Five Happy Days

Lets do this quick and dirty.  

Sunday. Stopped at Waitrose on my way home to harass Becky at work. Bought ice cream. Multitasking ftw.

Monday. Did laundry. Cleaned my room. Did some work, then napped a lot. Was feeling really sick.

Tuesday. Gorgeous sunny day at Luath. Spent all night working on school stuff. Very busy, still sick.

Wednesday. Insanity. Printed off all our work, submitted our final group portfolio, our group buisness plan, our individual essays, and our packaged disks with the books. Still more work to do but I couldn't be prouder of everyone. Went to bar to celebrate. Got a pot of tea. Was mocked. Still sick.

Thursday. Busy, second-last day at Luath. Went to launch of new book at Blackwell's, enjoyed being surrounded by books. Also showing off my nails. Still sick. Almost done.

(Real posts will return soon, promise. I'm almost out of the rough of it. There is a light at the end of the tunnel).

In other news, and as most of you may have heard already, I'm heading home! Thats right, as of Tuesday I will be officially back on my native Canadian soil for 24 days!

#100happydays

One of my friends on the course, Georgia, has been doing the 100 Happy Days Challenge for a couple of months now, and I was thinking I would like to do it. The basic premise is that every day you take a picture and post it to social media using the hashtag, of something that makes you happy - anything from something momentous to something as small as the feeling of getting home after a long day.

We live in times when super-busy schedules have become something to boast about. While the speed of life increases, there is less and less time to enjoy the moment that you are in. The ability to appreciate the moment, the environment and yourself in it, is the base for the bridge towards long term happiness of any human being.

I love the idea of taking the time everyday to notice what is making you happy, and just exist in that moment and enjoy it. However, I think I will wait until I get back from my various upcoming trips (Spain in particular) to start, as I'd hate to fail the challenge right off the bat just because I didn't have internet for a week. In fact, that will probably be my biggest challenge - not taking the time to notice what is making me happy, but being able to access internet every day for 100 days. But, when I'm back, I will give it a go, and we shall see how it goes!

In the meantime, something that has made me happy recently: I had a very lovely day this Sunday. We had the time change for daylight savings, which meant I got very little sleep, and, due to the fact that others in French Club had not had half as productive a Saturday as I did, we decided to meet at 10:30am (which ended up being more like 11 because Alix and I were both having disorganized mornings - me because I didn't want to get up and her because she missed the bus). End result: we were both very sleepy and having trouble forming English sentences, much less French ones, so French Club was more like leisurely half-asleep coffee with some random french thrown in. After we finished our drinks and croissants, we browsed the books for a while, and I got Alix to take a picture of my outfit that day, which included my new shirt that I got on sale at Topshop the other day.

I also bought some books for the first time in months, but I'm very excited for all of them. I've heard some very good things about Half Bad, I love Holly Black and am super excited for her newest book (The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, which also sounds amazing), and Claire McFall is one of the authors going in our anthology, so I'm very excited to read her book Ferryman, which I've also heard good things about.

New Years Resolutions: Three Months In

I know there is still a couple days left in March, but I thought, since it is almost three months into 2014, it would be a good time to take stock of my New Year's resolutions and see how I am doing. So, for 2014, my new years resolutions were:

1. Lose weight

Yeah, I've gained like two pounds, so that one isn't going so well, something to focus on going forward, as well as...

2. Run regularly

Nope. Though I do keep meaning to. Its going to be easier now that I've cut my hair, so my ability to go for a run is less dependent upon whether or not my hair will be able to dry after my post-run shower in enough time for me to style it for whatever else is going on. I really need to focus on actually running, even though I am busy and it is kind of difficult. My friend Maya is moving just up the block from me, and she's been meaning to start running to, so hopefully we can start running together and motivating each other to actually run. But, for now, a mini-goal: run tomorrow!

3. Up my eyebrow game

Check! Obviously this is an ongoing process, but I've been experimenting with different shapes as well as filling them in with a couple of different pencils (best pencil so far: a £1 one from Primark - who knew?). Also might go and get them done at the Benefit brow bar before London Book Fair, because both Melissa and Maya swear by it and it might be nice to get them professionally shaped for that event.

4. Read 50 books

Well on my way! While I haven't read much these last couple of weeks, since the start of 2014 I have read 14 books (Fingersmith by Sarah Waters; Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn; Catching Fire and Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins; Looking for Alaska by John Green; Breed by Chase Novak; City of Bones, City of Ashes, City of Glass, and City of Fallen Angels, all by Cassandra Claire; Divergent and Insurgent, by Veronica Roth; Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levathan; Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman).

5. Practice French more (use Duolingo every day!)

Also going very well! I have used Duolingo (and thus practiced) French for every 67 days of 2014 that have passed so far! French club has also been meeting (nearly) every week, and Alix, who is the fluent French-speaker of the group, has told me that she has noticed me getting better since we started meeting - while I knew I was getting better, its really great to have a native speaker tell you that! 

6. Graduate and get a real life job (maybe even get a flat without roommates…)

Ongoing, obviously, but hopefully also on track! I've just applied for a job down in London today, so thats all very real-life-y! 

The Art Assignment

The Art Assignment is a weekly video series produced by PBS Digital Studios and hosted by curator Sarah Urist Green. We take you around the U.S. to meet artists and solicit assignments from them that we can all complete. Watch our videos (http://www.youtube.com/theartassignment), and then post your responses with #theartassignment.

I've been wanting to participate in The Art Assignment for a while, and while I still really want to do the first one (which involves figuring out the exact, literal middle between you and another person, and not communicating at all between deciding to meet and the date/time you have set for your meeting... oh, and one person brings lunch, the other drinks).

