The Read-a-thon begins!

For those of you who haven't heard, I'm participating in a 24-hour reading marathon from 5 a.m. Saturday to 5 a.m. on Sunday. It begins now!!

If you would like to join or see what all the literary fuss is about, hop on over to the website here


Here's a questionnaire to get going on all the fun and festivities.

• Where are you reading from today? Glendora, California!
• 3 facts about me … 1. Most days I wear pink sparkly eyeshadow; I can’t help myself. 2. I am a Ph.D. student in English literature...so part of this read-a-thon is my normal homework routine of reading every minute of every day, haha. 3. This is my first read-a-thon!
• How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours? About 14, but I am rooting for finishing about 4 or 5.
• Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon (i.e. number of books, number of pages, number of hours, or number of comments on blogs)? 4-5 books, probably 15 hours or so (hopefully more!), and I want to cheer others on when I get a chance.
• If you’re a veteran read-a-thoner, Any advice for people doing this for the first time? It’s my first, but I would love advice!

listies

I have finally compiled my read-a-thon list, which is so exciting that I think I might have to do a little dance before typing any more...

*long pause*

Allllrighty then. Back to business!

My read-a-thon list is quite awesome. Starting at 5 a.m. on Saturday morning, I will be reading...

"Non-negotiable…" selections

Much Ado about Nothing by William Shakespeare—for my Shakespeare class

Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare—for my Shakespeare class

The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England by Richard Godbeer—for my American History course (I'll probably add this to my non-fiction five challenge list)

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie—for the Intro to Lit course that I teach. My students start discussing this book on Tuesday…

Henry V by William Shakespeare—for my big ‘ole paper due in a month (blah)

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins—I have to write a paper on this novel before school is out to finish my incomplete in my last nineteenth-cent. British lit course. I should re-read it or at least get a good chunk re-read this weekend.

Just for me, but still academic-y.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne—because it’s soooo good.

Hard Times by Charles Dickens—for my Classics Challenge J

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens—because Dickens is my homeboy

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen—because I’m the only one (and by “one” I mean mushy book-crazy girl) I know who hasn’t read it.

For fun, for ME!!!

All Cooked Up Elvis Cookbook—to make the read-a-thon hip shakin’ good (for Non-fiction five challenge)

Being Perfect by Anna Quindlen

The Messenger by Lois Lowry

Dr. Dredd’s Wagon of Wonders by Bill Brittain

Does my list make you happy too? Enough to dance?

Here's another list. It's things I've done in the past 24 hours. Lots of numbers.

I have...

1. graded 39 essays, 4-7 pages each
2. slept 2 hours
3. taught 2 classes
4. caused 2 students to cry
5. written about 15 emails for the transdisciplinary Text course
6. received my big Amazon box in the mail with 7 new books!
7. danced 1 happy dance
8. spent about 1 hour w/ hubby
9. eaten 1/2 of an enchilada that I brought home from El Ranchero a few nights ago. YUM.
10. compiled my weekend's read-a-thon list
11. danced 1 more happy dance
12. made a list on my blog with 12 items

And the answer is "yes" if you have asked, "is she going nuts?"

bookmarks

I've been mulling over my books for about two weeks now trying to decide what I have to read for school during the read-a-thon and what I get to read for myself. Since this is my last semester of coursework for my Ph.D. in English Literature, I'm working my rear end off trying to complete all of my assignments and finish what I start, which is a very hard thing for me to do when it comes to books. I LOVE books. I love, love, love them. But I have problems, too.

I have an entire house full of books that are only partially read. I did a quick head count of my shelves, and just glancing at one of my "novel" shelves, I saw around thirty books with bookmarks sticking out of them. I am pretty diligent about marking my place when I stop reading them, but I am very bad at ever getting around to finishing the books. I have very good intentions. In fact, I try all the time to go back to books that I never finished. The problem, of course, is that I want to start over from the beginning again, and then I usually get busy right around the time I stopped the last time, so the book mark goes in again and I never make it to the end.

Grad school has been brutal to my bookmark problem. In fact, the number of bookmarks I've lost to some really good books has probably quadrupled in the past four years. There is never enough time to finish one 800 page Victorian novel before it's time to read the next one, or the next one, or the one after that...and the tumultuous cycle continues. (That said, I've probably read *and finished* hundreds of books in the past four years...but I've stopped short too often due to the time constraints of school.)

