Insurgent, by Veronica Roth

At some point I read the first book in this YA dystopian trilogy, Divergent. It was okay, as I recall. Then recently I read the second book, Insurgent. I liked it a lot. Now I wait for #3 to be released in October.There's going to be a movie at some point, too. Three movies, probably--with the first one coming out in September or thereabouts.

If I would've had my act together and written about this book back when I read it (maybe a month ago), I'd probably have more to say. Sorry. Been doing much more reading than writing about reading, latey.

Scintella Project Day 2

So, I'm doing (attempting?) The Scintella Project again this year. It's only day 2 and I'm already a day behind, but here it is:

The prompt I chose:
Tell a story about something interesting (anything!) that happened to you, but tell it in the form of an instruction manual (Step 1, Step 2, etc.).

1. Get an MFA if you want, but don't expect to ever make any money off of it. It might help you get a more prestigious job down the road, but ultimately they're just looking at your publications. So get the MFA for its own sake--for paid time to write. In my opinion, that word "paid" is key. I only applied to fully funded programs--I have enough loans from undergrad--if I pay for another degree, it'll be one that earns me money. This MFA won't.

2. I applied only to fully funded three-year-programs. MFA programs tend to be either two or three years. There are also a fair number of low-residency programs. Three years made the most sense for me for a bunch of reasons. The main one was that if I had to move again, probably to somewhere I wouldn't want to stay after I graduated, then I wanted to move for long enough to make it worth moving. In my late 20's, I felt like I'd already moved for the hell of it enough times: I left Minneapolis, where I'd grown up, and went to Bard, in upstate New York. I took a semester off of undergrad and went to Seattle, then back to Bard to finish my degree. After undergrad, moved to Portland, which I loved, except I was nannying, working as a barista, and writing grants for a non-profit. And I didn't have healthcare, much less time to write. I started looking for full-time work, which didn't exist in Portland at that time, for someone just out of college, with my (limited) skill set. So I started applying for jobs back in NYC, where many of my friends from college were, and suddenly I had five job interviews lined up. So I went for it. I was in NYC for nearly two years before I went for the MFA.

3. I ended up at Syracuse University. I was miserable in a lot of ways:

• I was dealing with some huge medical shit, having just been diagnosed with a brain tumor my neurosurgeon said had probably been there since I was in utero. I had no symptoms and he decided to leave it alone. I had surgery the following summer since as he pointed out, I was in graduate school and had the time. I went through radiation that summer and played a lot of Scrabble with my Brooklyn roommate Laurice.
• I was also miserable because I knew I didn't really want to get an MFA, but I didn't know what the hell else to do.

So I spent three years in Syracuse, NY, and when I got out of school, I realized I wanted to be a middle school/high school English teacher. Teaching in local schools in Syracuse, pushing in to the regular classes and working in after school and summer programs, was one of the best things I got to do in grad school. I taught with some awesome people in my MFA program who I wouldn't have gotten to know so well otherwise (poets, no less!), who are probably the closest friends  I took out of that experience (Micha and Gerry, I'm talking about you!).

4. After I got my MFA, I moved back to Brooklyn and became a teacher. After three years of teaching in NYC, I was able to get a teaching job in Portland, and I moved back here and have been happy here every since.

Janelle Monee is so cool

http://reallivingbeauty.com/2013/03/11/janelle-loveher-monae/

Leaving Church, by Barbara Brown Taylor

My friend Micha wrote about this book on her fabulous blog (I couldn't find the link to the exact entry--but here's a general link). I got it out of the library, curious, but not sure I'd read it--I thought maybe I'd page through it, then take it back, unread. So not my kind of thing. Instead I sat down and read and read and read. And now I'm looking forward to reading Barbara Brown Taylor's other books.

About her experience becoming a priest in the Episcopalian Church, working in a large urban ministry in Atlanta, then finding a tiny parish in rural Georgia, where she was the only woman priest in any denomination. Then leaving that parish--leaving the ministry completely, to figure out her own spirituality outside the church.

I was raised Catholic, and for the past couple of years I've been meditating at a Zen temple near my home. So I know something about Christianity, and considerably less about Buddhism, but I've been learning. Never took a religion class in college or grad school, haven't read much on the subject, but it does fascinate me.

I liked this book a lot. Lots to think about. Religion definitely fascinates me--though in a distant, removed way.

Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel

I read Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel, several years ago, and really liked it. I've also read many of the "Dykes to Watch Out For" comics over the years.

So, Fun Home was her memoir about her father--his death, apparently a suicide, though apparently catalogued by the police as an accident. But she and her family seem clearly to view it as a suicide.

Anyway, I liked Fun Home a lot. This book, essentially a memoir about her mother, I didn't like as much. There's not the same cohesive story there, and though it's been several years since I read Fun Home, this book just didn't feel nearly as compelling.

Tenth of December, by George Saunders

I just finished George Saunders' new book of stories, Tenth of December--released on January 8, 2013.

According to an awesome profile in the New York Times Magazine ( http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/magazine/george-saunders-just-wrote-the-best-book-youll-read-this-year.html ), George Saunders has written the best book you'll read this year.

I did love it. My favorite book of his since 2000's Pastoralia. I'm already looking forward to reading it again.

I don't know what more to say about it. Thoughtful, bizarre stories that show Saunders' sense of humor, thoughtful worldview, and are fabulously weird and not weird, both.

The Monsters of Templeton & Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff

After finishing Arcadia, I had to read Lauren Groff's other books: her first novel, The Monsters of Templeton, and a collection of stories, Delicate Edible Birds. Arcadia was the best, feels the most fleshed out and thorough--The Monsters of Templeton was great, but felt very first novel-y in places, and some of the stories were really strong (Groff spans such a wide range of time in both Templeton and the stories--it's a lot of fun), but again, there were a lot of spots in the stories that felt very young too. Especially after Arcadia, I'm excited to watch Groff mature and grow as a writer.