However, the third episode of The Art Assignment, which asked viewers to think of something that was intimate and indispensable to you, and depict it in gif format, was one that I immediately wanted to do.

Despite the immediate swirl of ideas (eyes for reading and seeing the world, my family, my friends, my home back in Canada), I kept coming back around to the same thing - books. I am currently living overseas and am thus away from the vast majority of my personal library (just ask my brother, who had to move it all for me - its not exactly a small library), but have nonetheless gathered a small, but significant collection of books in the short months since I moved to Scotland. I have an ereader, which was bought at least partially so I wouldn’t need to buy physical books while on another continent, however, there is something so immediate and comforting about physical books, and I find myself unable to stop myself from filling my surroundings with my favourite things in the world, despite the impracticality of them.

Sorry for the quality, I’ve never made a gif before, so I just used a free online tool.

Crowdfunding & Stop Motion

Edit: like tomorrows post, this post ended up being pushed from the week it was written for, and thus all dates mentioned are actually more like two weeks in the past. Sorry about that. 

Last monday we got together at 10 to practice our presentation on Wednesday, but we didn't have class after that until 3, so Laura, Maya, Lindsey, Becca, and myself headed down to The Treehouse for lunch - I seriously love that place. After that, I went to Starbucks and read for a couple of hours. I've been reading a lot this last couple of weeks - I took a bit of a break after finishing the first three books in Cassandra Claire's Mortal Instruments series, before reading the fourth one (which I did not really like, while I really liked the first three). Then I read Veronica Roth's Divergent, which was amazing (another occasion of me staying up to 3am to finish a book because I couldn't stop reading), read John Green and David Leviathan's Will Grayson Will Grayson, and am currently reading Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens. There are two more books in Roth's series, but, as amazing as they are, I decided I needed a break from YA sci-fi and fantasy, and when Will Grayson Will Grayson wasn't enough of a departure from that, I decided to go for an actual adult book.

In other news, last week I *finally* managed to finish editing the video for Ah Dinnae Ken's crowdfunding efforts. There were a couple of delays in getting it done - while Laura and Lindsey and I got together a couple of Tuesdays ago and managed to take all the photos and write the script for the video, there were a couple of delays in getting the voiceover recorded and finding music, but it finally came together last Wednesday! If you haven't seen it yet, our crowdfunding is now live, and if you'd like to go and have a look and support our efforts if you are interested, you can find it here.

These are some "stills" from the video. While we were going to simply film myself drawing and then speed it up, we couldn't figure out how (or if) you can film on my DSLR, and so decided to simply photograph myself drawing, and then edit them together in a stop motion video (it was quite the set up, with the camera in a tripod on the table, facing downwards, with me awkwardly drawing between the legs of the tripod while Laura clicked the shutter).

Some of the pictures ended up being cut to make the video more brief and succinct, and also to help it line up with the script, so while the little guy above is still in the video, the speech bubble got cut - a good aspect of doing stop motion is that it makes it very easy to do things like cut certain scenes or aspects. 

Live Project The Second

Our second live project is called Ah Dinnae Ken: Stories of Scottish Identity. An anthology of short stories, the book deals with issues of Scottish identity and is aimed at Scottish teens. As with the other one, I'm not going to be talking about them too much on here (maybe more after the trimester is over) but I will say this project is proving much more logistically difficult as it will be made up of nearly all new, never-before-published work from significant Scottish young adult authors.

What does it mean to be Scottish?

Can "Scottishness" be defined, and is there really a difference between Scotland and the rest of the UK? Some of today‘s leading Scottish authors for young adults – Theresa Breslin, Matthew Fitt, Cathy Forde, Keith Gray, J.A. Henderson & Cathy MacPhail – address these questions and more, in this thought-provoking collection of stories about national identity. Each story is unique, some are amusing, others moving but together they show how different people, ideas and even dialects make up the Scotland we know and love today. With a foreword by Scottish journalist and broadcaster Stuart Cosgrove.

As with the other project, you can follow our progress on the website, on twitter, (#AhDinnaeKen), and Facebook, where we are currently running a bit of marketing which involves people sending us their pictures of what Scottish means to them, which is turning out to be quite fun.

While The Day Boy and the Night Girl is being published to be sold in bookstores, we are hoping to give Ah Dinnae Ken out to various Scottish high schools.

Live Project The First

The first book that we are doing for our live project is a reprint of George McDonald's 1882 fairy tale, The Day Boy and the Night Girl.

A boy and a girl, each imprisoned in a castle by the evil witch Watho. Photogen, exposed only to the sun, and Nycteris, familiar only with darkness. United by the dream of adventure and desire for freedom, they have a chance meeting one night. Together they must find a way to overcome their fear of the unknown and escape Watho. 

I'm not going to actually talk about the project on here, partially because I don't really want to keep checking with Marketing and Rights about what information can be made public, but you can follow our progress on the program's website. You can also check out (and like, if you are so inclined) our facebook page and our twitter (#DayBoyNightGirl). There was also a brief blurb written about our projects in Informed Edinburgh.

Totally Judging A Book By Its Cover

So last night I curled into my bed at 9 pm to start reading... and the next time I looked at the clock it was 1:40 am and I had just finished my book. In sum: if you are a fan of YA fantasy, I really recommend Cassandra Clare's The Mortal Instruments series. 

