The weekly links, opinion, and personal updates post
1. Links of Interest
Abby West at Entertainment Weekly is talking romance novels.
I like soap operas and I like romance novels. There, I’ve said it. Throughout the years, both those pastimes have been guilty pleasures that have gotten me teased an awful lot by my high-brow peers (and even some of my low-brow ones). But I no longer care; they have both given me hours of enjoyment and escapism and I accept your derision with a shrug. They are their own art forms, coming in varying degrees of quality and engagement.
Janet Mullany had me on the floor laughing with her mock tax form for romance writers: OMG.HEA.2010 at Risky Regencies.
Sarah at Monkey Bear Reviews has a great list of Mysteries Which Would Appeal to Romance Readers.
A group of YA bloggers have launched a YA Bloggers Debut Book Battle. It’s “a bracket-style judging contest to pick the best nominated debut work published in the last year (and a little bit of 2010).”
Author Claire Dudman is talking about Slow Reading, my favorite past time (via Books, Inq). This book looks very interesting. From a review:
Readers make choices in the kinds of attention they give to texts–from scanning, skimming and speed reading to deep reading and rereading. In Slow Reading, John Miedema draws on both his personal reading experience and the extensive research literature on reading to make a powerful case for the deep pleasures of engaged, reflective reading.
Another post about reading from Tim Carmody at Smarkmarket (via @josefurtado)
At any rate, it seems to be the case that these conventions are dependent upon context, so that they don’t necessarily translate if they get taken out of that context. Change the format or screen size, change how we encounter them in space, change our routines of how we pay (and get paid) for them or how we incorporate them into our day, and the whole game could change.
Over at Gossamer Obsession, AnimeJune is talking about History v. Romance in The Duchess, Amanda Foreman’s biography of Georgiana Spencer Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire.
This post is going to be on how the movie deviated from the book in order to support a modern romantic narrative, which will in turn elucidate how romance narratives operate in today’s cultural climate.
The Washington Post is looking at laptop bans in university and law school classrooms. Regular readers of this blog know this is an issue for me. I banned laptops in the fall, but allowed them this semester. I think I will ban them again in the fall. This pretty much says it all for me:
Two years ago, Carrie B. Fried, a psychology professor at Winona State University in Minnesota, studied the effect of laptops on learning. She discovered that computers were a significant distraction in class and that using laptops negatively affected students. The students admitted that they learned less and performed poorly compared with those who didn’t use them during class.
Masturbation: Literature’s Last Taboo, at the Guardian Books Blog.
Britain’s most distinguished literary quarterly has knocked off work early, picked up some wine on the way home and taken the phone off the hook. That’s right: Granta has just published its sex issue.
Dismayed, the author notes that only one story stands out, and it’s about masturbation. I leave you with a quote, proving yet again that notwithstanding their other wonderful other talents, literary writers cannot write sex to save their lives:
She goes for it, fingers in, too late for dainty refinements, she wants it too much and has been ready for at least an hour now.
Yes, you read that aright. Fingers. In.
2. Romance Roots Readalong
As part of my attempt to educate myself on the roots of the genre, I am going to read and review Jane Eyre for Friday May 14. Anyone care to join me? Let me know so I can link to you. I’ll set up a page where you can comment with your blog name. If you have a better suggestion for organization, feel free to chime in.
3. Personal
By the time you read this post, I will be on my way to the Lone Star State to give a couple of talks. This is my last week of being crazy busy. I hope to blog more regularly beginning next week.
HAPPY WEEK!
Jane Eyre is one of my favorite novels, but I’m very much due for a rereading. I’d love to join you!
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O_O
Jane Eyre-oh, man, I haven’t read that one in ages… hmmm… I might do that. Going to have to see how much work I get done on this WIP. I didn’t like many of the classics, I’m afraid, but that’s one I adored.
Oh my, are you going to be talking at UT Austin?
I’ll reread Jane Eyre. It’ll fit in nicely with my slow reread of The Madwoman in the Attic.
Nobody tell my mum but no thanks to re-reading Jane Eyre: I’m sure I’ll lurk but I never clicked with it and I can’t forget the Wide Sargossa Sea which I also read (about the first Mrs. R) … I find the childhood parts so upsetting too. Has anyone read Elsie Dinsmore? That sort of feeling inside.
I’ve been looking forward to the Jane Eyre “group read.” May 14 will be tricky (I have finals the week after), but I will do my best to really re-read it and then actually write a blog entry. There, I’m committed.
Thanks for the linkage!
I’m totally going to use “fingers in” at random moments over the next few days, then laugh myself to tears while the people I’m talking to stare in confusion. It’s in my head and there’s no way it’s leaving now, so I might as well have fun with it!
I wish you’d do Jane Eyre as a group discussion (like you did with Black Ice) so that those of us who don’t have our own blogs and contribute to the discussion… I mean, I guess we can comment either way, but it’d feel more inclusive if it wasn’t focused on blog posts. I’ll follow along either way, though.
I just grabbed my copy of Jane Eyre from Mom’s house. It still has a receipt I tucked into page 143, dated 10/29/97! And it’s an illustrated edition, full of dreary engravings. Oh, this is fun already. Don’t know if I can read it that soon but I promise to at least look at the pictures.
I was so absurdly glad to read your links about laptop-banning in the classroom – I have been flip-flopping rather wildly about whether to ban or not to ban next year. What dismays me is that there seems to be a segment of my class who, despite my every attempt to be engaging and attention-grabbing and lucid, find in their laptops a means of tuning out of the lecture components of the course. Thus, although the bulk of the class is engaged and getting the material (as proved come exam or quiz time), there are students who have been in all my lectures and yet are completely unacquainted with the material. Why come to class if you are going to completely disregard my contribution and your colleagues’? And, although they have a responsibility to themselves to engage with courses and bear the responsibility if they don’t, surely I have a duty to create the best environment I can for their learning? I don’t think making high demands on student’s effort and attention is infantilizing; in my experience, students commit the most effort and get the greatest rewards from the courses that demand the most of them.
After reading the links you provided, I wonder about this alternate strategy: in the first week of class, in lieu of an outright ban on laptops, review for the students the research that has been done that links laptop usage in classrooms and poorer attention and performance on tests, and then assert that you strongly discourage laptop use in your classroom. I have been considering doing this, and pairing it with the assertion that if I catch anyone surfing the web or texting in class, they will immediately lose their class participation credit for that day.
Hmm. On the other hand, I am not quite clear in my mind what the virtue of this path over an outright ban would be.
@Sasha: Great!
@Shiloh Walker: Glad to hear you liked Jane Eyre. You now have until May 23, a Sunday, to re-read. Join us if you can!
@Janet W: Oh feel free to lurk, and even to fling the occasional insult!
@SonomaLass: In deference to your schedule, the new date is Sunday May 23.
@moimoi:Great point. I will do it both ways. If people want to compose longer writeup,s they can link to them. And there will also be discussion here!
@Jill Sorenson: now you have more time! Dooo eeeeeeeet!
@Ariel/Sycorax Pine:
Damned if I know.
This is what I have come to as well.
I like your plan as a kind of middle ground. It will take some effort to enforce, more than a ban. I also wonder if students who surf don’t realize they are not learning, but just don’t care. In that case, no amount of data will change their behavior.