Saturday, December 26, 2015

A Year of Consumption

No, I don't mean I got TB this year, but if you could get TB from TV I definitely would have.

As many of you probably know, I like to track everything I read and watch during the calendar year. That way, I can see what I spend most of my time consuming (as if I didn't already know). It's also interesting to see what I rewatch, what I reread, and how my reading and watching vary from year to year in terms of what kinds of things I'm into, or how much I read or watch. This year I'm thrilled that my reading list is a tad longer than last year's reading list, due mostly to the fact that over the summer I worked at an aluminum can making factory and took the bus to work. That's when I did most of my reading--I did about two hours of commuting per day.

I ended up watching 30 movies, and (I can't believe I'm about to say this) 53 seasons of different TV shows. I also ended up watching some other odds & ends, like The Ultimate Guide to the Presidents, which is only 8 episodes, and which I didn't count as a season of a TV show. I spent a lot of my time staring at a screen this year.

BUT, I also read 65 books, plus some other manuscripts I read for a class I took with Todd Boss at the Loft about ordering a book of poetry. I listed some of those manuscripts here, whose titles I remembered or had written down. In addition to those manuscripts, I read MOSTLY poetry, though some graphic novels (kind of a first for me!), fiction, and non-fiction were thrown in for good measure.

So here's the list: everything I read and watched in 2015, though we have a few days left, and no doubt I'll be adding a movie or two to the list before the end of the year. There are also a few books near the end of my reading list that I am finishing up, and hopefully will close the book on (heh) before 2016. My most, most favorite new books I read this year are in bold, which means you should definitely read them, though one of them isn't published yet (!!!!)

READING LIST

Black Aperture - Matt Rasmussen
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Any Anxious Body - Chrissy Kolaya
The Dig - Lynn Emanuel
The Wild Iris - Louise Gluck (reread)
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James (reread)
The Tell-Tale Heart - EA Poe (reread)
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Washington Irving (reread)
The Monkey's Paw - W.W. Jacobs (reread)
Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror - John Ashberry
1408 - Stephen King
Citizen - Claudia Rankine

Women Who Run With Holsteins - Jeanne Lutz
Poems - Lee Kisling
Sleeping With the Dictionary - Harryette Mullen
Things That Are - Amy Leach (reread)
Don't Let Me Be Lonely - Claudia Rankine
Beautiful Pathology - Katharine Rauk
Pyramid of Lemons - Carolyn Williams-Noren
You Are Not Dead - Wendy Xu
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James (again, for a class) (re-reread)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera (reread)
Flow - Del Doughty (reread)
These Are the Gloria Stories - Kelin Loe
Land Sparing - Gabriella Klein
Blues for Jocasta - Timothy Otte
Zion - TJ Jarrett
Bad Feminist - Roxane Gay
Don't Let Me Be Lonely - Claudia Rankine (again, because why not) (reread)
What the Living Do - Marie Howe
Still Another Day - Pablo Neruda, translated by William O'Daly
At the Drive-In Volcano - Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Haunts- Laura Cherry
[insert] boy - Danez Smith
Urban Tumbleweed - Harryette Mullen
Memoir of the Hawk - James Tate
The Road - Cormac McCarthy (reread)
You Are a Little Bit Happier Than I Am - Tao Lin
What Do We Know - Mary Oliver
The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands - Nick Flynn
Staying Alive - ed. Neil Astley (poetry anthology)
Hum - Jamaal May
The Art of the Story - ed. Daniel Halpern (short story anthology)
Ariel - Sylvia Plath (reread)
NOX - Anne Carson
Wind in a Box - Terrance Hayes
Steal Like an Artist - Austin Kleon
The Awakening - Kate Chopin (reread)
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Debbie's Inferno - Anne Emond
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson (listened to this on tape)
What It Is - Lynda Barry
Show Your Work! - Austin Kleon
Lewis Carroll in Wonderland: The Life & Times of Alice & Her Creator - Stephanie Lovett Stoffel
If the Tabloids Are True What Are You? - Matthea Harvey
An Unquiet Mind - Kay Redfield Jamison
Life on Mars - Tracy K. Smith
The Empathy Exams - Leslie Jamison
skin, sin, shine - Erica Anderson-Senter
Autobiography of Red - Anne Carson
American Barricade - Danniel Schoonebeek
Live My Lief - Steven Roggenbuck
Through No Fault of My Own - Coco Irvine
Some Planet - Jamie Mortara
Native Guard - Natasha Trethewey



