Punctuated Post: Anita Shreve's The Weight of Water

Read Anita Shreve they said. You'll like her, they said.

The Weight of Water takes place off the coast of Maine. So, when I traveled to Maine to a dear friend's graduation, I thought this book was a fitting pick! I love to read a book while being in the book's setting.

In a way, this was the perfect type of book to read during the hustle and bustle of travel: light and easy to dip in and out of while boarding flights and such. It has two narrative threads, one contemporary and one pertaining to a mystery from 1853. In the contemporary thread, a woman who is a photographer on a job at the island learns of gruesome murder. We also learn about the circumstances of another women, an immigrant to the area in the 1850s. An undercurrent of both narrative threads is the whodunit of the nineteenth century murder, partially as the contemporary woman finds archived letters written by the immigrant. I think the book could have been more enticing if the murderer didn't seem so obvious early in the book. While I am glad I gave an Anita Shreve book a chance, I am not sure that another is in my future soon.

Shreve, Anita. The Weight of Water. Back Bay Books, 1997.

Professional Development Panel

This morning, at 11 am, it is my honor to present on a professional development panel with Dr. Antoinette Burton (professor of history, UIUC) and Dr. Carina Ray (professor of African and Afro-American studies, Brandeis). The panel will take place at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Graduate Symposium on Women's and Gender History. We'll discuss preparing papers for publication, transitioning to the tenure track, and revising your dissertation into a book.

Of course, when the panel was planned, we had no idea that we'd be presenting at the same time as a Bernie Sanders rally elsewhere on campus!

The Crisis in the Dominican Republic: A Reading List

There is a humanitarian crisis that has been evolving in the Dominican Republic, and it is perplexing why more people aren't talking about it because of its significance regarding law, race, and basic human rights. For decades, Haitians have moved to the Dominican Republic, oftentimes to escape poverty in Haiti. Discrimination against people of Haitian descent is intense in the Dominican Republic (there was a lynching earlier this year), and in 2013 the Dominican Republic courts denied citizenship to all descendants of Haitian-born parents, impacting tens of thousands of people, some of whom have spent their entire lives in the Dominican Republic. Recently, there was news media coverage of authors Junot Diaz and Edwidge Danticat speaking out about the situation. There is a link to that article below, along with other articles assembled along a timeline that provide a sense of the situation, especially over the past several months as thousands of people face statelessness.

October 15, 2012 article about 1937 event: Parsley Massacre: The Genocide that Still Haunts Haiti-Dominican Relations, International Business Times, by Palash Ghosh

October 7, 2013: The Dominican Republican and Haiti: One Island Riven by An Unresolved Past, The Guardian, by Carrie Gibson

October 24, 2013: Dominicans of Haitian Descent Cast into Legal Limbo by Court, The New York Times, by Randal C. Archibold

May 22, 2014: Dominican Republic Lawmakers Pass Citizenship Bill, BBC News

February 3, 2015: Thousands of Dominicans Woke Up This Week without Citizenship in Any Country, The Huffington Post Latino Voices, Roque Planas

February 11, 2015: Haitian Man Lynched amid Dominican Republic Immigration Controversy, The Huffington Post Latino Voices, Roque Planas

June 16, 2015: Dominicans of Haitian Descent Fear Mass Deportation as Headline Looms, The Guardian, by Sibylla Brodzinsky

June 16, 2015: Dominican Republic Threatens to Deport Haitian Families, The Root, by Nsenga K. Burton

June 25, 2015: Junot Diaz and Edwidge Danticat Jointly Speak Out Against Dominican Republic Refugee Crisis, Fusion, by Daniel Rivero

June 26, 2015: Haiti PM Warns of "Humanitarian Crisis" Caused by Dominican Deportation Policy, The Guardian, Associated Press

July 2, 2015: The Dominican Time Bomb, The New York Times Magazine, by Jonathan M. Katz

July 5, 2015: Deportations of Noncitizens in Dominican Republic Protested by Activists in Boston, The Boston Globe, by Laura Crimaldi

I have found myself turning the most to the coverage in The Guardian. (Search "Dominican Republic" on The Guardian's homepage for articles on the issue that go back several years.) How will you stay on top of news on this issue?

Jurassic World and A Jurassic Library Sequel?

As someone whose entire social media presence is predicated on the concept of a reading dinosaur, I feel absolutely obligated to post about Jurassic World. First impression: the movie was awesome! Last impression: the movie was awesome! I suspect anyone who didn't think it was awesome didn't want to think it was awesome, and went into the movie waiting to be disappointed.