Does anyone else have this problem? Am I the only one with book-marky bookshelves??

...I have made a vow to myself that I am going to finish before summer is over at least the books that I claim are my favorites. Then, once I finish my dissertation in 2011, I can revisit my bookmarks one by one.

Chocolate Cake; or, what I did last night instead of grading papers

Last night, Scott and I made a delicious chocolate cake from my All Cooked Up Elvis cookbook. All I can say is YUM. I'll post the recipe later. :)

I am doing a ton of reading for my history course, so I don't have much time to blog, but I wanted to say that I'm formulating a tentative list of books for my readathon! I'm going to have one for each of my classes, and then maybe a little one just for me. I'm two-thirds of the way through Lois Lowry's Giver series, which has The Giver, Gathering Blue, and The Messenger. I'll probably read the last book during my 'thon. The others will have to be school books, but I'm going to try to make some little goals for myself to spice it up. Any suggestions?

Love to the fam, KB

Marathon

24 hour read-a-thon? Of course I've heard of it...it's called every day in grad school!

But in all seriousness...

I've been playing around with the idea of joining the 24 hour reading marathon on April 18-19th. What do y'all think? I know I definitely have plenty to keep me occupied. The question is, can I stay awake the whole time??

The cool thing about the marathon is that you can use it to work on other reading challenges (again, in the real world it's called "homework"!). I would just need to make sure that I get all my grading done before the weekend. :) Would anyone want to join me? I think it sounds like fun.

Of course, I am a big nerd and admit this in public venues. But books are awesome, and I like making lists and then crossing things off. It may be a sickness. More details later.

Non-Fiction Five Challenge

Non-Fiction Five Challenge
May 1 - September 30, 2009

My friend and fellow book-lover Trish has taken on a new challenge and has invited us to join here.

The Rules (unchanged from previous years)

1. Read 5 non-fiction books during the months of May - September, 2009 (please link your reviews on Mister Linky each month; Mister Linky can be found each month on this blog)

2. Read at least one non-fiction book that is different from your other choices (i.e.: 4 memoirs and 1 self-help)

(all choices do not need to be posted and may change at any time)

My tentative list:

1. All Cooked Up: Recipes and Memories from Elvis' Family and Friends
2. Jill Lepore's New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in 18th Century Manhattan
3. Julian Symons' Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel: A History
4. Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories
5. Harry Mount's Carpe Diem: Put a Little Latin in Your Life
   

Spring "un"-break

Scott and I have had a busy Spring Break, especially since neither of us are actually taking a break. I'm still teaching at my other college that will have a later break, and we're both doing a ton of researching and writing for our semester projects and papers. Just once, I wish I could have a decent vacation. But, I am grateful for a week off of school and tutoring, and I just hope that I can get everything done in time to at least enjoy the weekend a tiny bit. I think I'm going to get a massage. :)

My research is really interesting right now. I'm working on reading a series of New England Puritan sermons from about 1650-1750. I'm tracing the metaphor of death as sleep through these sermons and trying to form some of my own conclusions about how the Puritan settlers' ideas of both death and sleep were changing as a result of these publications. There's a really fascinating dichotomy that I've found in the way they talk about the death of believers as a kind of sleep, while the death of the unholy was a restless prison. I am hoping that--eventually, and after much more research--I'll be able to make some connections between Puritan beliefs of death and sleep and my former Gothic lit arguments of sleep as a fragment of death. I would love to write my dissertation on sleep in British literature, and I'm glad I was able to find something in this American History seminar that at least tangentially relates to my interests. I only wish I didn't have to read my sleep sermons in Special Collections! They have so few hours, and it's impossible to get comfortable and settle in with a book.

On the other side of things, I'm working on a text edit of Shakespeare's Henry V, reading many books all at the same time, grading rather large stacks of essays, and trying to keep my many employers happy.

In my meager spare time (or as the Puritans would write, my meagere sparre Tyme), I'm thinking about how crazy this summer will be since we have two weddings in Texas to go to (be in?) and we are also taking a trip with my sister, her hubby, and their toddler to Tennessee and Georgia. I am soooo psyched for this trip! But, I can't think about it toooo much right now or else I won't want to do any work at all.