After Rachel and I deciding that we were too brain dead after an entire day at the school to do French Club Wednesday nights, we have moved French Club to Sunday afternoons. Which was really fun and leisurely, and, y'know, we didn't stay so late we got kicked out, which was a nice change of pace. My french continues to get better and better (22 day streak on Duolingo) and French Club remains fun and chill. 

After French Club was over, we inevitably ended up wandering around the bookstore - I didn't buy anything (go me!) but it remains a very real danger, and is definitely the (somewhat questionably) downside of meeting in a bookstore (its also kind of an upside). We also engaged in quite a bit of criticism about cover design and fonts, which was very nerdy. Below are some of my favourites. 

Also seen: my pretty pink nails :)

All of the Reading

So as I may have mentioned in a previous post, I spent the couple of weeks between getting back from Paris and the start of school watching tv shows and binge reading. So its time for another fun and entertaining book review post!

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins

Against all odds, Katniss has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and her longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol - a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.

Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest she's afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she's not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can't prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

In Catching Fire, the second novel in the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins continues the story of Katniss Everdeen, testing her more than ever before...and surprising readers at every turn.

I really enjoyed this book. Like the first book, I had already seen the movie before reading the book. However, after finishing the book I rewatched the movie, harassing Melissa by texting her all my observations. I was cataloguing things they had changed, and thinking about why they would have done so, which is just an interesting exercise in itself. Overall, they did stay very true to the books, and much of the dialogue is word for word. Though they did remove some of the more disturbing aspects, and changed other things to amp up the drama.

But this a book review not a movie review (the movie is really good though, much better than the first). The book was really good. Katniss is an enjoyable character to read, and while I think Collins' writing style tends towards the simplistic and cold, you get throughly swept up in her struggles that you are really too wrapped up to engage in any real criticism.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins

Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire, has survived, even though her home has been destroyed. Gale has escaped. Katniss's family is safe. Peeta has been captured by the Capitol. District 13 really does exist. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution is unfolding.

It is by design that Katniss was rescued from the arena in the cruel and haunting Quarter Quell, and it is by design that she has long been part of the revolution without knowing it. District 13 has come out of the shadows and is plotting to overthrow the Capitol. Everyone, it seems, has had a hand in the carefully laid plans--except Katniss.

The success of the rebellion hinges on Katniss's willingness to be a pawn, to accept responsibility for countless lives, and to change the course of the future of Panem. To do this, she must put aside her feelings of anger and distrust. She must become the rebels' Mockingjay--no matter what the personal cost.

I think Mockingjay was probably my favourite book in this trilogy. I know a lot of people who were fans of the series consider this their least favourite. And I understand why. SPOILERS. After the trauma of going back into the arena, and being forced to kill and fight for her life again, Katniss demonstrates some serious PTSD, something that remains throughout the whole novel even as she tries to fight this war for her family and friends, resisting becoming just as much a pawn of the rebellion as she was for the capitol. It does result in quite a few slow periods, and a lot of Katniss kind of hiding in closets, but I appreciated the reality of it, and I think it makes you feel her pain so much more than having her being unrealistically strong in the face of adversity and not demonstrating the symptoms of PTSD that she does. There are some extremely disturbing parts of this book, of course, but I don't think Collins uses those unnecessarily or simply to shock. In all three books, I also really appreciated that Katniss doesn't know what is going on a lot of the time, and thus neither does the reader (something that has been changed in the movies, as the viewers are given scenes showing the decisions of people in power). But the books are entirely from Katniss' perspective, and I really like that we never know more than she does, and she often doesn't know nearly enough, as every faction attempts to exercise its control over her.

I really do recommend these books. They are really good and will seriously take you no time to read.

Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne's fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick's clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn't doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife's head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media--as well as Amy's fiercely doting parents--the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he's definitely bitter--but is he really a killer? 

As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one that they love. With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands by his innocence. Trouble is, if Nick didn't do it, where is that beautiful wife? And what was in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet?

I know I mentioned Gone Girl the last time I did a book review post, but I finally finished, and can now provide a much better review of the novel. I was really drawn into this novel in the first half, stunned by the twist in the middle, and then in the second half found myself growing increasingly disinterested, before the ending made up for all of it. SPOILERS. In the first half you are lead to believe that Nick killed his wife (which the savvy reader is going to assume is false just because it is to obvious). However, he is just such a selfish and terrible person that you find yourself thinking he has done it anyways, just because you start disliking him so much. Then, in the middle, you find out that Amy is alive and framing Nick for her murder as punishment for being a douche and cheating on her. Which, at first, I was totally down with, as I had spent the previous half of the book discovering what a tool Nick was. However, by the end of the second part I came to dislike Amy just as much as Nick, so by the climax, when Amy murders an old friend of hers and lies to make it look like she was kidnapped by him, I honestly didn't know what I wanted to happen, because they were both such awful people that I didn't want either of them to remain unpunished, but having them both go to jail would be immensely unsatisfying (too neat) and either one of them going to jail alone would have been annoying. However, Flynn creates the perfect ending when Amy gets pregnant and their punishment becomes a lifetime with each other. I loved the ending. I spent the last ten pages of the novel just grinning - really makes up for the second half which I struggled with, as I really don't like reading books where everyone sucks. However, I do get why a lot of people don't like the ending, as it is very much a horror-esq ending, which a lot of people don't go for, but they are apparently rewriting it for the movie, which I do not approve of.

Fingersmith - Sarah Waters

Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves— (fingersmiths) —for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home.

One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud’s vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of—passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum.

With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways...But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals.