Universal Pictures, how about Jurassic Library as the next movie in the franchise? With short arms and eyes on the side of his head, reading is pretty close to impossible for T-Rex, who clearly needs some help. The plot of Jurassic Library begins as BD Wong genetically engineers a T-Rex with longer arms and more forward eye placement for better binocular vision.

Reading in the Wild: Provo, Utah, and Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones

Work travel recently took me to Provo, Utah, in the gorgeous Utah Valley. As a Phoenix native, I feel most at home when I'm near mountains, and the snow-covered peaks of the Utah Valley mountains made quite the impression on me. Though it was my first time visiting Utah, I felt right at home.

Book Counter, Pioneer Book, Provo, UT

When I'm traveling for work, it might go without saying that I don't have much in the way of free time, but I got to sneak in a couple of quick treats during my time in Provo. My first night in town, an open schedule coupled with a late 9 pm sunset gave me the opportunity to explore the small, adorable downtown area. Filled with small restaurants and shops, I came across Pioneer Book, and never able to resist a bookstore (and a used one at that!), I went in to explore. I came to find that it was a newer establish, but I am not exaggerating when I say it was one of the most organized bookstores I've seen. I lost track of time browsing the fiction shelves, and before I knew it, the music volume turned up as a gentle reminder that the store was closing. I checked out with the exceptionally kind staff member who agreed to pay my loyalty card forward to the next local shopper,  and I left quite happy with my decision to get Elie Wiesel's Dawn (it is my name after all!) and Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. 

When I settled in for the night in my spacious yet noisy Marriott Hotel room, unmotivated to continue with my current read, Continental Divide by Russell Banks, which I've been forcing myself to read because I'm not a quitter, I picked up The Lovely Bones. I picked it up and carried it right up a mountain with me.

Y Mountain is one peak in the Wasatch Mountain Range. Because of it's proximity to the Brigham Young University campus, the mountain became involved in some junior versus senior class prank over a hundred years ago. In the years since, it became tradition to maintain a Y on the mountain. This must have been no easy feat. Now at least there is a trail, but one that consists of 11 painful switchbacks, not to mention the elevation change. I felt like a champion when I reached the top of the Y, only to discover a trail that goes further, but after I realized that proper hiking boots rather than sneakers might fit the bill better, I turned around, followed the trail to the bottom of the Y, and parked myself there reading until the sun rose over the mountain.

Over the next few days, I read the book in every spare moment, and due to several hours of frustrating travel delays out of Salt Lake City, I finished The Lovely Bones before the plane even left the runway. The book is moving and suspenseful. About the tragic murder of a young girl in a small community, the book details the struggle of the victim looking down from heaven as her family mourns and wonders if her murderer will ever be discovered. I was left with the thought that we would all hope to be fortunate to have a family that passionately remembers and seeks justice for their lost loved one, but simultaneously melancholy at the family's reality that the death grew into an obsessive life of its own.

Sebold, Alice. The Lovely Bones. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2007.

Introducing Punctuated Posts

Happy birthday to me! As I get older, I like to think I'm getting wiser, and one of the things I've been getting wiser about is how I spend my time. Sometimes I just have a smidgeon to say about something, and sometimes those thoughts aren't specifically about the books I'm reading (though sometimes they are), and I'm going to start sharing those thoughts in brief, intermittent musings I am calling Punctuated Posts. I hope you enjoy this new aspect of the blog!

Sprouts: My New Favorite Bookmarks, Naturally

If you had asked me last year what my favorite bookmark was, the answer would have been easy: my Phoenix Suns bookmark circa 1994 from the Charles Barkley era of the Suns. I mean, the bookmark had Dan Majerle AND the Phoenix Suns gorilla, so how could it have not been my favorite? Used to mark my page in many a book, I had to retire the beloved place holder many years ago as it started to deteriorate, but without a doubt it remained my favorite because of sentimentally attached.

If you ask me now what my favorite bookmark is, I would have no choice but to tell you my favorite bookmark has changed, thanks to a gift I got from a dear friend. These bookmarks are adorable. They are little green silicone rubber sprouts that shoot out of the top of the book. Here is a shot of the bookmark in action.

How cute is that? The sprout bookmarks are from Fred & Friends. They come in a pack of six, so no worries if you read multiple books at a time and need a marker for each. Another bonus is that they are synthetic, and so I'll never have to worry about the wear and tear of a paper bookmark. They also give a little touch of nature to your book, which just makes me happy. 

