Thursday, July 05, 2007

The Out of Town Recap...

Greetings all!

I spent the last five days visiting the lovely Boston, so I, sadly, haven't really had time to post any updates. Can I admit that I'm loathe to forego updating because I feel guilty about it? Or is that just a wee bit pathetic?

Regardless, I'm back, now, and ready to blog.

While I was in Boston, I had a chance to go to a Center for New Words event. It was their monthly Feminism and Desert event, and this month they did a book swap, which was absolutely awesome! Chocolate cake, cranberry lemonade, chocolate covered almonds, and lots and lots of books... yum.

Around 20 or 30 people came to the event (including a couple of people who, as it turns out, read my blog! Hello you two!), and the selection of books was fantastic. I brought an old copy of Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and left with Ehrenreich's Bait and Switch. I picked up The Handmaid's Tale years ago, because it was one of those books that I kept meaning to read, and felt like, as a Lit major, I ought to have read... but hadn't gotten around to reading yet. Sadly, there are still many, many books left on the list. I figured that I can't have been the only person in such a situation, so I brought it along. As it turned out, the woman sitting next to me was in exactly the same situation- she'd been wanting to read it for some time, and just hadn't gotten around to picking it up, yet. So, Atwood's book found a nice, new home.

I got, as I mentioned, Bait and Switch. It has, so far, been quite interesting. The only other Ehrenreich I've read was Nickle and Dimed, but it was such an eye-opening and interesting book, that I've been wanting to read Bait and Switch since I heard about it. Given that I work in a pretty white collar position, I'm finding myself nodding along as I read- "Yeah, I've definitely heard that." I'll probably finish it this weekend.

So, now, a little reader participation: On 79Soul, I do a thing on Friday's (usually) I call List Day, but I'm not sure how well that fits in here. I thought I might give it a little nudge, though, and do a reader participation day. I was thinking I'd fish for topics from you, my readers. So, now is your chance to ask me questions, or suggest topics, or give me links or articles that you think I should check out... whatever you're interested in seeing on here, now is your chance to push it on me. Tomorrow, I blog about what you want to see.

If this is a hit, it can be a weekly thing.
So, lay it on me!

4 comments:

wellie said...

i haven't read the handmaid's tale yet either... but i did pick up audacia ray's naked on the internet and Homocore: The Loud And Raucous Rise Of Queer Rock the other day. yay for new books!

Jaclyn said...

Ok, here's an idea:

If you were in charge of programming a feminist film festival, which flicks would you feature and why?

(Or maybe I'm just looking for some good movie recommendations ;) )

Anonymous said...

Sorry-- any awesome ideas that I come up with for awesome blog posts are ALL MINE.

cme said...

<waves back> Hi! It was nice to meet you.

Please tell us what you think of Bait and Switch when you're done. I read it some time ago. As someone slowly falling off the white-collar wagon described therein, I found it accurate and appalling.

Other things to blog about... Have you written a post about what your blog title, and about what the phrase "you don't get a cookie or a tourguide" means to you? I have been trying, with varying amounts of success, to communicate this concept to people who need to hear it, and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the topic.