summer reading list.

Last summer my extra-curricular reading list was relatively straight forward: I read Updike's Rabbit tetrology, an experience that was beautiful and worthwhile and easy to get sentimental over in contrast to my vigorous schedule of watching The Wire and trying to crack the scholarship on moderate Republicans, which I thought I wanted to do m dissertation on (oh how things change!). This year, following the disaster of my comps and the trauma of such gluttonous and deliberate reading, I just started loving on books again and let my list emerge organically.

Here's what it became:
Bossypants by Tina Fey
The first book I read this summer, I think the weekend when I should have been preparing for my oral exams. It was anti-climactic but a nice way to transition from crazy town into summer sloth.


Ten Little Indians by Sherman Alexie
This was actually for work. I knew I wanted to discuss Alexie in my Race and Ethnicity class because he is from Washington. Also short stories are my favorite type of literature. These stories were amazingly satisfying. I think this was the only piece of literature that I started and finished while I was in Washington, which is a little bit disconcerting considering how long I was there.


Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
Pulled this one off my roommate's shelf. I seem to remember my brother reading it in college. This is geeky, but it was made more interesting to me by both the introduction to Jewish culture that has characterized my 2 years and Philly and reading Canuto's The Ungovernable City last summer, because who doesn't love John Lindsay. 


The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
An interesting compliment to the identity issues of the Roth book. I cried at the end, the sadness of the main character was just so deep. A quick and worthy read selected because I had really enjoyed Ten Little Indians and this book won the National Book Award.


Wifey by Judy Blume
I read this book after reading Rich Juzwiak's post "You should read Wifey". The writing is hilarious and Blume's story invoked for me, a female narrated Updike story of suburban discontent. This book was funnier after reading Portnoy's Complaint because now my summer reading list has this weird comic New Jersey thread running through it.


I Don't Care About Your Band by Julie Klausner
Thanks again to my roommate, I now diligently listen to Julie Klausner's How Was Your Week podcast. I love Klausner's sense of humor, but I was kind of terrified that I would hate this book, as dating memoirs or commentaries sometimes promote really, really fucked up ideas about relationships that I always take more seriously than those that emerge from mid-century male writers or things that I say at happy hour after a couple of beers (double standard!). But Klausner dances gracefully through the minefield of possible terrible things that could be said, and the book winds up being this really wonderful gift from a cool older sister who is all about being real and takes the ridiculous of one's 20s in stride. I'm rambling here, but of all the books I've read this summer, I will probably buy a few copies of this book to give as gifts because I think it is wonderful and I want to be like Julie Klausner when I grow up. As a memoir, it is much better than Bossypants.


In progress:
Operation Shylock: A Confession by Philip Roth
I have been slowly, slowly inching through this one. It's postmodern! It takes a lot of focus. I have read several other books since I started it. Another one from my roommate's shelf.


Fear of Flying by Erica Jong
As I mentioned in my post yesterday, this is a classic that I was kind of embarrassed about neglecting. I felt like I had to read it after reading Wifey and I am really glad I did. Again, with Portnoy and Wifey, it's as much about Northeastern Jewish culture as it is about sex and relationships and inner life. It is a magnificent primary source from the 1970s. Taking into account everything I've read this summer, Isadora Wing might be my favorite character so far.


What are you reading this summer?

great melanies in popular culture.

It's funny-- I've been thinking about this post for a couple of days, and then a very successful filmmaker friend of mine emails me today to tell me he's naming a character after me in a script he's writing-- not because the character and I are all that much alike, but because the name sounds right.  Let us review some of the great Melanies of popular culture, real and fictional, who often bear little resemblance to the name's meaning-- "dark."


Melanie Hamilton, Gone With the Wind, 1939
Good... pure...... helpless...self-abnegating... one of literature's biggest doormats, really.  Miss Mellie serves as a foil to the evil Scarlet.  I can't think of any good quotes for her because she is totally spineless.










