2010 Book List

I love to read end-of-year lists. I love them especially when they are written by friends (and because of this, lisa b. is my favorite person right now) but I love all end-of-year lists even if they are about things that I really don't care anything about. I also love lisa b. right now because she tweeted this aggregate of end-of-year lists and it has been entertaining me for days:

While I love to read the lists, I do not make lists--of any kind really, except for the occasional grocery list. But I am going to make a list now (and maybe another one tomorrow). And these lists may seem a lot like lisa b.'s lists, but I don't care. I like to emulate. I am an emulator.

I was going to start with a list of tv shows I've watched, but that may be embarrassing. So I will start with books. Because books make you smart.

Books I read (or pretended to read) for school (the ones I can remember, anyway; there are many that have been returned to the library):

• Visual Rhetoric: A Handbook and Visual Methodologies and Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. These were for a class on, you guessed it, visual rhetoric.
  
• A collection of books about math and crochet, which were for the paper in the visual rhetoric class. I still think about this project and will some day turn it into something worthwhile: Making Mathematics with Needlework, Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Crochet, Mathematics as Sign: Writing, Imagining Counting, and Semiotics in Mathematics Education.
• Kiss My Math and Math Doesn't Suck both by Danica McKellar. These were going to be part of the above project, but I changed my focus. But I did learn some math from these. They are a little too "girly" for my tastes, but I think she's on to something about making math accessible.
  
• The Disability Studies Reader and Universal Design for Web Applications. This class on disability studies kind of rocked my world and will probably shape my dissertation. I have purchased a bunch of other books on this topic, but I haven't quite read them yet.
  
• Assessing Writing: A Critical Sourcebook and a whole bunch of other books on assessment that I won't bore you with. This class on assessment was suprisingly interesting and I loved the project I did. I am available to assist you with all of your assessment needs.
  
• Central Works in Technical Communication. This book, and the class that required it, is about as interesting as it sounds.
  
• Mission Improbable: Using Fantasy Documents to Tame Disaster. This was for my paper for the above class, a paper about the oil spill. A depressing topic, but an interesting book--although it was far longer than it needed to be and the author has a very poor understanding of rhetoric and the extent of research in the field (which probably just means that rhetoricians need to do a better job of communicating their work to other disciplines).
  
• The Language of Work: Technical Communication at Lukens Steel, 1810 to 1925. For the boring class mentioned above. This sounds really boring, I know, but it was actually good. All about changes in literacy practices, shifts from oral to print culture, etc.
  

Books I read to Imogen:

• Charlotte's Web. I read this to Imogen when she was just a few days old. This may have been a bad idea because I cried in a ridiculous way. This is my favorite book of all time.
  
• Imogen's Antlers which our delivery doctor told us about and is kind of amazing because we joked about our baby having antlers from the moment we found out I was pregnant and before we picked a name.
  
• Many, many board books--among them Click, Clack 123, Let's Dance Little Pookie, Les Chaussures, Olivia's Opposites, and Whaley Whale.
  

Books that I read or am reading or thinking about reading:

• Dog of the South Charles Portis. I am reading this right now and I love it. I am going to read everything of his.
  
• House of Mirth. This is one of my favorite books. I reread it recently because I heard a Studio 360 podcast about it. Still wonderful, still heartbreaking.
  
• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I haven't actually read this, having given it up only a few pages in. I put on the list, though, because I keep wondering what the big deal is. I admittedly read very little of the book, but it was so tedious. Does it really get better?
• When You Reach Me Rebecca Stead. A kid's book. I loved it. A combo of sci-fi and the typical coming of age, relationship-driven kid's book.
  
• Silence of the Grave Indridason. I read this because of DrWrite. I liked it. I want to go to Iceland.
  
• In the House. Go DrWrite!
  
• Hellhound on His Trail Hampton Sides. I read this because the author was on Daily Show or Colbert. It is about MLK's assassination. I did not find it to be particularly interesting or insightful.
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Rebecca Skloot. This was also a Stewart/ Colbert book, and it is my favorite read of the year. It should be on more best books lists. About science, and race, and family. You should read this.
  
• A Bridge to the Stars Henning Mankell. Another kids' book. I haven't finished it, but I like it. Sort of elegiac, which seems like a strange description for kidlit.
  
• The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. I bought this because I heard the author talking about how he dealt with panic attacks. I think it's pretty good, but I haven't finished it (even though I bought it a year ago). This may be because I was very pregnant when I got the book or because no matter how much I like the idea of meditation, etc. I just can't really get into it.
• The Mind at Work Mike Rose. Still reading this one, but it's good. It is making me think about how/why we teach composition at a community college.
  
• Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language David Barton. I guess this one should go on the school list, but I sort of love reading about literacy in a way that makes it almost not like work/school, so I will just leave it here.
  