This was a book that had been on my to-read list for a long time, and was another book that I had seen (the BBC miniseries) before reading. I would recommend reading it before watching it, as the twist is so excellent. But it had been long enough since I watched the miniseries that I couldn't remember the details, and was drawn into Water's excellent novel with ease. The characters are great, the setting is wonderfully drawn, and the story is unexpected and compelling.

American Gods - Neil Gaiman

Days before his release from prison, Shadow's wife, Laura, dies in a mysterious car crash. Numbly, he makes his way back home. On the plane, he encounters the enigmatic Mr Wednesday, who claims to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America.

Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm of preternatural and epic proportions threatens to break.

Scary, gripping and deeply unsettling, AMERICAN GODS takes a long, hard look into the soul of America. You'll be surprised by what and who it finds there...

The UK edition I bought was about 12,000 words longer than the original, and I cannot imagine it without a single one of them. I cannot recommend this book enough. It was so good. There is a particular scene (people who have read it will know exactly which one I'm talking about) that I remembered vividly from when I started reading the book about five years ago but never finished, and having now managed to finish the book, I doubt I will ever forget it.

Incredibly original and imaginative, with an ending that I totally did not see coming, American Gods operates on a huge field of characters who are strange and compelling, all revolving around Shadow, an ordinary human man who gets sucked into this huge cosmic mess, the battle between the old gods brought over to America by the immigrants, and the new gods, the gods of chrome and steel. This was one of those books that I kept looking at the pages left and thinking no, I don't want it to end! (which wasn't enough to stop me from reading the whole thing in about three days).

Zombie - Joyce Carol Oates

Meet Quentin P., the most believably terrifying sexual psychopath and killer ever brought to life in fiction. The author deftly puts you inside the mind of a serial killer--succeeding not in writing about madness, but in writing with the logic of madness.

Zombie was a (predictably) very disturbing book. I don't know that I would recommend it to anyone who wasn't into horror, but for all its grotesqueness, it is very well written and a blessedly short read (I started and finished it on the train between Bath and London).

I don't want to talk about it.

Looking for Alaska - John Green

Before. Miles "Pudge" Halter's whole existence has been one big nonevent, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave the "Great Perhaps" (François Rabelais, poet) even more. Then he heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed-up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young, who is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart.

After. Nothing is ever the same

While I loved John Green's newest novel, The Fault in Our Stars (the movie trailer is now out and it looks like it will be just as heartbreaking as the novel. Awesome), I haven't really enjoyed his other books that much. Both An Abundance of Katherine's and Looking for Alaska involve a self-involved adolescent male narrator with terrible attitudes and relationships with women. Overall, this was a quick read, and a relatively amusing story, but it didn't elicit any feeling in me with more strength than it did annoyance. SPOILERS. Alaska is a complete MPDG - the kind of girl whose only "flaws" are those which make her mysterious and cool, and whose basic function is to exist for the narrator or protagonist to fall in love with it, and then, as Alaska does, die to catalyze a journey of self growth in our male protagonist. It was all terribly cliche and insulting and I did not like it.

Related: Melissa, Alix, and my YouTube channel is still ongoing, though we have now changed the format to a single person review three times a week, which I think is going to work better. The reason I bring it up is because I did my video this week on Looking for Alaska and the phenomenon of the MPDG.

In conclusion, American Gods for all of the awards.

The Problems with the English Literary Canon (No, Seriously)

I read this really great article recently that made me think again about the impact of doing my degree in English. So this is going to be a bit of an expansion of what I said in this post. To sum up what I said before:

One of the hardest parts of my undergrad was the persistent feeling that I was being slowly stripped of my love of reading. As everyone who knew me from about grade three onwards knows, I have always been an extremely voracious reader. This was something that I felt myself lose a lot as I did my undergrad in English. I still enjoyed reading, but over the course of the school year, I had to read so much for school that I found myself enjoying it less, and during the summer months, I would read far less, and what I did read would be what academia would deem "trash" (and thus, to my delight, were utterly different than the sometimes unbearably dull or outdated works I was required to read over the course of year). This was in part due to the nature of the school I went to - I choose a small school to do my undergraduate degree at, which had many benefits, but one way in which it was lacking was in terms of diversity of courses. This, combined with degree requirements that placed a greater emphasis on early works of English literature (think before the 20th, even 19th century), meant that I had little flexibility when it came to courses.

Now, don't get me wrong. I do love me some older English literature. But there is a point (that came around second year) where I was so completely, throughly, and overwhelmingly DONE with reading works penned by old, white, Christian men. The lack of diversity was stifling. My fourth year was a delightful change from this - having finished all my required early English course work, I powered through several amazing classes. 

My friend was the one to originally share that article, highlighting the quote "when women read the hyper-masculine literary canon, their discomfort is punctuated by the knowledge that their male peers are reading these books, identifying with them, and acting out their perspectives and narratives." and commenting "I’d add that while I was in university, it wasn’t only my male peers who were “reading these books, identifying with them, and acting out their perspectives and narratives” but some of my male professors as well"

Megan and I went to the same small liberal arts university and did the same degree - a major in English literature. Bear with me for a moment while I break down the degree requirements. To do a BA degree in English, you were required to take:

