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Belated ASECS Write-Up!
Apr. 7th, 2016 10:58 pmSo last week I went to ASECS, the big conference for Eighteenth-Century studies. It's not really my era or area, but I was giving a paper on women printers, and they let me in, which is more than can be said for, uh, a number of other places. >_> Anyway, a lot of papers I listened to was a bit like going to class without having done the reading, but I made notes for stuff to read that sounded interesting. Also, my roommate bailed on me so I was by myself, and had to go to extra effort to mix and mingle; I went to both the Grad Student Caucus and the Women's Caucus luncheons and tried to be amenable and knowledgable, and succeed-ish. My paper went well, and I got a number of encouraging comments, and I got invited to submit to a journal and may be getting invited to submit to an edited collection, so these are positives.
I've been super tired all week though, but pushing to be productive anyway: I drafted and sent in a book review, and hopefully will finish and send off another tomorrow, and I also sent off two sets of essay edits. Then next week I hope to revise and send off another essay. So: Ever forward.
With all this traveling, I did get a chance to do some leisure reading:
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor was awesome--a bit soggy in the middle but the first half of the book was perfect, and the ending was intense.
I'd really been looking forward to The Dead Ladies Project by Jessa Crispin because I've read Bookslut for years (and I'm sad that she's closed it down), but...it had its moments but I was just put off by Crispin's internalized misogyny. She came off as incredibly bitter and issue-ridden, and I wish to fuck that her editor had been like "No, dear, write about dead writers and exotic places, not your married lover and his wife or your other lover or that woman you're jealous of and blah blah blah. Yes you are a human but you also need to get over yourself." It was a short book but so fucking exhausting.
Anyway, as a treat I went to the bookstore and got an omnibus edition of Rice's Interview with a Vampire/Vampire Lestat/Queen of the Damned. After watching the film version of Interview at PCA for probably the first time in fifteen years, I really just wanted to reread the books, and assuming those grubby paperbacks are still extant they are somewhere in my Mom's house in Georgia and, tbh, probably saturated with cat piss by now or something. Anyway, I don't think I've reread them since at least my freshman year of high school, and these were some of my favorite books as a teenager. (I still remember the conversation I had with my sibs about whether or not Lestat and Louis were gay, and they were like 'LOL no.' Man, I'm so glad kids these days have Tumblr and so forth to talk about stuff these days, because it SUCKED back in the day.) Anyway I started rereading Interview yesterday and it's just interesting to revisit a book that used to mean so much to me, you know? (Yes, I know, I was totally the little goth kitten back in the day, always dressed in black, I knoooooooooow, but I was THIRTEEN, okay, geez!)
In a couple of weeks I'm also going to be flying out to Chicago to take part in DePaul University's Celebration of Star Trek symposium, where I'm going to be speaking on two roundtables about Star Trek fandom. I am excited about this!! More anon, undoubtedly!
I've been super tired all week though, but pushing to be productive anyway: I drafted and sent in a book review, and hopefully will finish and send off another tomorrow, and I also sent off two sets of essay edits. Then next week I hope to revise and send off another essay. So: Ever forward.
With all this traveling, I did get a chance to do some leisure reading:
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor was awesome--a bit soggy in the middle but the first half of the book was perfect, and the ending was intense.
I'd really been looking forward to The Dead Ladies Project by Jessa Crispin because I've read Bookslut for years (and I'm sad that she's closed it down), but...it had its moments but I was just put off by Crispin's internalized misogyny. She came off as incredibly bitter and issue-ridden, and I wish to fuck that her editor had been like "No, dear, write about dead writers and exotic places, not your married lover and his wife or your other lover or that woman you're jealous of and blah blah blah. Yes you are a human but you also need to get over yourself." It was a short book but so fucking exhausting.
Anyway, as a treat I went to the bookstore and got an omnibus edition of Rice's Interview with a Vampire/Vampire Lestat/Queen of the Damned. After watching the film version of Interview at PCA for probably the first time in fifteen years, I really just wanted to reread the books, and assuming those grubby paperbacks are still extant they are somewhere in my Mom's house in Georgia and, tbh, probably saturated with cat piss by now or something. Anyway, I don't think I've reread them since at least my freshman year of high school, and these were some of my favorite books as a teenager. (I still remember the conversation I had with my sibs about whether or not Lestat and Louis were gay, and they were like 'LOL no.' Man, I'm so glad kids these days have Tumblr and so forth to talk about stuff these days, because it SUCKED back in the day.) Anyway I started rereading Interview yesterday and it's just interesting to revisit a book that used to mean so much to me, you know? (Yes, I know, I was totally the little goth kitten back in the day, always dressed in black, I knoooooooooow, but I was THIRTEEN, okay, geez!)
In a couple of weeks I'm also going to be flying out to Chicago to take part in DePaul University's Celebration of Star Trek symposium, where I'm going to be speaking on two roundtables about Star Trek fandom. I am excited about this!! More anon, undoubtedly!
