In which I try to recreate the post that mysteriously disappeared

So, apparently we're having technical difficulties with the whole blog platform thing. I posted last night, and actually saw it live on screen, but when I went to correct a spelling error, the post had mysteriously disappeared *poof*

This is the third time it's happened in a week or so, but I was just too tired to try and recreate it last night. Anyhow, I was posting about the book I'm currently reading (and probably will be for a while).

Weighing in at a hefty 4.75 pounds and 1,376 pages, Hunger's Brides: A Novel of the Baroque.



And in this corner, at a much more manageable 2.2 pounds and 750 pounds, Sor Juana or the Breath of Heaven: The Essential Story from the Epic, Hunger's Brides (no really, that's the title).



I was working for the publisher when Hunger's Brides first published in the U.S. in 2005 (it was originally published in Canada) and brought home a copy to read. Mostly as a challenge. Most reviews of the book were focused on it's size. The New York Times, while acknowledging that the book is well-written, equated it with a 6-pack of beer (4.75 pounds), 3 hardcover copies of The Da Vinci Code (5.25 pounds), and a chihuahua (4 pounds).

The story is historical fiction. And it's not. The author, Paul Anderson, writes as different characters at different moments in time. There's the historical story of Sor Juana and the imagined bits or her life to go with it, and there's a current day story of Gregory and Beulah—of which I can't tell you anything because I became bored with it and started skipping those sections.

I was about a third of the way through when my boss asked how I was liking it. When I told her I was skipping entire sections, she advised me to wait for the paperback. Apparently, the manuscript was being reedited to exclude the current day storyline. The paperback has been sitting on my shelf for nearly 3 years. It sits no longer.

I started rereading it the other night and the story of Sor Juana is just as enthralling as it was the first time. The story begins at her deathbed but then immediately picks up in her youth. Juana Inés Ramírez de Santillana is an extremely precocious child, learning to read far earlier than her peers, reading Herodotus, Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Thucydides.

She simply hungers for knowledge and is always examining, questioning and challenging. But her story takes place in New Spain in the mid-1600s, when women weren't expected to have more than a rudimentary education. Real learning for women was frowned upon and questioning authority was particularly blasphemous, especially when questioning the church.

It is also time of immense cultural shifting. The conquest is over, but the hacienda and caste systems are deeply entrenched. Juana (and her 2 sisters) is the illegitimate daughter of a Basque father and Castillian (possibly Mestizo) mother. Her mother is a non-conformist and works the hacienda with the Mexica men. Her mother leaves the child rearing to the Mexica house servant, Xochitl, whose daughter, Amanda, was born the same day as Juana. The two become fast friends and Juana learns about the world from the Mexica point of view as well.

There's no way I can sum up such a huge book (that I haven't completely read yet!)—there's the historical part of the story, the gender aspect, and the cultural aspect. And it's is extremely well-written. Oh, and there's some of Sor Juana's poetry as well. I like how how Spanish and Nahuatl are sprinkled through the text and I like the subtle changes in Juana's voice as time passes.

Anyhow, I know how I can be when I really like a book. Nothing else matters—not work, or sleep, or food, or sex. So I've placed the book on my elliptical machine (a pedestal of sorts) and have decided I can only read while I'm working out.

So how's that working out for me? I've decided that my workouts are far too short. I'm going to be sore tomorrow.

Gotta Get It Outta My Head

Well, my rosy optimism about uncluttering the house has gotten off to a unbelievable start, which is to say that, aside from going through my closet, nothing has happened. (The unbelievable part is that I went through my closet.)

I think the thing that bothers me most about all the "stuff," other than the fact that it's just in the way most of the time, is that more than likely somebody spent money on it and it just sits there. It's not being used; it just sits there.

And if money is just going to sit there, it might as well earn some interest while it's at it, however little that interest may be. Instead, the stuff just depreciates in value over time to the point that we just want to give it away to get rid of it. It made me remember this post over at The Simple Dollar.

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned that I work for a book publisher (which is part of the reason I have so many books in the house), but it also means that I read the trade journals and websites. Well this book caught my attention and it is one book I'm positive will never end up in my house, Sanjaya Malakar's Dancing to the Music in My Head: Memoirs of the People's Idol.

