17 posts tagged “books”
I didn't get as much reading done in Florida as I thought I would... but I've got a few good ones coming in the mail from paperbackswap (yay!). And I have no job (working on that... kinda) and my summer course was cancelled, so there's really nothing to do but sit around and read.
Books I've read (so far) this summer
Currently reading
And loving it.
Awesome as well.
Books I've read (so far) this summer
I think Valencia was the best out of the bunch.
Books I'm taking on vacation with me
Well, classes are officially over. I was exempt from my Spanish final because I maintained an A throughout the course (yay!) and I took my Archaeology final yesterday. All I have left are two papers, one on female Thai migrant workers and another on anthropological theory since the '60s. Those should be bundles of fun.
Taylor's wedding is in less than a month. I'm definitely not as skinny as I'd hoped I'd be at this point. But I've started my infamous tuna sandwich crash diet. Fingers crossed that I can lose at least 20 pounds.
Chrissy and Adam are thinking about going to Mexico this summer. If they go, they might take me 'cause of my fly Spanish-speaking skills. I'm dying to go to Mexico. Earlier this week I learned about the Maya in my Archaeology class and I really wanna check out Pacal's temple in Palenque. It'd be pretty cool to read the Popol Vuh in a Mayan ruin.
So, one of my goals this summer is to read at least one book a week (I'll have to pry myself away from this website). How about a list?
Books I've read (so far) this summer
I loved Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep but MOMD was just eh. I like her writing style but the subject matter was kind of boring. I've never read any of Nick Hornby's stuff before (I'm not a big fan of reading British books in general) but the premise seemed pretty cool. I haven't actually finished reading it yet but, if I ignore my papers for another night, I'll be done soon.
Books I want to read this summer
The first couple are for a class I'm taking in the fall, Contact and Culture Change. I figure since that class is going to have a 20 page paper and I'll be starting my thesis, I should probably get a head start. (Speaking of my thesis, I was thinking maybe I could write about the impact of war on museums. I could look at the history of museums (their purpose and all), focus on museums during WWI/WWII, mention the looting that happens during war and what has found its way onto the black market, and finish up with the Iraq war and what priceless artifacts have been lost (mostly Sumerian stuff, I believe). I don't know... I'm still in the really early stages of it. I'll probably spend some time in the Cornell libraries this summer.) Anyways, I watched that really terrible movie adaptation of Growing Up Brady the other night (with an adorable Adam Brody) and thought it'd be fun to read the book. Good thing I found it on paperbackswap 'cause I certainly wouldn't want to be seen buying it. And the last couple are supposed to be pretty good. What's everyone else reading this summer?
I'm not digging Geertz very much. I feel like a bad anthropology major when I say that... but it's the truth. Everyone else seems to find great, profound meaning in his writing and I don't. I see tons commas and semi-colons and by the time I finish a sentence I can't remember what the beginning was about... Sigh. There has been one cool thing that Geertz wrote that I liked (it's in the middle of a sentence at the beginning of the prijaji section of Religion of Java); 'whatever lives feels, whatever feels lives." That's about as profound as I get.
Book: Show us the latest book you bought, borrowed or received.
Those are the books I bought. Gotta get my study on so I can get into a decent grad school. I happen to suck at standardized tests... fucking analogies (I got a 1060 on the SATs, yet I'm in the top 10% of my class... hmmmm).
This is the latest batch of books I received through PBS. From Blank Land to Fifth Sun is for one of my classes and just happens to be really interesting. Eighty-Sixed is about a young gay man's life pre- and post-AIDS. Victims of Progress is a book my Theory teacher recommended and One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of my favorite books of all time... I was just sick of looking at the Oprah's Book Club sticker on the cover of my copy, so I found a really old copy of it =) Sidenote: before I went to get the mail I put down one of those cardboard scratching trays filled with catnip for the kitties. When I got back in the house it was turned upside down, catnip was all over the kitchen, and Dinah and Loki were completely covered in it. They looked like little junkies.
I went to the Chili Festival yesterday afternoon with Chrissy and her boyfriend, Adam. Ran into an old co-worker from the South Asia Program who bought tickets for us which was so nice of her (the ticket line was ridiculously LONG!) Tried some veggie chilis. The best was definitely the Statler's. Had lunch at Ragmann's. And Chrissy bought a 1970's snowsuit from the vintage shop (I got a book from 1956 called The Highest Dream by Phyllis A. Whitney... I paid a dollar but then I found a dollar in the parking garage, so it feels like I got it for free).
So, I drove to school today. It was scary. By the time I got to campus (and slid up hill) my jaw was killing me because I had been clenching it the whole way.
Some new items I received today... L to R: Batik bowl from Indonesia (via Target), wooden elephant from India whom I've named Jishnu (also via Target), Crash Course for the GRE (via PBS), Bel Canto (PBS, too), and Peru Before the Incas (PBS as well). I love PBS... I hate going to school in the snow, though. And I really hate my Astronomy class (well, I hate waiting two hours for it to start... so I think I'm going to drop it and take it in the summer).
So, the Nor'easter is coming through tonight and tomorrow. By midnight tomorrow we're supposed to have between 18 and 36 inches on the ground. Wow. Needless to say, I'll be staying home from school (I doubt I'll even be able to get out of my driveway much less all the way to Cortland). My mom said Tops was absolutely packed, like when there's a hurricane coming through--no water left on the shelves, parking lot filled to the brink, lines down the aisles. Fun! I got a couple books through PBS today and I checked out some classic anthro books from Cornell (Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific--a copy from 1922!!--and A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Word, Leach's Rethinking Anthropology, and Lévi-Strauss' The Savage Mind), so I should have enough to keep myself productive.
Today when I got home from school there were about 8 turkeys in our front yard. They're so cute! They were talking to turkeys that were across the street and behind the house. I took a picture of the turkey snow prints.
And these were taken the other day (the sunniest day we've had in a long time).
I am loving PBS... PaperBackSwap.com. So neat! Tomorrow I'm sending out two books and I've already requested a study guide for the GREs with one of the credits I got automatically for posting 9 books. I can't wait 'til I get my box of books out of the garage and add them to my bookshelf--I will have millions of credits. Muwahahahaaaa!
Culture is most effectively treated, the argument goes, purely as a symbolic system (the catch phrase is, "in its own terms"), by isolating its elements, specifying the internal relationships among those elements, and then characterizing the whole system in some general way--according to the symbols around which it is organized, the underlying structures of which it is a surface expression, or the ideological principles upon which it is based.
That is one sentence out of The Interpretation of Cultures by Clifford Geertz. Intense, eh? They should include that kind of stuff (real theoretical writings instead of the watered down interpretations of the theoretical writings) in Intro to Anthropology... if I had been introduced to it four years ago I doubt I'd be feeling so apprehensive right now. Anthropological Theory is scary. Supposedly, Anthropological Methods is even more terrifying (I've heard rumblings about a thirty page mock grant proposal and six hours worth of coding). Sometimes I think I should just quit while I'm ahead and start working my way up to middle management at Cornell. Sigh.