• Introduction to Principles of Literary Analysis (I got to skip this because of having done AP English in high school - #winning - but it sounds hella boring, no?)
• Introduction to Poetry - as someone who loves poetry, I hated this class. I suppose I do have to grant it the title of being comprehensive, but in “surveying outstanding achievements in the English tradition” guess what gender and race it focused on? Zero points for guessing correctly. 
• Literary Periods to 1800s. White men. And Aphra Behn. 
• Literary Periods 1800 to Present. White men. 
• Then you could take up to two more classes from the 2000 level, including such rousing choices as Intro to Shakespeare, Intro to American Lit, and Intro to Canadian lit (I took all three because I was a tool and didn’t look at the academic calendar until I was picking my classes for third year). Guess what authors they focused on? Oh, except maybe Canadian Lit, which was taught by the feminist female professor who also taught women’s lit… I’m sure thats just a coincidence though. 
• Then you got to the 3000 level, where you were given the wonderful choice of taking three classes from the Medieval, Renaissance, 17th Century, and 18th Century subject areas. WHITE MEN. 
• Then you got to take five (FIVE) whole classes from at least five of the eleven subject areas: Medieval, Renaissance, 17th Century, 18th Century, 19th Century, Modern, Contemporary and Theoretical Studies, American, Canadian, Postcolonial, and Literature by Women. Of course, what you could do depended on what credits you were using for other requirements, and you really couldn’t take more than one subject area, unless you were insane like me and overloaded, oh and it also depended on what was offered each semester, and whether or not they currently had a professor on staff that could teach some of the more niche topics like Postcolonial lit (hint: they didn’t). And guess what? MORE WHITE MEN. 

I was lucky enough, in the incredibly narrow options given to me, to take some really interesting classes - Literature by Women in the 20th Century, African American Lit, and Caribbean Lit. However, I would like you to look at the list of classes I just gave you, in a FOUR YEAR ENGLISH DEGREE that did not teach a majority of works by WHITE MALE AUTHORS.

I was taking both American Lit Civil War to Present and African American Lit at the same time, with the same professor, and he raised the question at one point as to whether or not we should separate African American Lit from American Lit. And I argued we should, for three reasons:

1. Due to the vastly different cultural background and social experiences, African American Lit emerges from a very different background than white American literature and should be discussed within that context and the experiences of their authors and how that shapes their literature. 
2. African American lit would then have to struggle to be heard within the pool of white American authors, and we all know they would not fare as well.
3. And this was what I said in class, is because I took African American Lit because I wanted to read books that I knew, knew, weren’t going to be written by some old white dudes. 

Memorably, a girl in my class once asked how she could write an essay disagreeing with a black author without coming across as racist. This doesn’t have anything to do with the extended rant I have going on here, I just can’t get over the things that girl said (she also commented that she was surprised by how well educated and spoken a black author was).

There have been so many instances in my degree program where both my male professors and male classmates have made me extremely uncomfortable, casually slinging out sexist comments and praising writers whose words I found offensive and sexist (I’m look at you Hemingway, you tool… and Shakespeare. Taming of the Shrew. Really?). And there is no, NO critical eye applied to these men, because they are literary classics. And you don’t want to speak up, ESPECIALLY if its the professor saying these things, because you don’t want to get a bad grade, or be looked down upon, or be subjected to one of many dismissive “oh you females” comments that men frequently sling our way.

NOR is there any consideration given to the disproportionate representation of men over women, both as authors and in novels, and the way those authors describe women… the way authors still describe women… and I’m not going to touch on the fact that women will inevitably, over and over again read books with male protagonists, while men consistently shy away from books with female protagonists.
I can’t even put into words how angry and frustrated I am with the English literary canon. How alienating it is. How narrow. How elitist literary fiction still is, how literary worth is determined not by how many people it touches but by how much of a headache it gives you to read it.

I went to a debate at the beginning of the year talking about the Booker Prize, and what it marks and means. And one of the panellists said some incredibly elitist things, talking about what is popular isn't necessarily good literature, when certain works that were popular in their time weren't considered good literature until much later. While I don't think anyone would argue that Fifty Shades of Grey is great literature, it is popular, and what is wrong with people reading things they enjoy? This obsession with high quality literature, and literature that has some great and deep meaning that is largely impossible to understand is probably a major factor in turning people off reading - I know a lot of people bemoan Shakespeare, especially having to do him in high school, and while I adore Shakespeare, perhaps some consideration should be given to how impenetrable the language can be, and let people who might get turned off of reading for life be given the chance to read something fun, instead of something difficult, and save the Shakespeare for people who are willing to really go at it.

Doing an english degree left me really disillusioned and disappointed in literature. By the time I was in my fourth year I wanted to tear my face off with how sick I was of white male authors wanking their poor, privileged ego all over the place while describing how awful women are, how much they want to **** them, and how misunderstood their sorry white arses are.

I also read another really good article dealing with kids books, and what it means that the majority of children's books are still written about white boys. Some good bits:

