I guess past history just overwhelmed me more than anything current, so I've been slowly recovering this past week from the old ghosts. Feeling a lot better about where I stand at work (it's looking more and more like this temp job will become a permanent one, as I'm now on board through Christmas time and likely much longer, according to my bosses) and the students are responding as well as could be expected to the change in teachers and approaches (they are now expected to work on school subjects the entire 6.5 hours they are in class rather than the hour or less they did before I arrived). But that's all I'm going to say about my new job, as I do try to keep my professional and personal lives separate to a large degree.
Since I imagine many of you would rather read reviews of books that you may not have known beforehand that you wanted to read, I would like to say that there will be some newer releases reviewed this month. Most of these will not be books that are currently being pimped about on several of the new releases-oriented SF/F blogs. Instead, I'm going to be reviewing books that fascinate me, frustrate me, intrigue me, and which are not easily classified.
There is one book I'll be reviewing on Monday (after delaying it for a while due to a combination of factors) that I think will intrigue quite a few people. Look for it very early in the morning.
One book that I will review in the next few days (if not this weekend) is René Belletto's Dying. Released by Dalkey Archive, this is a translation of a 2002 French book that defies traditional narrative approaches. I have a lot to say about it, so look for that in the very near future. Amazon is listing it as shipping, although the official release date is October 7.
I'm going to be reviewing several other Dalkey Archive books that I featured in my most recent book porn post, including the translation of Viscount Lascano Tegui's On Elegance While Sleeping (scheduled for a November 30 release), a translation of Gert Jonke's The System of Vienna (released in December 2009), and Momus' The Book of Jokes (released in September 2009). Each of these will be a challenge to review effectively, but I will see what comes from these works.
Might also read some Bradbury this month, since I have enjoyed several of his works and October just seems to be his month for some reason. I do have the recently-released Everyman's Library collection of his best short stories to read sometime, plus I might be moved to read/review a few of his novels.
And there might be a high-profile new release or two to review as well by month's end. We'll have to wait and see for that, though. Just glad that I feel a desire to review coming back to me.
The Empirical Approach to Learning
1 day ago
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7 comments:
Hope that means you are also feeling at least a little bit better :)
Yes, the anxiety is much lower now. Weird, having the closest thing to a panic attack I've ever had.
Mid-life panic attack? Been there done that already. No fun.
And your reviewing mojo sounds like my writing mojo.
Yeah, I felt like that rat in that Smashing Pumpkins song. No fun at all.
i'm happy to hear the blogging mojo is on it's way back. :)
It's great to hear that you're back. Looking forward to the Bradbury, as I'm about to read Something Wicked and some of his shorts for the first time, as well as the unknowns.
I wouldn't quite say "back," as I won't be posting all that much most work weeks, but at least I'm in a slightly better frame of mind. One day I'll write out a history of my experiences in this particular field and perhaps some will understand better why there are days that I'd rather die than face another day of stress and abuse. But things went fairly well last week. One hour at a time.
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