Melanie, Rabbit is Rich, 1981
I've been working my way through Updike's Rabbit tetraology this summer.  Updike is far and away my favorite author, so you can imagine my pleasure at finding a character called Melanie in the series' third book.  Melanie comes home with Rabbit's son Nelson from college at Kent State.  A Californian unfamiliar with small-town Pennsylvania, she throws the family for a loop with her happy embrace of 70s trends-- she gets the whole Angstrom family eating wheat germ and studies various yogis in between rides on her 12 speed Fuji bicycle, her curly red hair flying in the wind.  


My favorite quote about Melanie occurs as the family discusses her impending arrival--

"We don't know the girl is a slut," Harry apologizes.  "All we know is her name is Melanie instead of Susan." 

"Melanie" by Wierd Al Yankovic, 1988

Well, he's stalking her... so that's not creepy at all. But you can't help but like the song.

(true confession: I once went to a Weird Al concert with my filmmaker friend. Everything comes full circle!)

UPDATE: Photo evidence of Weird Al singing to me:

Melanie Griffeth, film actress

I haven't really seen anything she was in other than Now and Then but  Antonio Banderas wasn't such a bad catch in the 1990s.

Melanie Chisholm and Melanie Brown, members of Spice Girls, mid-90s
Not one but two Spice Girls were named Melanie.  Sporty Spice and Scary Spice never really appealed to my middle-school sensibilities (I was Team Baby Spice all the way, as my blonde loyalty knows no bounds).  Nonetheless, a good excuse to post a Spice Girls video on my blog.

Melanie Ralston, Jackie Brown, 1997

Nobody talks about this Tarantino flick very much, but Bridget Fonda's beachy surfer-stoner Melanie is endearing.  As is Samuel L. Jackson's line:

"You can always trust Melanie to be Melanie." 

Melanie Smooter, Sweet Home Alabama, 2002

I like this Melanie.  I mean, what's not to like?  A sassy fashion designer with tons of gumption played by turn-of-the-century star Reese Witherspoon.  Sure, she's kind of a liar, but she comes around, right?  And she can't help but keep snagging good looking guys.  Unfortunately, this movie coined the term "Melanie taco," a practice I've been in the middle of on more than one occasion (by guys; guys would never admit to watching this movie).










Ok, that was all of the Melanies I could muster. Did I forget any?

bright spots stockpile, part 4.

I emailed a professor a couple of days ago asking for two book recommendations to round out a five book historiography* I'm working on (political networks of the early republic! so good!) and he finally got back to me today.  


With recommendations for seven books I should look into.  


I know that the expectation isn't that I read them all, but that's the difference between being an undergraduate and a graduate student, I feel. I will read them all.  My learning journey with this professor this semester has been so positive and enlightening and mind-stretching that I know the books will be useful and I want to go down that path.  I am happy that I get to be here, learning from such nice, brilliant people.  I am happy that I'm living a life where I can drop everything and race off to the library.  I am happy to have work that is so blissfully consuming and challenging.  I am happy, I am happy, I am happy.


*a paper that is a brief overview of a specific field-- like a multi-book book report, with more analysis.

three disparate things.

1. I'm reading The Handmaid's Tale again.  After a particularly difficult year of high school, I asked a favored English teacher what to read that summer, knowing that she had to have good taste because she'd done her masters thesis on e.e. cummings.  She suggested Atwood's book. I loved it. It got me thinking about woman's place in the world.

As an undergraduate I pursuaded another kind English instructor to let me do a paper on it. The course of that research introduced me to Phyllis Schlafly, the ERA, the Christian Right, and the LDS Church's efforts against the proposed Amendment. It revealed to me that dirty word: feminism. As a graduate student I've done work on the Eagle Forum and am now working on the Moral Majority. The Handmaid's Tale was written in a very particular moment, and that moment has come to define my career and how I spend my days.

And to think it all stemmed from a very casual book recommendation to a teenage student.

2. When I was living in the dorms at college, I embarked on a mission to a suburban Macy's for a bathrobe. I left the store with a piece of fluff the color of buttercream frosting. It was one of the first times that I said, "damn the costs," and bought something because I liked it and I knew I would need it for a long time.  Now that it's suddenly winter bathrobe season, wearing it puts me back in Pflueger Hall, back in the steamy smell of Dove body wash, back next to the drafty window where I used to sit after my showers. It puts me back in a time before I was an aunt and before my relationship with Mormonism got so fraught. I put on this bathrobe and I go back in time, back to before I knew anything about how good life could be.