• Twice as many children's books feature male protagonists than female protagonists. 
• 57% of children's books published each year have male protagonists, versus 31% female.
• As with television and film, books with animated characters are a particularly subtle and insidious way to marginalize based on sex, gender and race. In popular children's books featuring animated animals, 100% of them have male characters, but only 33% have female characters.
• The average number of books featuring male characters in the title of the book is 36.5% versus 17.5% for female characters.
• Female characters in books that are for "everyone" are often marginalized, stereotyped or one-dimensional. Especially in traditional favorites that are commonly highlighted in schools and libraries. For example, Peter Pan's Wendy is a stick-in-the-mud mother figure and Tiger Lily is a jealous exotic.
• How many people would never consider buying Anne of Green Gables or Island of the Blue Dolphins for their 10-year old boy, but don't pause before giving a daughter Treasure Island or Enders Game? Books featuring girls are, for the most part, understood to be books for girls.
• Researchers of the study above concluded, "The gender inequalities we found may be particularly powerful because they are reinforced by patterns of male-dominated characters in many other aspects of children's media, including cartoons, G-rated films, video games and even coloring books."
• Of an estimated 5,000 books released in 2012, only 3.3% featured African-Americans; 2.1% featured Asian-Americans or Pacific Islanders; 1.5% featured Latinos; and only 0.6% featured Native Americans.
• A girl's imagination and literary life would be a stark and barren place if she didn't learn early on to read books about boys, put herself in boys' shoes and enjoy them. As with other aspects of socially sanctioned behavior, children's ability to cross-gender empathize is a one-way street -- girls have to do it and boys learn not to.
• Researcher Isabelle Cherney found that half of boys ages 5-13 picked "girl" and "boy" toys equally... unless they were being watched. They were especially concerned about what their fathers would think of them if they saw them.
• Boys who grow up seeing themselves everywhere as powerful and central just by virtue of being boys, often white, are critically impaired in many ways. It's a rude shock to many when things don't turn out the way they were told they should. It seems reasonable to suggest media misrepresentations like these contribute, in boys, to a heightened inability to empathize with others, a greater propensity to peg ambition to intrinsic qualities instead of effort and a failure to understand why rules apply or why accountability is a thing. It should mean something to parents that the teenagers with the highest likelihood of sexually assaulting a peer and feel no responsibility for their actions are young white boys from higher-income families. The real boy crisis we should be talking about is entitlement and outdated notions of masculinity, both of which are persistently responsible for leaving boys confused and unprepared for contemporary adulthood.

This article actually made me really happy I'm going into publishing, where there are presses that focus on counteracting some of these problems of representation. But it just highlights the way that its not even the literary canon - from childhood, girls are reading books from the perspectives of boys - something that never goes away and never changes. And while I have no problem reading books by male authors or featuring male protagonists, the fact remains that there is a substantial inequality in literature. And as Junot Diaz, a creative writing teacher at MIT put it: "If you’re a boy writer, it’s a simple rule: you’ve gotta get used to the fact that you suck at writing women and that the worst women writer can write a better man than the best male writer can write a good woman. And it’s just the minimum. Because the thing about the sort of heteronormative masculine privilege, whether it’s in Santo Dommingo, or the United States, is you grow up your entire life being told that women aren’t human beings, and that women have no independent subjectivity" (x) 

Not to mention women writers will write under male pseudonyms in order to make their books more popular. 

Okay this was really long and rambly covered a lot of things and was mostly depressing (and should probably be edited more but I'm really annoyed now, so sorry if its not super coherent or cohesive) so I will leave you with this bit of funny: male novelist jokes.

I will be back soon with an update about my real life, not just the things that have been making me angry lately!

Really Putting the "Super Freaking Slow" in "Snail Mail"

On November 16th, Lorraine let me know that she had mailed my Hanukah present. By the time I moved out of my old flat on December 1st, I had yet to receive it, so I let my former roommates know to keep an eye out for it. Through December I sent them a couple more messages, and even went to the post office to see what was taking such a long time. I had sent my mother a package, but she had received it in just over a week, so I was quite concerned for my Hanukah present. By the time I got back from Christmas break, I was fairly resigned to the idea that the postal system had lost it, to my great sadness. However, on the 14th I got a message from my former roommates - something had arrived in the mail for me. Excited, I went over to find two issues of a Canadian publishing magazine that I had also thought lost in the mail. With hope renewed that  the package was on its way, I went back home... and two hours later received another message - there was something else now at the flat for me! 

Two days shy of two whole months, my Hanukah package had arrived. 

It was so nicely wrapped I almost didn't want to open it...

The rules for our Hanukah presents is that they have to be handmade (this year, my dad helped me make a cutting board for Lorraine). The chocolates were obviously just a bonus (perhaps because we usually play for chocolate when we play with the dreidel on Hanukah?)

A gorgeous modified books, containing the covers and first pages from a number of different literary works.

There was also some of the original book left in at the end.

A gorgeous present from a wonderful godmother :)

Hopefully this means my christmas package from my dad has been similarly delayed - and for those wishing to send me gifts in the future, it might be a better idea to just order them off a UK site and have them sent to me from inside the country, as the snail mail between the UK and Canada seems to be much faster in one direction than the other.

MIA & Christmas Travels

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. This week I had two of three major projects for this semester due, so it got pretty busy there for a while. But I handed the last one in today, and don't have to hand in the final project until Jan 8th! However, I am flying to London tomorrow morning, so I'm not sure how much I'll be posting for the next couple of weeks. My cousin Sam kindly invited me to come down and stay with her in Bath over the break, so I am flying to London, staying there in a hostel for a couple of days, then spending a week (including Christmas) in Bath, before heading off to Paris for New Years (my friend David is doing an internship there and invited me to come visit). So while I may not be posting over the break, I should have lots of photos and stories to share when I get back!

But first - some things I did (besides school) in the last week.

My tutorial group had our christmas party. We decided (at my suggestion) to do a yankee gift swap, but instead of random gifts, to buy our favourite book to put into the exchange. While my all-time favourite book is probably still To Kill A Mockingbird, most people have already read that, so I decided to put in House of Leaves which is, as you may have heard, the best book I've read this year. I told Kate I was getting it, so as soon as it was her turn, she grabbed it, but unfortunately Keira decided to steal it in one of only two steals of the night (the other was from me).

Every one a book!

However, we are all such nerds that I think everyone was pretty stoked... certainly not many people wanted to steal. Our main reaction seemed to be "Book! Mine not yours BACK OFF". Then we spent half an hour flipping through the books we got and barely acknowledging each other.