Love to the fam. <3 KB

Classics Challenge 2009!

click here to sign up!!

1. Hamlet by Shakespeare
2. Hard Times by Charles Dickens (in progress! 4-1-09)
3. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
4. The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe
5. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
6. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
7. Someday Classic Bonus: ???? by E. L. Doctorow

update 4-3-09
I've replaced one of the above with Bram Stoker's Dracula. Yummy scary books. Rarrr.

Because it helps to talk about it

Since December, I've been having a racing heart. I don't know how to describe it other than feeling like my heart is beating out of control--like I've been surprised or scared, except it hasn't slowed down. This happened a few times while I lived in Lubbock, and it seemed very worrisome to me at the time, but it would go away after 5 or 6 hours each time. This time, it hasn't gone away.

So, I went to the doctor and had my blood pressure checked out. Sure enough, I was right. My heart didn't just feel incredibly fast, it was incredibly fast. The average person's heart beats about 60-100 beats a minute, depending on what they are doing (it's sometimes much higher if they are exercising). Mine was monitored over the course of about an hour, and it was around 100 the whole time. A tiny bit lower, at one point. It's not too good, he said, if it never slows down. My average should be around 80, not 100. However, the dr. said it was not too out of range to get worried, so he didn't feel like he should rush me to a cardiologist. Instead, he did an EKG that measures the electrical activity of my heart, and my heartbeat looks normal. There were no extra beats or in-between activity that would make him worry.

They did other tests to check everything else out that could make my heart go crazy, but everything checked out normal. Everything except for my adrenaline levels, which were sky high. So, that's the culprit of my racing heart.

For some reason my body is pumping extra adrenaline because something is telling my brain that it needs it. The doctor said that I'm either scared by something or scaring myself, worrying constantly, or putting irrational and unhealthy pressure on myself. OR, my brain is tricking itself into thinking these things. OR, any combination of these things are causing "fight or flight" signals in the brain which speed the production of adrenaline...

There were so many possibilities, but I'm guessing it's a combination of school/job/ worry, not enough sleep, and a million irrational stressors attacking my brain and body. Whatever it is, it is putting my body in sprint mode for marathon lengths. One 10-second little worry (like merging onto the freeway, for example) will set my body into making enough adrenaline for days. That, in turn, causes an anxiety attack and leaves my head reeling, feeling panicky, worried, and generally stressed out. Not the "I have a paper due" kind of stress. (Because I always have a paper due. I will always have a paper due.) It’s more like "the world's going to explode" kind of stress. Hence the crazy heartbeat for over two months now.

I don't know what set me off, but something happened to my body or brain in December to make me sick. The doctor thinks that therapy will calm me down, or at least give me a "safe place" to let out what goes through my brain that could potentially cause one of these anxiety attacks. My psychiatrist thinks that my illness has probably been a long time in the making, due to my “perfectionist, self-induced worry complex.” Hmmm…am I crazy? No, not at all. Just extremely over-worked, over-stressed, and under-rested. Nothing that a little graduating in two years with my Ph.D. won’t cure. In the meantime, I’m supposed to take deep breaths, relax, and keep telling myself, “it’s okay, you’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay” whenever I feel panic coming on. Surprisingly, it’s actually helping.

You know what else is helping? Prayer. Real prayer. Real worship. Time spent not thinking about anything else other than something omnipresent and omnipowerful. It’s amazing how healthy my heart feels when I envision my Lord holding it, protecting it, and calming it down. Calming me down. This might not make sense to everyone out there, but—dear reader—it makes sense to me.

full of heart

In my last blog, I hinted at some health problems that I have been having. Is it normal for a heart to race for weeks months on end with no relief? Well, it is beginning to feel normal for me even though this clearly is not a common problem. But before you start worrying, let me briefly explain that the EKG and a wide scope of blood tests all confirmed that my heart is fine. In fact, it's great. And ditto for my thyroid, kidneys, liver, etc. (On a slightly humorous note, the dr. said he'd never seen a 26-year old grad student with better cholesterol. Go me!) Unfortunately, even though my body parts are working fine, there is an abundance of adrenaline being produced which keeps me continually on edge, on alert. I can never relax or rest because my brain is receiving mixed signals from the excess of adrenaline, which makes me anxious (or worried or scared or irritated, you name it). If the condition doesn't improve on it's own, I have the option of taking medication, but I would only be treating symptoms unless the adrenaline production decreased.