And yet I kind of like that my cozy bathrobe takes me back to that time of not knowing any better.

3. Yesterday I went to New York City for the first time. It was big and bustling and dense and busy and shadowy. I only saw a few rushed snippets of the city, and I didn't like it all that much. How do people live there?  Why would anyone choose that? 

And then I remembered that I was in New York City, where I had never been before. That I made choices- a lot of them, big ones- that got me there. That I'd better enjoy right where I was because I'd never get to go to New York City for the first time ever again. Times Square got a little prettier and the people seemed a little nicer. 

New York made more sense to me when it was a myth, but at the very least, there I was. And Philly seemed so blissfully quaint when I returned.

who will do it again.

When I went to the nurse practitioner to see about my sleeping problem, she banned me from reading history before bed and prescribed fiction reading. It didn't take long, suddenly reintroduced to the grand world of literature, to get into the works of John Updike (some had compared his book Couples to Revolutionary Road. I like them both for very different reasons). In my opinion, Updike is the perfect writer to read before bed. From what I've read of his work, he seldom leaves you with cliff hangers or chapters that you just have to finish-- in some of his books he hardly even uses chapters. Instead his long, meandering, paragraphs, rich with lyrical imagery just beg to be closed at any time. I like the story topics-- my selections have been his works about relationships in the post-war suburbs-- and the way he sells the comedy of people feeling trapped. I like how he gets into the trouble regular people got into when confronted with sexual revolution and feminism. I have found that I can just read and read John Updike.

So I was a mite sad when I found out that he died today. One of his poems emerged over the course of the coverage that made me a little bleary eyed, not because John Updike has passed but because it really gets at what loss is and what each person in our lives brings to the table.

Perfection Wasted

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market --
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories
packed in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.

i can't tell if this shows that i really care about what i do or whether it justs boasts about my ability to make a great sandwich.

I would just like to use this post to publicly thank the turkey-cranberry sandwich in front of me for preventing me from spontaneous combustion. You see, I turned down an invitation to a kegger in Logan (Logan? Really? Not even gas under two bucks a gallon can make driving that far seem like a good idea when I am this busy. It just occured to me that not even free beer could get me to drive that far this weekend. Who am I becoming?!) to spend the evening "getting ahead" on a paper not due FOR ANOTHER MONTH (Where is Melanie?! What have you done with her?! This is turning into Invasion of the Body Snatchers, clearly).

I say this because I think that such effort-- such devotion to my craft-- should certainly be rewarded by the magic of the text-- the six books I need to read are, after all, in my field! This should be an unending pleasure cruise of an evening! And then I opened up The Longest and Newest Book on My List that I Shall Not Name and my evening started to feel like that Office episode where they go on the cruise, only not even funny or entertaining. I have not been so enraged and annoyed by a book after reading only the introduction EVER. I already hate this book more than any book I've ever read, and I mean come on, I finished... no, nothing even compares. My sensibilities have been so assaulted. I feel so wounded, injured, insulted, and aghast that somebody entered my subject area, injected this nasty, biased, bourgeois consensus liberal intellectual elitism into it and then, THEN, called it OBJECTIVITY! The children of post-modernism weep at the very existence of such a book.

So I just wanted to thank artisan bread, mayonnaise, red leaf lettuce, salt and pepper, rosemary infused roasted turkey breast, homemade whole cranberry sauce and whipped cream cheese for settling down the bustling atoms that make up my body. I very nearly exploded.

my natural heat.

I actually got up at 8 this morning, none of my plants have that collapsed sad look and I am writing and responding to emails. This is progress, people.

You know what else is progress? Mad Men icons for one's desktop. And can I just say, I am so glad that Betty finally kicked philandering Don's ass to the curb. Sunday was definitely January Jones's best episode since "Shoot" last season (i.e. my favorite moment in television ever).

Also! Weeds season finale posted on the interwebs. Good thing Must See TV is coming back soon. Which reminds me! Biggest Loser tonight! I hope you'll all be gathering around your tellie with pizza and friend(s) because that's what I'll be doing!