I got a lovely copy of The Hobbit from Laura! :D

Photo courtesy of Sergio

 From left to right: Lindsey (USA), Chentong (China), Laura (UK), Rachel (UK), Jonny(UK), Sergio (USA), Annie (UK), Keira (UK).

Photo courtesy of Sergio

 From left to right: Sarah (UK), Kyra (Canada), Kate (Canada), Steward (UK), Ali (UK), Sophie (France), Lindsey (USA)

Photo courtesy of Sergio

 Since we were basically the only people in the bar, the barman kindly agreed to take a group photo.

A large part of the rest of my week was spent both at school and hanging out in my living room by the fire (pictured) finishing up my Project Portfolio for Publishing in Practice (the book proposal, including market research, publicity plan, product rational, production schedule, design brief, cover mock-up, and sample pages) and my assessment for CreativeToolkit (redesigning a former Merchiston Publishing project - Detective McLevy's Casebook - including a cover, interior pages, and prelim pages)

Last night I went and saw The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (again) in this lovely movie theatre... not that its fancy or anything (awesome movie btw).

The Flat (Round II)

Here are the promised pictures of my new flat! Sorry about the lighting - we currently only have about six hours of real daylight, so its kind of hard to capture the natural lighting. And the overhead light in my room is currently burnt out, hence the double desk lamps attempting to light the whole room (as of finishing this post, I have replaced it, but I hadn't at the time). 

Looking into my bedroom from the hall - I'm overlooking the street, but the noise isn't bad at night, and I'm kind of really used to traffic sounds all the time (I kind of find it soothing at this point TBH). 

So much storage! Actually more than I really need, which is awesome. The drawers in that dresser are so deep, it is wonderful.

DOUBLE BEEEEEEEEED *happy dances around room*

My desk has both drawers and a little weird sideways bookshelf thing - so awesome! And a second dresser! I now have an entire drawer just for my makeup. And my new chair is way comfier than my old one.

The front door of the flat, just outside the door of my room. We are on the fourth of four floors, right at the very top! There are two flats per floor in this building.

From my door into the flat. To the left, just out of the frame, is the largest bedroom, which belongs to David, the only of my roommates that is currently here. The doorway visible is to the living room.

From left to right: living room, bathroom door, smallest bedroom, and two storage closets (which, as the first one to move in, I gleefully shoved my suitcases into). 

The bathroom - small, but totally functional. Though I am really not certain how they expect you to shower without splashing with just that little bit of glass? IDK the plumbing is universally stupid in this country. The shower is electric so the hot water isn't dependant on the heat being on.

From the hallway into the living room (and dining room! With real chairs and table! Wow!). The doorway at the back there leads into the kitchen.

I need to fix that lamp shade.

Excuse the laundry.

And finally, the kitchen! Which is lovely! Nice and bright and NOT CARPETED.

Why they put the washing machines in the kitchen in this country...

Gas stove. Ah. I have no idea how to use this thing. 

Tonight I went to a quiz at Blackwells Bookshop, which was great fun. There were two teams of us publishing students, and my team, as the one lady running the quiz announced loudly, were all virgins to the Blackwells quiz. We named ourselves Jon Snow (because we know nothing) BUT we beat the other team and tied for third overall! Not bad! AND we rose up from fifth place because I correctly identified "Anne of Green Gables" in the final round (the other team also had a Canadian, but clearly Melissa is just not as awesome at being a Canadian as I am). I was really nervous I got it wrong, but as they gave more clues I was like yeah, I got this. 

So how pub quizzes (or in this case, Bookshop quizzes) work, is that you get in teams (in this case, a five person limit) and there are so many rounds of questions, usually themed. In this case, there was a round where we were given a sheet of paper with book covers, and we had to identify the book and author. Another round was focused on various literary awards. And so on. Each round contains ten questions. The final round is a "who am I" wherein clues are given, with a decreasing value of points given per clue. If you get it on the first clue 20 points, second clue 16, etc. The clues start out very obscure and then become more and more obvious. You write down your answer, and hand it in. If you get it, you get however many points, if not, you get zero. I figured out it was Anne on the second clue, when they mentioned that the author was inspired by a friend who wanted to adopt a boy but got a girl instead (the first clue and most of the second were details I really did not know... such as her birth date or the name of the first family she lived with). The other group guessed Heidi on the same clue. Jussayin. 

So I was pretty stoked about that. We didn't win, obviously, but since it was the Christmas quiz, they let us all dig through a bin of old advance copies, so we all left with a new book!

The only bad thing about my new address is that I think I will be taking the bus more - while it only takes me 12-15 min to walk to school, my new address is in the opposite direction of my old one - so my old flat was closer to downtown, the school was farther away, and my current flat is the farthest away. So while it used to take me 25-30 min to get to the Grassmarket area walking, it now takes me 50-55 min. Still not a horrible walk, but as it gets colder, I suspect my laziness will begin to win out over my cheapness (£1.50 isn't that much... its more the fact I never have change. Esp the 50p). 

December!