In sum, if you are looking for a gift for a bookworm friend, or if you are in the market for some sturdy bookmarks to replace the random things you're using to mark your place now (I am guilty of using hair ties, receipts, even a Kleenex from time to time), then I would recommend these, my new favorite bookmarks, naturally.

Were You Raised in a Virtual Barn? Thoughts on Social Networking Etiquette

There is no Emily Post of social networking. Oftentimes, we are on our own when we find ourselves asking ourselves: Do we reject that person’s Facebook friend request, or just let it sit in our notifications queue so they can’t friend request us again? When should we follow someone back on Twitter? Do other people mind when we check them in on FourSquare, or do they only use it to lurk and prefer to keep their whereabouts private? What is a good rule of thumb for determining whether it is appropriate to post pictures of other people to Tumblr or Instagram? Social networking brings people closer together, and that is usually pretty awesome; however, it seems people forget that, like any other social situation, you should think before you speak (or post), mind your p’s and q’s, and give credit where credit is due (don’t steal people’s content and thank people for sharing yours).

There are innumerable things that people do on social networking sites that can be irksome, but there are some things that I consider to fall into the category of bad social networking etiquette.  Here are just a few:

• Don’t retweet people who have just retweeted you. If I follow you, I prefer to only see your message once; not every time you retweet any Joe Schmo who thought your tweet was funny or retweetable. I saw your tweet once; I don’t want to see it again.
• Consider carefully before you publicly correct someone or draw attention to someone’s error. I corrected someone who was very gracious in responding, but I later felt like a jackass even though I was correct. This was on Twitter, and a direct message may have been more appropriate. I also have been corrected. In a specific case, I was annoyed by the fact that the person simply didn’t get my pun. Unless you are sure that it is necessary to correct someone or that you haven’t misinterpreted their message, then think twice about it. It may result in you looking silly, and it will put the other person in an uncomfortable situation of wanting to defend him or herself.
• Everyone likes the life of the party, but don’t be an attention hog. Know your audience, notice what other people are doing, and post in accordance with that. While it isn’t that unusual for people to tweet several times a day, I don’t want to see what you are doing every hour on Facebook, and I’m not going to read your blog if it reads like text messages to a close friend. Be conscientious of your socially networked friends and their interests.
• Please don’t post something emotionally vague. This either tends to make people think you are on the verge of offing yourself or that you are trying to get attention, and sometimes both. If you have a situation you can’t be explicit about, then it is probably too private to post about. If something is truly wrong, think about picking up the phone and calling a friend or a self-help line instead.
•  Cyberbullying is a huge problem, especially among youth. As if kids needed one more way for the mean kids to make fun of them. Don’t use social networking to be a bully. Just don’t. In a virtual space that allows anyone with a Twitter handle to be a critic, I still try to heed the age-old advice, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

I’m sure there could be an entire blog devoted to social networking etiquette, and maybe there is. Maybe that person will someday be a household name just like Emily Post. Until that day comes, I hope people use some common sense and social grace when navigating their social networks.

List o' Book Lists

I love list. And no, I'm not just looking at things and saying I love them. Lists make my life possible: grocery lists, To Get Done lists, I Do lists (what I call my wedding to do list), contact lists, and, of course, book lists. With the end of the year always comes a deluge of "best of" lists, and none are more enticing to me than the best books lists. It is a special sort of joy to read through a list of books that come highly recommended that you haven't already read so that you can, naturally, put them on your To Read list. I've collected here some of the Best Books of 2013 lists that I appreciate for one reason or another:

NPR's Book Concierge: Our Guide to 2013's Great Reads

This year, NPR decided to forego a list and has created an innovative, interactive site of tiled book covers that you can adapt to your reading preferences. I'm quite smitten with this design.

75 Notable Translations 2013 (World Literature Today)

Luckily, it seems like every year more and more contemporary fiction books get translated. This list is a real resource, in my opinion. Scroll to the very bottom to see WLT editors' picks for best translations of the year.

Riot Round-Up: The Best Books of 2013
Self-described as a list "as eclectic and indiosyncratic" as the Book Riot bloggers are, this list has a few books I just can't wait to read, and many more I hadn't even heard of this year. Who doesn't like hearing about new books?

The Overlooked Books of 2013 (Slate)
If you're interested in what Slate editors consider to be the books from 2013 that you haven't heard about but should have, then here you go.

