another request for cultural assistance

My sister Jenny, who's a high-school history teacher, sent me an email this week. Her school is revising their English curriculum, and she wanted some suggestions for 20th-century female authors who are "good, readable, and interesting."

Now, as someone who used to be a high-school English teacher, and is currently a professional student of literature, you might expect me to have some opinions on this matter. Probably I would have, back when I was a high-school English teacher. But if you've asked me for book recommendations in recent years, you'll already have heard that studying literature has more or less killed off my ability to read literature like a normal person (if normal persons even read literature anymore? all the literati say they don't, the literati not considering themselves normal, because they're snobs. But I listen to their podcasts anyway.). I read a lot during the day, so when I get home I want to cook, or knit, or watch TV. Or I read a magazine, which isn't the same. Lately I've even been doing crossword puzzles!

So when people ask me "have you read any good books lately?" I get all embarrassed and muttery, and this email gave me kind of the same feeling. And after I went though a cranky round of "What kind of authors? For what group of readers? What part of the 20th century? Why specifically women? Are they supposed to address women's issues? What genre? You probably want novels, don't you? Why don't you say novels if you want novels?" and so on, I got to thinking, "Why on earth do we teach novels in school anyway?"

Then I was shocked at myself.

My high-school teacher self had some answers on hand: novels inculcate a love of reading, which is useful. And novels contain lots of good lessons that they can get across in more complex and effective ways than other forms (same argument for poetry).

But I'm currently studying novels in the 18th century, when they were considered frivolous entertainment, would never, ever have been taught in schools, and were both kind of scandalous and wildly popular. Even though they were long and boring!

I've had the experience of trying to teach a great, fun, non-boring novel with relevance to the students' lives and yada yada--and watching it become a total slog. It's a problem: just assigning something as work is enough to make it feel like work. So why ruin fiction by making kids read it (at an annoying group pace, with a quiz coming) and claiming that it's good for them? Why not allow them to read novels, as a treat? It would be easy enough to fill out the curriculum with other literary forms.

So the answer I wanted to give was, just get a lot of books and let kids pick the ones they want to read. (I had a lot of success doing this. People like the things they pick out for themselves, even when they're books.) But obviously that's not going to happen. And, you know, I'm glad I was made to read The Brothers Karamazov in high school. Besides, I'm not ready to commit to my ban-novels-from-the-curriculum position, because it seems kind of reactionary, even to me. So I did come up with a pretty standard list of books for my sister (most of those books are quite good, when they're not being taught in high schools). And then I thought, maybe I should throw this question out to people who actually read! And aren't curmudgeons.

So that's my request: books for the high-school curriculum! And you can go beyond 20th-c women writers if you want, because I'm curious. Plus, you never know, I might be back in the HS classroom one of these days. And if I am I want to have the very coolest list of books to slog through.

holidays, and a new year's request

Jeff and I are settling back into life in Chicago after our holiday trip, 10 days divided among Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. We came back on the 31st to still-living plants, an empty fridge, and a pile of parcel slips in the mailbox. (To date, we've gotten one package out of three. The south-side postal service might be called sub-par, by a polite person.)

Poor Laurel had to go surfing on St. Maarten's on Christmas so couldn't make it to our party, and Julia could only come for a couple of days. Still, we managed to squeeze in our family ornament-shopping tradition on Christmas Eve. The shop we were trying to buy ornaments in closed early, so we made our choices quickly, then went and had a beer.


After that calm moment I drove back up to Maine to join Jeff's family for a Christmas Eve/Hanukkah dinner, followed by a present-wrapping extravaganza that might have been frenzied except that there was a power outage. Wrapping by the light of the menorah had the effect of slowing things down. So it was late when we got to bed, but Santa got his job done anyway.

Eliza got her three requests: a dollhouse, a cash register, and some books. In return she (mostly) tolerated an orgy of picture-taking, but did insist on personally vetting some of the images.


Uncle Jeff decided it was time to introduce Eliza to Hungry Hungry Hippo, even though the box said she wasn't old enough.


Maybe she isn't, quite. Or maybe she just figured out that it's much more efficient to get the marbles with your hands.

Another fun toy of the morning was Nancy's new Flip--an amazingly easy-to-use camcorder. Jeff was immediately enthralled.


And put it to work, filming the star of the day. (No, it wasn't Santa...)


After all the presents were opened and the brunch consumed Jeff and I drove down to NH for my family's Christmas.

We'd teamed up with Jenny, Reggie, and Jules to get Dad some fancy pots. (New Englanders, have you been to the Calphalon outlet in Kittery? It's an amazing, wonderful place.) We put them all in a big, big box.

Then we sneakily suggested that we all open one present early.


Once Dad had opened up his new, shiny cookware, we dispatched him to the kitchen to make the Christmas dinner. The rest of us proceeded to enjoy another early-opened present: a cocktail book we'd gotten for Jenny and Reggie, but which was plenty of fun for the rest of us too.


After a few fancy drinks and a scrumptious dinner, we moved on to the rest of the presents.

Mom gave us cookie jars filled with very delicious "Ellen Cookies"


And Dad had made us each a beautiful cutting board out of pieces of wood left over from various boats.


The cookies have all been eaten, but I haven't been able to actually use the board for cutting. It's too lovely.

I got Mom some materials for making cheese.


Other than Ellen Cookies, Mom doesn't cook much, but because cheesemaking is more like science than cooking, it seemed likely that she'd enjoy it.


See, science.


There's the bacteria...


And the final product! We made a quick, soft cheese to start with, and it was totally delicious. I believe mozzarella is coming up next. By the time I go back next she'll probably be doing fancy things with mold.

After Christmas Mom and Dad headed up to 5 Islands for a few days, and I got to spend a night with them (and Mom's cheese).


In the morning there was snow--so quiet and pretty.

Then it was time to cram all our new gifts into our insufficient suitcases and make our way back to Chicago, just in time to start the new year.


Waiting for us was the above, my Christmas present for Jeff (too heavy to truck back and forth!). 2009 is bidding fair to be the Year of Beef Stew chez nous.

Speaking of the New Year...

I remembered recently that a couple of years ago Jeff and I had made year-end playlists of the songs we'd been listening to in that year. And then I realized that we couldn't possibly do that this year: I won't tell you just how many songs I could come up with for 2008, but I'll admit that they can be counted on one hand. While this may be a symptom of us getting old and out of it, it also has to do with the fact that there was an election this year and our ipods got filled up with Rachel Maddow and Countdown (for Jeff--too shouty for me!), on top of Radiolab and The Bugle and all our usual podcast favorites. But to the extent that there was time for music, we sucked at paying attention.

So, with-it friends, we need your help! You know that there comment function, the one none of you ever use? How about trying it out in order to let us know what music was awesome this past year? Or, if you're with us in being off the music wagon, tell us about whatever you've been listening to that doesn't involve pundits. We would be so, so grateful--and you would start the new year with Good Music Karma. Who doesn't need some of that, in These Tough Economic Times?

As I anxiously await your suggestions (come on, somebody comment, or I'll be embarrassed) I wish you a new year full of cheese, and cocktails, and hippos, and everything that makes you happy. Here's to the best of all possible 2009s!