• Middlemarch Look, I tried to read this. I don't really know why. And I could not read it and I could not care about it. I ended up reading Jane Smiley's description of it in 13 Ways of Looking at a Novel and I think that is just fine.
  
• Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ Philip Pullman. This book annoyed me and I did not finish reading it. But I cannot remember exactly why.
  
• The Lonely Polygamist Brady Udall. A good novel. My reaction to it is too difficult to explain in a list.
  
• In Pursuit of Silence George Prochnik. I am reading this because of a project I am working on about voice (not the metaphorical kind). It has lots of interesting information, but the writing is a bit precious for my tastes.
  
• The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance. I read this because of Ron's recommendation and I read it in one day. I did not really like it, though, and I can't decide if that is because a) it is too close to home or b) it is more a memoir of "I was once overweight and now I feel pretty" (which I'm not that interested in) than it is a memoir of religious uncertainty.
• Blind Descent James Tabor. This is a book about exploring deep, dark, scary caves. I have not finished it yet.
  
• I also read several books in the early days of 2010, in the long three months before Imogen's birth. It was too long ago and in a different lifetime for me to say much about them, but here they are: The Lacuna, Wolf Hall, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Never Let Me Go, Blind Willow Sleeping Woman, After Dark, The Comfort of Strangers (which I hated! passionately), Born Round (which I also hated), Wicked (which I was very ambivalent about), The Little Princess (revisiting a childhood favorite), and the Irregulars.
  

I also read a bunch of books about babies and birthing and breastfeeding, but I'm pretty sure no one wants to hear about that.

motherhood, the first week

Wow. What a ridiculously amazing, terrifying, exhausting, exhilarating week this has been. People tell you it will change everything, but I had no idea. No idea.

What startles me most, perhaps, about this motherhood experience is how biologically driven it is. When Imogen was born, I thought she looked like Will. I didn't see myself at all. My sister kept pointing our things that were like me, but I didn't see it. Then, a day later, I was looking in the mirror and suddenly I looked like her. I didn't look like myself at all. I had the same experience with Will. He no longer looked like himself, but like Imogen. It was as if the only face I could see was hers. My own face is back, but this little girl's face and its connection to both me and Will is firmly imprinted in my mind. (And then there are those other bits of biology: the ridiculous emotions, the breasts that immediately respond to her cries and stirrings).

I am also amazed by how much of an individual she already is. My first impression of her was a lucky one, I think. As soon as she was born, she was whisked away by a pediatrician who wanted to check her out for any ill effects caused by a fever I had during labor. I didn't get to hold her right away, but could only stare at her from across the room. She was a crier, bursting out into a wail the moment she exited my body. I watched her from my bed, this beautiful, flailing creature and my first thought was, Here is this woman, Imogen, already herself. My job is just to help her on her journey. I am glad to have had this experience because I know that for as much as she is mine, she is not mine.

She is a lovely girl, sweet and mellow. For all the ferocity of her first cry, she hardly cries now. Perhaps that is because we dote on her and respond quickly to any sound she makes. But I suspect it's also because she's a happy one. I am lucky and tired and overwhelmed. But mostly lucky.

things i'm thinking about

i'm just listening to this radiolab podcast about how infants respond to sensory input, that even though their senses function, they don't function in the way that we expect them to, in a way that we would describe as conscious. Sights don't necessarily register in the vision center of the brain, transforming them into who knows what--data, but not necessarily meaningful data. Babies that stare may just be experiencing a brain glitch, unable to move their gaze away rather than presenting a keen interest in a specific object or individual. But our reactions, as adults, assume that the infant is seeing, hearing, gazing, etc. and that assumption helps the infant to learn how to make sense of all of that sensory input.

This pregnancy thing has me thinking about lots of things, wondering how we humans work.

A friend asked me the other day whether I would find out the sex of the baby. I don't care, either way. I'm not going to make a big deal of trying not to find out, but I wouldn't really care if I didn't know. She said it was nice to find out, because then you could start bonding with the baby. And I wondered why the baby's sex makes a difference in the bonding. Do I need to know the baby's sex in order to think of the baby as a real entity, someone who will be part of my life? I do know, though, that seeing an ultrasound picture of my baby--the sort of picture I've never really gotten excited about (or understood) when someone else showed me--made me feel instantly attached to and protective of this new person. What are the things--sex, image, voice, etc.--that allow us to envision and embody human life, to make it real and meaningful for us.

And the other thing I am wondering about. I find it perfectly normal, this idea of a fetus growing inside of me, this person who is totally dependent on me yet totally independent--already with its own heartbeat and blood type. It doesn't seem odd or unusual, and yet the other day when I thought about while this baby growing hair while still in the womb, I sort of freaked out. I try not to think about the hair because it does truly disturb me. So, why does the whole process not freak me out, yet hair does? Will was tormenting me last night with stories about the baby and its Don King hairdo.

People are funny and I think pregnancy may be one of those things that reveals our strangeness more than anything else.