Ha! This entire post is about TV! And exclamation points! The perfect response to BS, who thinks all I have on the brain is bikes and politics. Here, I'll throw in this book I'm reading that is totally awesome and fun just for some balance. And I won't start whining about how LAME IT IS that my research is yielding NOTHING.

to put on your summer reading list.

Ian McEwan's Atonement. I plowed through it over the course of my weekend in typical Melanie fashion and I could not have spent the days in any better way. The writing is so beautiful and the story so poignant.

in defense of carol lynn pearson.

So I woke up in Cranky Town this morning. Today is of course the big deadline, which of course as I told my editor, I would probably not be able to meet and of course that is actually what is happening. So I'm feeling a touch down because I know that some time this afternoon my peer review drafts will start rolling into my inbox and I will still be fucking around on page six. I'm not in entirely bad shape-- I have another interview scheduled for this afternoon and interviews breed more interviews. And Starbuck's sent me a free drink card, which I think will really make everything all better after my afternoon in South Jordan.

But anyways, I was extra cranky and hit up the blogs as I tried to wake up and feel some cheer. I was reading this local blog (which I will not even bother linking to) and some assclown had the tenacity to knock Carol Lynn Pearson. Obviously I'm still not over it. As you may know, the Church has come out against the gay marriage gig in Cali (as they have done before) and naturally a good many people are using the "moral issue" as an excuse to be bigots. I am angry that the Church has their hands in it but am also not surprised-- I mean come on, I do ERA history. I expect no less.

Anyways, somebody knocked Carol Lynn Pearson because apparently she's not sufficiently Mormon for them. Pearson married a man who had been "rehabilitated" by the Church for homosexuality who later came out, ending their marriage. Pearson then cared for him as he died of AIDS in the mid-80's. She is a poet and has counseled many people who have struggled to except their own homosexuality or that of a family member. I really, really respect her work.

Anyways, I read her book No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones last year. I have a friend who's been through the fires with the issue of homosexuality and Mormonism and put Pearson's book in my hands because it had been meaningful to her and her family. The afternoon I spent reading it was part of a larger awakening in myself-- that I could no longer willingly shut people out, not from the Church, not from God's love and certainly not from my own life. What kills me is that I felt like such a rebel for feeling that way, for even having Pearson's book on my coffee table. I felt pretty sure at the time that she had a better understanding of what Mormonism was supposed to be about than most General Authorities.

I didn't really think of that whole experience factoring into my paradigm shift until this morning when I realized how angry I was that anybody dared speak ill of a woman who did so much to change my thinking. It's crazy how that stuff comes from left field sometimes.

i practiced the yo-yo because it pleased me to do so.

Ok, so I made the necessary phone call and am feeling marginally better about the future of my project. I have decided not to think about my big picture future too seriously until after my draft is turned in on July seventh. So that was one area in which my crappy attitude was productive-- it got me to the breaking point that inspired proactivity. Maybe I am just being negative because it's hard? Somebody was quoting JFK recently... something to the effect of, "Why do we want to land on the moon? Because it is hard." Well ok then, I'll buck up and do this shit because it is hard, and that can be reason enough. I've got to stop over thinking this.

Incidentally, I was following this discussion on Jezebel today and somebody suggested a particular book of interest with regards to my whole little career Chernobyl I was having earlier. While it wasn't on the shelf where it should be at the library, I did find a book that caught my eye and have started reading it. It is called Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women's Changing Lives by Anna Fels. It appears to be a slightly refined pop psychology book, but the author seeks to look at how women relate to their ambitions and argues that it is so important for women to have dreams and goals and ideas about their futures, and to really think about it.* I had forgotten that positive psychology is one of my favorite things (Sports Psychology was the best, most influential class I took at PLU, hands down) and Fels starts right out by saying that too much psychology is about the past and should really move towards looking at how people see their futures. I feel the same way about history!**

I have only read a teensy bit of it as I am a little caught up in a work project (for once! I am helping the interviewer meet a deadline and as the song goes, "When we're helping, we're happy...") but I think it will be a really good book for me to read. I am better at seeing myself as apart of other people's lives than as a part of my own distinct, self-determined future. Not that the former is necessarily a bad thing, but you know, I've got to be happy with what I'm doing and the circles within which I move and who I am etc., regardless of the other people in my life and, as Dr. Fels argues, if we are willing to try things out in our head then we can get a better sense of how they can become realities and ultimately, how to make them realities without seeing our aspirations as a burden. Even if this book does reek of Betty Friedan's influence*** I think it will be a nice little diversion for the weekend.