It is officially December, and I am officially in a new flat! I will post some pictures tomorrow, but I am all moved in! Candice very kindly came and helped me with what was a bit of a process - while I managed to pack everything I had, there was too much for one taxi (and before you make a comment about how much stuff I must have bought while here, remember that I was having to move all of my food as well... Connie). So Candice helped me carry a load onto the street, the taxi came and drove us the couple of blocks to my new flat, where we unloaded, then carried all of it up four freaking flights of stairs. Which was exhausting. And I had no idea where I'd shoved my inhaler while packing, so I was wheezing like crazy. It was all very glamorous. Then we walked back to the old flat, and did it again. Though I very wisely moved all the heaviest bags first, so the second load was lighter and smaller, nicely balancing out how exhausted we were at that point. Then we went for late lunch at the pub just up the street, which was good (they had a deal - two meals for £10 - that included pretty much all of their vegetarian dishes, which was a pretty sweet deal) even if the service was really slow (and it was a sports bar so there were a bunch of dudebros yelling at the football match (soccer)).

I only have one roommate at the moment. My second roommate is moving in in a couple days.

My legs are killing me.

Anyways.

Last Sunday Alix and I boarded a bus to head up to what looked like an awesome vintage clothing sale. Much to our disappointment, it turned out to be mostly 70s and 80s fashion, which were basically two of the worst decades for fashion, and even some stuff from the 90s, which just makes me feel both old and indignant. After making fun of the clothes for a bit, we bussed back into the city and headed into Armstrong's, a vintage clothing store chain in the UK which was absolutely magical. I tried on so many dresses from the 50s, but alas, women then (and... actually... now) aren't really built like I am (as in, the national average height for a woman in the UK is 5ft3. I am 5ft10. Wow, that is actually a huge difference). BUT Alix and I did have a blast trying on all of the vintage fur coats (as I told Connie, while I am anti-fur, I don't mind vintage fur, because one the animal has been dead for ages, and two, buying fur from a vintage store isn't supporting an industry that continues to murder animals solely for their pelts, which is stupid and wasteful).

I ended up buying the coat I'm wearing in the picture, which is suede with wool trim, and the fabulous hat as well (much to my regret, I could not justify the muff, no matter how cozy and awesome it was). Alix also left with the coat she is wearing.

After that we met up with Melissa for dinner and drinks at Biblos (student discount of 25% on all food, and G&Ts for only £1.95 means that we have officially found our new favourite place), after which we attended the 50th anniversary special of Doctor Who at the cinema, which was freaking AMAZING. It was part of a simulcast, watched in 94 countries and simultaneously screened in 3D to more than half a million people in cinemas across Latin America, North America and Europe, breaking a Guiness World Record. It was so much fun to attend a screening - there were people dressed up, and while pretty much everyone was dead silent the entire episode, there were certain moments (such as when the new doctor was briefly seen) that everyone cheered and clapped. Everyone also clapped when it ended. It was just such a fun experience. I love going to fan events where everyone is just unabashedly excited about this thing that we all love - not to mention the fact that there were both young fans and older men and women that had probably been watching the show since they were kids.

Wednesday night Alix and Melissa and I met up to plan our super secret project (to be revealed soon!), but before that we stopped to wander around the Christmas Market.

Everything is incredibly expensive, but man, does it smell good. There are all sorts of food stands, selling everything from churros to chocolate fountains with sticks of marshmallows, to hot beverages like mead and coffee. There are also loads of stands selling gifts, souvenirs, cheeses, and coffee beans.

We shared an order of churros (Melissa and mine's first ever). I always thought they were just an American thing, but apparently not. They were pretty good - I mean, they were basically deep fried dough rolled in sugar, its kinda hard to go wrong on that one.

The market is just overlooking the Princes Street Gardens, and includes a ferris wheel (that is eight freaking pounds) and a skating rink (ten freaking pounds).

Looking up the gardens towards North Bridge.

After we got bored of that, we headed up to the Elephant Room for food and hot chocolate. And to finally leave our mark on the bathroom!

Thursday was American Thanksgiving, which I actually celebrated for the first time with Kate and her roommates (two of whom are American). I'm still eating all the leftover mashed potatoes I ended up leaving with. I was horrifically full afterwards - it was so good. And Kate made this tofu-turkey roast thing that was completely delicious (unlike my last time trying tofurky).

I ate so many potatoes with cranberry sauce. I felt bad for how much cranberry sauce I was taking, but then I realized pretty much no one else was eating it, so I took more (Rachel, one of Kate's American roommates made it from scratch). Mashed potatoes with cranberry sauce is the best thing ever and no one can tell me any different.

I had the tiniest slice of pumpkin pie for dessert, I was so full, but it was so good. 

There were also several hilarious moments when all the non-Americans/Canadians just stood around taking pictures of the food, especially the turkey. There were also several rousing arguments about when the "real" Thanksgiving was.

This week was also Book Week Scotland, which my classmates made a series of promotional videos for, concluding with this video, a series of seflies from everyone on the course with their favourite book (or, in many cases, whatever they had on hand) - this was because selfie was named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries.

I had someone recently ask me how, as an English major, Publishing student, and all around huge language nerd, I felt about the way language is changing. And in some ways I feel sad, because I do feel like we are losing something with the way digital language is evolving, but on the other hand, internet shorthand is not used in novels, where the richness of language is still valued and always will be valued. And really, internet shorthand is just that - shorthand to make communicating over a digital medium faster and more efficient. Overall, I enjoy watching language evolve. English has always evolved, appropriating words from other languages and transforming over the years, and, as any student who has attempted to read Chaucer in the original text can attest to, we wouldn't even recognize much of English language as it used to exist. Evolution is a natural part of language, and I don't think there is anything to mourn as it changes, nor do I think that including selfie as the word of the year indicates a general dumbing-down of our culture (selfies, after all, predate cameras), nor does it indicate, as so many columnists and writers claim over and over again, that my generation is more narcissistic and self-involved than any generation predating it.

With that in mind, I leave you with this selfie.

My hair is getting out of control.