So, what was the doctor's prescription? Therapy. I kind of chortle as I write it, but the way he explained it, it actually made sense.

I need an outlet for emotion and ideas since my brain is working over-time. Talking to a trained counselor might be exactly what I need to calm down and make some sense of the ways in which I often feel completely overwhelmed. I started "treatment" today, and I am looking forward to stepping out of my (wildly chaotic and, therefore, ironic) comfort zone more often.

heart

I don't have any time to calm down, but for my own health, I may have to eventually stop what I am doing and give myself some time to heal.

Scott finally convinced me to go to the health center here at school to talk over some of my most recent concerns, and when I think logically, I know he's right. I should go talk to a doctor. I should tell someone licensed in medicine what I have been feeling and noticing about my body. And--he says--"knowing is always better than not knowing." Well, maybe, but I am scared of knowing, even if it is better than the unknown.

So, all this to say that I did make an appointment for Friday, I will be talking to a doctor, and I will probably spend a considerable amount of money on inconclusive tests...but, at least I am taking a step toward knowing, which you know who says is always better. I worry and cry and get my husband's shirts soggy with my tears about health problems, and I guess he is taking a stand against sogginess from now on. Because he loves me.

I enjoy what I do, and I don't want to have to give any of my academic plans away. Let's just pray for some peace to come from the appointment, if nothing else in the form of answers.

today I am grateful for

• a patient, forgiving, and loving husband and the beautiful match we make


• the nutritious food on our plates, fresh fruit, warm bread


• books books books, in every room, under the beds, scattered on floors, piled on tables and nightstands, filling the car trunk, hiding under stacks of old mail, weighing down backpacks


• the jobs I have shown myself capable of handling, in any situation--good or bad


• the meager but well-deserved paychecks


• the talents God has given me, and the strength, wisdom, and courage to keep trying even when I am scared or don't know what my talents will ultimately be used for


• ...literacy.

...and everything yule in between

Scott and I had a wild time rushing home to Texas and back during Christmas. Our time there was short but much appreciated and much blessed, and we wish we could have stayed longer. The trip consisted of leaving a day and a half late because of schoolwork, not completing said schoolwork, getting 1/3 of the way there only to run into icy and blizzardy conditions between Kingman and Flagstaff, having to turn south and backtrack to Phoenix to I-10, finding out that we did the right thing because I-40 was closed and not opened until Christmas eve, driving around lost for half an hour trying to find our downtown Phoenix motel and then realizing it hadn't been our fault because we had been given the wrong address, staying in a freezing room with an old run-down heater that konked out about 5 minutes after we arrived, waking up after far too few hours of sleep to drive all the way through Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to get home late on Christmas Eve-eve.

THEN finding out after hearing a horrible sound driving home from my sister's on Christmas day that the so-called "oil" in my oil reservoir was actually transmission fluid (thanks for that, mechanics who did the last oil change, we really appreciate finding this out AFTER driving 2000 miles in inclement weather, you could have been the death of us and my little trooper car, Priscilla Paige O'Dell-Strovas).

$$ later and a merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all, we said sad goodbyes to our families (the hardest for me was saying bye to my sister). We drove home (only having to break into one relative's house for a place to stay on the way home--btw, sorry about that). We made it back to California, obviously stopping at In-N-Out Burger on the way into town because we had been without it for two weeks, and then started an intensive French course one day later. TWO weeks, $500, and 30 in-class hours later, Scott and I had both passed our French reading exams after never having studied French in our lives until 2009. (we're awesome, did I mention?) I can't speak more than 10 phrases in French, but boy can I read it!

I started teaching again in the midst of French craziness, but we didn't start our own classes until this week. Technically, both of my classes were cancelled this week, so I don't start until next week. I am excited to start my third job soon. That's right, this semester I have taken on three jobs in addition to my own coursework and trying to pass another language exam (this time, it's Latin). I'm nervous but equally excited, and I'm ready for the challenge. So, if you see me in the next few weeks and wonder why school just started and I already look exhausted, crazy-eyed, on the verge of tears or insanity...it's okay. It's just me. C'est la vie. Hugs help. :)