refund from Uncle Sam. I also bought an iSee hard case for the phone as well as a Power Support Crystal Film Set to protect the screen…primarily from my greasy fingers, haha.

    I must say that just about every aspect of this phone comes in handy for me. I check the weather on it, not only for my city, but also for the cities of friends and family. Same goes for the time. I have multiple clocks set up to reflect my time as well as those of friends and family. I use the iPod portion of the phone frequently as well as the ability to sync it with my computer’s address book and calender. And being able to get my email wherever I am is awesome as well. I love it and I’m so excited to have a phone that finally works.

    I know I haven’t been posting too much lately. It’s just to that time of the semester again that everything seems to be piling up. On top of the normal day in and day out stuff, I learned that I can actually graduate a semester early, so by December of this year, I should be done with school. This means that my need to decide on a Grad school and getting all that jazz in line for graduating and moving on seems a bit more urgent than previously. I just keep thinking of all these things that I need to do and then stressing at the fact that there doesn’t seem to be time to do any of it. At the same time, I never feel like I’m actually getting anything done. It’s as if I have absolutely no concept of time these days. It just seems to rush on by and I’m always playing catch up. But all that is for another posting, this one is supposed to be my March screenshots:

    I felt like going with a wallpaper that was a bit more organic for the time being. Naturally I found it here at MacThemes. The wall is by b.slag. Of course this will probably change in a week or so, but for now, I am enjoying the darker, earthier background. Other than that, not much has really changed.

    I’m not really sure how I feel about Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. I actually really liked the title and kind of had high hopes for it when I saw it on the list. I was excited to get to it initially and kind of bummed that it was the last class text we were going to read. And then I had to actually read it.

    It wasn’t a horrible read. There were some good points to it. There were instances when I related to it, but all in all, it just didn’t strike a chord with me. I felt like Flynn just went over everything too quickly. He didn’t obsess about anything in the book…except his father…who he never really knew too well. But not even that bothers me, because I can totally relate to that obsession over someone you hardly or don’t even know. That huge parental question mark has been a big part of my life. So I sympathized with him. I guess I just felt cheated throughout the memoir, like there wasn’t enough emotional investment.

    Some people in class said that the memoir read like a person who has alcoholism or has dealt with it. I guess so, I really wouldn’t know. There were so many “oh my god!” moments to his life experiences and I felt like I never got a chance to really experience that with him. I find it annoying that tons of people came down on Brad Land for the style of writing he used in Goat and then completely ignored the fact that Nick Flynn had a very similar style. There was this short, choppy, disconnected style of writing. A constant build up of tension without a releasing moment for the reader. Everything just keeps piling on. AND Flynn’s memoir is like two or three times the size of Land’s….in what universe does this make sense?

    Like I mentioned in class….the only way I found Flynn’s memoir palatable was by reading it out loud to myself. But let me tell you, a hundred pages in one sitting of reading out loud is harsh on the throat. I think Flynn would have an interesting style of poetry and I would be curious to read his poems, but I didn’t really care for his memoir. It was interesting and there were moments when I related to the text, but all in all….well, let’s put it this way….I probably won’t ever read it again. :/