Now I haven't watched American Idol since I was completing an internship in Washington, D.C. It was the season Fantasia won, and the reason I watched then had more to do with my almost-21-year-old-roommates than any true desire of my own. At any rate, whether or not you watch, it's nearly impossible to avoid all exposure to the spectacle, which is to say, okay I vaguely know who this Sanjaya guy is.

But I also know he's only 19. How do you write your memoirs at 19, let alone 256 pages of them? Okay, Britney Spears might have been able to pull off memoirs at 19, but this guy? Does this mean for hom that it's all downhill from here?

Oh, and he's written his memoirs with Alan Goldsher, which really means one of two things 1) either Sanjaya truly did write the memoirs, but the editor had to do so much work to get them presentable as a book that the editor demanded a rather prominent cover attribution, or 2) Sanajaya told this guy Goldsher some slightly interesting stories and Goldsher had to beef them up to make it interesting enough to publish as a book, in which case the title really should be Dancing to the Music in My Head: The Imagined memoirs of Sanjaya Malakar, the People's Idol.

Simon & Schuster is publishing the book (I don't work for them), which probably means the guy got a hefty advance to write/dictate it--I would guess mid-to-high 5-figures, but I always lowball these things; I wouldn't at all be surprised if he made 6-figures. Oh, and it was published as a hardcover! Really?

Anyhow, I certainly won't be buying the book, and I don't really have any interest in borrowing from the library. I hope the library doesn't spend any tax dollars on this piece of pulp.

Balancing the Books

I'm having a problem keeping the books. Or rather, I'm having a problem not keeping the books. While tidying up the house for the home appraisal last week, I ran across a few boxes of books in the garage and more than one stack tucked away in the darkest, dustiest corner of my closets.

I know why I have the boxes of books in the garage. Each one of those was connected to my college education, and I in my new graduate optimism thought I might need them for reference since I was probably going to find a job in my chosen field. I was a Native American Studies major, yeah. Not much work to be had in that particular field, at least not without a Master's in education, social services, or casino management.

But I can still identify which pueblo/tribe a piece of pottery/basketry/beadwork comes from based on materials and design, and I can still partially read a totem pole. As you can imagine, it's knowledge I don't call upon very often; but it's there all the same.

The other books I seem to have squirrelled away just about everywhere are from work. It was bound to happen working for a book publisher. Thankfully, now that I've switched the the travel guide arm of the company, I bring home far fewer books.

Anyhow, I've decided it's time to get rid of them. Well, most of them. I'll keep true reference book, cookbooks, and particularly meaningful book, but everything else is going to go.

Thankfully, books are pretty easy to get rid of, if sometimes heavy. But Scoob has a difficult time giving away something if he thinks he could get something for it. So I've come up with a plan of action: This weekend we will pull together all the things we need to get rid of and we'll give ourselves 3 months to do something constructive with it, or, at the end of 3 months, whatever is left gets donated.

My first stop for all those course books will be Half.com. I probably bought a good portion of those books on Half.com when I was struggling to save money as a student, so it seems only fair.

Beyond that I'll probably put the books up on Freecycle or donate them to the SF Bay Area's Prisoner's Literature Project. Unfortunately, the PLP won't accept hardcovers, I guess the inmates could use them as weapons. Just repeating what I was told. Anyhow, anything else still left will be sent to Goodwill.

Though I do like this idea at Bookcrossing--essentially you join their site (it's free) register the book you want to get rid of and give it a tracking number, then you leave the book in a public place for someone, anyone, to pick up. They then login the book and continue to pass it along and you can see how far your book went.

While my goal is to get things out of the house, Scoob is more interested in having something tangible after getting rid of things (you'd think a clean house would be enough). So for him we will focus on swapping. If I can't convince him to get rid of things, at least I can get him to trade them for things he will actually use. Scoob has a number of things I'm hoping he'll be ready to part with, mostly books, PC games, and DVDs.

He has traded DVDs in the past using Swaptree and PC games with Goozex (that's a "z" not an "s" I made the mistake of typing it in the other way first, and you know anything with "sex" in the URL is going to be adult in nature, though at least this wasn't NSFW). Scoob prefers the Swaptree system, but so far, Goozex is the only reliable trader we've found for PC games.

A few other book trading resources: PaperBackSwap lets you print your mailing postage from your home printer. BookMooch helps you connect with people who want the books you want to get rid of, though you need to source the postage. America'sBookShelf charges a $3.50 monthly fee, but this covers the postage on your trades.