*Not that men don't, but it's different for women, Fels asserts.

**just kidding :P

***have I ever said on this blog how much I hate The Feminine Mystique? How terrible it is despite all it's influential power?! Well there, I said it. That book actually gave me a meltdown when I had to write about it objectively. The result of course, was that I did not write about it objectively. I got a very bad grade and had to rewrite it. It required a lot more self-control than I thought I had.

The title heading comes from a quote in the book-- Fels, 8. I think it is the most beautiful sentence.

public service announcements.

Well, Big Brother... I may need that spokescard sooner than I thought. I ran out of words to link but I love the comments here.

Michaele... You should get a bike when you move. I want you to know you have my blessing! New life, new bike! Check these, I think they are classy. :)

Humanity... don't watch this movie and unless you have some booze to dull the intensity and a Jesus candle to scare the bad dreams away. And don't watch it alone, because Scary Face would just be too much for a lonely heart.

Why have I never linked you to this site??? I am so selfish. And I don't want my Mom to think I'm making fun of her-- I am not and I would never submit any communiques to these people but it makes me LOL every day. And my Mom is awesome. Proof: I read this book she recommended to me forever ago and was totally moved. It was really beautiful.

While we're talking books, readers-- because I know my readers are readers-- if there is anything you think I should read this summer of the fictional variety, let me know because I tend to find the books I enjoy the most are the ones people tell me I should read.

Also, don't hate but I am loving me some old school Mariah Carey right now. It takes a special kind of cocktail* to make me feel like that**, but Liberal Tree Hugger... I am totally doing the hand out the window thing-- do you remember that???-- while I'm in my room right now. But let's face it, it was all downhill for the music industry after Fantasy came out. I love the roller coaster part.


*so I had these lime wedges that had been sitting in water all day. And I had some Izze Clementine soda and I tossed in some Triple Sec and Vodka for orangetasticness and some punch (and to tame the sweet), respectively. And then I realized it was too strong so I mixed the lime water with the orangetastic and the combination was so amazing-- totally balanced citrus goodness summerliciousness.

**and maybe just a long hard day of women bitching to me, through archival texts and secondary sources alike, about the ERA. ERA= bitching and bitchy-ness, remember that. I know it meant a lot to them but the whole damn thing was just so emotional that I find this entire process to be quite draining. It's so frustrating! Both sides were completely talking past each other. For years. I love my topic and I'm excited about it, but damn those women just didn't let up! It makes me want to time travel and just give them all a good shaking and tell them to chill out a little.

i've got my work cut out for me.

Like all pretentious people, I like to consider myself reasonably well read. You know, I took all the obligatory AP and Honors English classes that pretentious people tend to take, and my summer reading lists have generally been guided my own pretentious desire to stack my bookshelves with books that would clearly identify me as well read. Well somebody somewhere authoritatively-- pretentiously-- made a list of the top 1001 books and even got a New York Times story about the list, so clearly the pretentious people at the NYT think this list has some kind of street cred.* It's not in numerical order, but I bet Big Brother would be pleased to see #301 is on the list, amongst others. I myself was validated in my pretentiousness by the presence of #242. Anyways, here's how I fared:

I've read 24 of the 1001 books.
I seen the movie versions of 9 of the books, and 1 is in my Netflix queue.
I've started 9 of the books but never finished them but probably got a nice nap out of the effort.
I would have read ~8 more if I wouldn't have taken advanced English classes in high school (verses the 2 from those classes that made the list).
My scores were greatly inflated by the presence of most (if not all) of the Jane Austen library.**
I will probably continue being pretentious, as I feel entitled to it.***

How did you fare?


