liberty! books!

From Gaiman's blog:

Still in Washington DC. It's still cold. It's still raining. Now lightning is flashing and thunder rumbling as well, and it just dawned on me that the White House breakfast tomorrow will be at the White House, and that I ought to do something special (apart from just dragging Maddy along to it as a combination of daughter and good luck charm) so I put my remarkably shiny boots outside the hotel door to be shined some more.

NATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL: THE RETURN.

I'm off to meet Fiona at Teaism, and then we're fangirling Tony Horwitz early.

glad to not be in a Ph.D English program, news at eleven

At the book fair today, I picked up (and am now five chapters into) Tony Horwitz's A Voyage Long and Strange - which corresponds a LOT to what I was reading/thinking about last fall in the grad class that would not die with Gil-a-monster.

(I'm frustrated I didn't read it beforehand, as it would have been something to talk about when Fiona and I awkwardly sidled up to him after Geraldine Brooks - his wife - finished her reading.)

So I got really brave and opened up the .pdf file of my thesis - something I haven't done since I printed it at FedEx the day it was due (May 12). The academic writing is tortured and awkward, I can't remember half of what I was trying to say, and some of it makes absolutely no sense now (provincializing via a middle global term? huh?) - it was a good topic. Well done, me. Maybe in ten years I could do it actual justice. Now I'm just laughing.