books

In order to procrastinate, I’m taking up Sparky’s challenge and bore people with a list of books on my desk (well, really scattered across my floor, my actual desk has knitting needles, blank CDs, a bag of dried pear slices, my checkbook and my old Bedford handbook from Freshman composition, and various other bit of mundania). Anyway, for Sparky, the books:

Mountains and Rivers without End. Gary Snyder. For the class that I’m TAing–what they will have to say about modern poetry, I really don’t know.

The Translation Zone. Emily Apter. For a seminar I’m taking. She argues that we should all translate in Comparative Literature and forge some kind of new discipline. Second time it’s been assigned to me this year.

Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. More fun than it sounds, because I can distract myself by looking at random entries, like “erotesis (Gk ‘question’): A rhetorical device in which a question is asked in order to get a a definite answer–usually ‘no.’

The Adrian Mole Diaries: The Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole Aged 13 1/2. Sue Townsend. Very funny diary style epistolary novel about a 13 year old boy in the UK. Was popular in the 80s. Paddy gave it to me.

The Divine Comedy. Paradiso. Dante. I’m glossing it for the fourth (?) time–I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever pay attention to it. As I was telling my professor, ironically he keeps telling us how much easier it is getting for him, yet it only gets harder for us. I never have the energy after reading the first two, so really I should just read it alone some day.

I think that is all the procrastination I can handle for now. Back to the grindstone.