*Tone of the article: "Two potent factors make “1001 Books” (published in the United States in 2006 by Universe; $34.95) compelling: guilt and time. It plays on every serious reader’s lingering sense of inadequacy. Page after page reveals a writer or a novel unread, and therefore a demerit on the great report card of one’s cultural life. Then there’s that bullying title, with its ominous allusion to the final day when, for all of us, the last page is turned." I read the list before I read the article and agree with the author of the article that the list author must have an Ian McEwan fetish. Also, bonus points to the article author for referencing currywurst, one of the world's most magical treats ever-- the mere mention of it sends me into a fit of nostalgia for little wurst trailers in a variety of German towns and cities. I might have to read that book just for shits and giggles. There really is nothing better than a currywurst on a cold day.

**I forgot to include her for the movies, so that makes the movies score more like fifteen and is probs pushing 20 if you include all the respective versions of Pride and Prejudice that I've seen, much less own. Also, listmakers street cred is seriously undermined by including the one where the cousins fall in love. Blech.

***which means I will continue to ask the waitress if "the nachos are forthcoming" because I will not be humbled! I am still too proud of myself for finishing War and Peace, the major victory of the winter of 2006-2007 and perhaps my whole life.

Picture at top can be found here. J'adore Christopher David Ryan's work.

it's not you, it's your books.

I have to say, I really loved this essay in the New York Times Book Review entitled "It's Not You, It's Your Books." Ok, yah, so I'm enjoying a quiet evening at home with a pint of Ben & Jerry's S'mores ice cream in one hand (graham cracker chunks in ice cream = amazingness) and a cannister of almonds in the other (edgy!!). So you could definitely accurately say, "Yah, you would like that article." The article is about the concept of dumping someone because of their taste in books. What a bourgeois dilemma!!!

For the record, I have never rejected someone solely because of their taste in books. I have definitely connected with people over books-- I'm not going to lie that I love it when somebody says they loved The Fountainhead. I doubt this would ever be the basis of a relationship though-- although I would probably marry a guy who adores The Handmaid's Tale as much as I do. Admittedly, I feel reasonably safe from the problem all together. Graduate School is such a magical cocoon where seemingly everyone is well read. But I digress.

The article did get me thinking about the books I list as favorites and why-- as well as a notable silence on my list that I should probably confront. As it stands right now, I have five books listed as my favorite books on Facebook. I think they are reasonably expressive of my tastes and influences. They are as follows, with accompanying justifications:

The Handmaid's Tale-- recommended to me for summer reading by the brilliant Mrs. Clark, my 11th grade English teacher. It was my first exposure to anything even remotely dealing with the intersections of feminism and religion-- skillfully done by Margaret Atwood in the form of a dystopian novel. I reread this book annually. Incidentally some of the events and people who inspired the book will comprise a significant component of my Master's thesis.

Behind the Scenes of the Museum-- recommended to me by my seminar advisor at PLU. A brilliant, funny novel about families, secrets told in kind of a material culture perspective.

Women of the Republic-- Token history book. I adore Linda Kerber's work. This book is about women in colonial America and the early United States and how they found political influence through a concept Kerber calls "Republican motherhood." I listed this book before I found my thesis topic, but interestingly it connects to it in a conceptual way that I hadn't really considered.

Home Away From Home-- I read this moving novel last fall during Fall Break as I negotiated some significant life changes. It's about a 30's-ish woman whose husband dies and her life in the year after he dies. Usually, I don't like grief novels, but if anything it's about accepting changes and letting yourself experiment and make mistakes as you figure out a new identity. A beautiful and appropriate story.

Lamb-- recommended by my brother over Christmas. A very funny novel about the adventures of Jesus and his best friend Biff. Reminds you of how little we know about Christ. Very funny.

The unnamed book-- I admit I have previously been too embarrassed to list it--it's by no means high literature in any form-- Danielle Steele's Jewels. Typical Danielle Steele-- independent woman made strong by circumstance falls in love with wealthy man, finds success and fulfillment in life. It's such a guilty pleasure! Someday some young historian will write her dissertation on the role of of Steele's books on our culture. Someday, someday-- you people will understand the importance of this book!

You know, I just realized that there is probably room for The Little House books on this list, but that's a post in and of itself. At any rate, there you go, take me or leave me, those are my faves.