WATCH LIST

The Desolation of Smaug
Hauntings: Is It Real? (watched twice, for a class)
Don't Trust the B*** in Apt 23 (seasons 1 & 2)
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas (rewatch)
Friends (season 1) 
(rewatch)
A Long Way Down
The Haunting (watched twice, for a class)
Star Trek TNG (season 1)
La Vie de Boheme
The West Wing (seasons 2 & 3) 
(rewatch)
Dirty Pretty Things
1408 (for a class) 
(rewatch)
The Fall (season 2)
It's Such a Beautiful Day
House (seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) 
(rewatch, though it's been ages since I've seen House)
Parks & Rec (two episodes only)
Californication (seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) 
(rewatch)
Weeds (seasons 1 & 2) 
(rewatch)
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (season 1)
Arrested Development (seasons 1, 2, 3) 
(rewatch)
Mean Girls 
(rewatch)
Twin Peaks (seasons 1 & 2) 
(rewatch)
Louie (season 4)
Top Gun 
(rewatch)
Game of Thrones (season 2)
Monty Python & the Holy Grail 
(rewatch)
Wet Hot American Summer (season 1)
How I Met Your Mother (seasons 1 & 2) 
(rewatch)
Veronica Mars (seasons 1, 2, 3) 
(rewatch)
The Rescuers
Dale & Tucker Vs. Evil
Hocus Pocus 
(rewatch)
New Girl (seasons 1 & 2 [twice], season 3) 
(rewatch)
Moonrise Kingdom 
(rewatch)
Dance Academy (season 3)
X-files (season 2) 
(rewatch)
American Horror Story (season 4)
American Psycho 
(rewatch)
Zombeavers (gave up on this one)
Orange Is the New Black (season 3)
American Psycho 2 (also gave up on this)
30 Rock (part of season 1) 
(rewatch)
Gilmore Girls (season 1) 
(rewatch)
Seinfeld (seasons 1, 2, 3, 4) 
(rewatch)
Darjeeling Limited 
(rewatch)
Hannibal (season 2)
Girls (season 1, partially)
Juno 
(rewatch)
Gothika
The Ultimate Guide to the Presidents (8 episodes)
Killer Legends (this was truly terrible---I did other things while watching it)
Stonehearst Asylum
Planet Earth (episodes 1 & 2) 
(rewatch)
The Double
Psych (just the pilot episode)
Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (in progress)
Mind of a Chef (season 1)
Jackass 2 
(rewatch)
The Simpsons (4 episodes) 
(rewatch)
Burlesque
Pulp Fiction 
(rewatch)
The Following (season 2)
Love Actually 
(rewatch)
Home Alone 
(rewatch)
White Christmas

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Travels, La Croix, and a Pushcart

Things have been just crazy around here lately. Will and I went to Florida over Thanksgiving and it was glorious. We did a lot of sitting outside reading, sitting on the porch reading, and, well, lots of eating. I always eat seafood when I go on vacation because I so rarely eat it at home, and it's one of my favorite things to eat. We also got to hang out with my family, see a cannon get shot off, and tour the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine.

Now we're home, and the end of the semester is in sight. We both have just two weeks left of teaching, and then about a metric buttload of papers to grade. My desk right now is atrocious. I sometimes use the coffee table as my desk if I'd rather be sitting on the couch while I work; this moment, it's littered with books, notebooks, and empty La Croix cans.

Somehow, even through all the traveling and grading, I managed to write twenty poems and read nine books in November. I'm unsure if this recent burst of productivity and diligence is due to the fact that I'm turning 30 in a few months or what, but I guess I shouldn't be asking any questions. I'll just take hold of this bull by the horns and keep going.

ALSO, I was literally writing this blog post when I got word that I have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Boxcar Poetry Review nominated my poem "Genesis." I have never been nominated for a Pushcart before, and I'm not ashamed to admit I cried a little when I got word.  Now I must go and buy a bottle of champagne and pretend I'm not scared when I pop the cork.