Independents' View of 2013's Best Books (The Guardian)
We can't forget about our friends across the pond, and independent bookstores throughout the United Kingdom provided The Guardian with their picks for books of the year.  

Favorite 2013 Books of 50 Famous People (The Wall Street Journal)
I'm always intrigued by what famous people are reading--and in this case, who The Wall Street Journal thinks of as famous and noteworthy. There are some pretty interesting picks on this list.

River City Reading's Best Books (and Blogger Voices) of 2013
I appreciate this list because it features 10 books that are the compiler's favorites of the year along with the thoughts of her favorite reviewers and bloggers.

100 Notable Books of 2013 (The New York Times)

This list is on the lengthy side, including 50 non-fiction and 50 fiction titles, and has enough suggestions to perhaps keep you reading until the next decade.

The 10 Best Books of 2013 (The New York Times)

If 100 is too many titles to digest, NYT narrowed their list of 100 notable titles down to their picks for the 10 best books of the year.

2013 Puddly Awards (Powell's Books)

Okay, so technically this award was given in early 2013 to great 2012 books, and you'll have to stay tuned for the 2014 award nominees for the best of 2013 books (thus its position on the list). The webpage provides numerous great titles from the previous year from Powell's Books readers. Also, how cute is the name Puddly Awards?

Happy reading in 2014!

The Time I Met The Subversive Copy Editor

I have a long relationship with style guides. For most of my academic career, I was loyal to MLA. We were close, and I loved the laissez-faire attitude it had—almost anything went in the relationship so long as you were consistent. But at a certain point, I just wanted more from a style guide. It wasn’t MLA; it was me. APA and I got to know each other well because of some freelance work, but we never got serious. I admire its brevity and attention to social scientific concerns, but we are just friends. CMOS, however, is the style guide love of my life. Its big, comprehensive index; its bright, colorful jacket; its sturdy, thick binding; its detail-oriented rules and abundant examples—what’s not to love about The Chicago Manual of Style? 

So, imagine my excitement when I got to meet the editor of the CMOS online Q & A forum, Carol Fisher Saller (@SubvCopyEd), who just happened to pay a visit to the University of Illinois Press last week, which just happens to be my place of employment. Carol Saller is a manuscript editor at the University of Chicago Press, and many know her as The Subversive Copy Editor. Her book by the same name is a delight to read, and the cover is pretty darn amazing, too.

 

She signed my book!

In all the excitement of meeting her, I apparently referred to University of Chicago Press as University Press of Chicago—how embarrassing! I had a zillion questions for her: As a manuscript editor, how was the process of having your own manuscript edited and put through production? Or was it perfect already? Do you have any other books in the works? What is the process of updating the new editions of the CMOS like? How do you come up with rule changes? Is it like 12 Angry Men with everyone seriously debating in a room? Do you have a running list between editions? What’s on the list right now? Will you sign my book? 

 I didn’t get to ask all my questions—I had to hold back on my crazy vibe—but that didn’t matter. Hearing her speak was wonderful. We even found out that she got her start as a freelancer in the Chicago office of our very press! She is a great storyteller, and she was a charming guest. She shared many stories of the various types of submission the Q&A receives, and she discussed the large, dedicated following of the style guide and the Q&A. One thing is certain: I’m not alone in my appreciation of CMOS.

Saller, Carol Fisher. The Subversive Copyeditor. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2009.

Chloe In Memoriam

I know this blog is usually about reading-type things, but what's the point of having a personal blog if you can't write about whatever you want? Today, I want to write about Chloe, who went to cat heaven this morning.

Chloe is my mom's cat. In fact, I got my mom Chloe as a birthday gift when I was in high school. It was a kind of sneaky affair. My mom had wanted a cat for awhile. She had grown up with a cat, but my dad sometimes has trouble with allergies (as it turns out, his cat allergies aren't all that bad). One year, though, my dad inadvertently booked reservations at the Grand Canyon over her birthday weekend, and so he was away. In my mind, this created the perfect opportunity for my mom to get a kitten. For her birthday, we went to the Humane Society to get a cat, and we came home with Chloe. For her first few weeks, as she got used to her new home she lived in my bedroom, and I got to play with her to my heart's content. Who doesn't love being woken up by an adorable, rambunctious kitten? Throughout her kittenhood, Chloe was a playful, friendly, good-natured cat. Occasionally, you'd go to pull out a chair from the kitchen table and find it strangely heavy because this was one of Chloe's prime napping spots. As an adult, she was motherly towards the other cats in the house, and her favorite spot just happened to be wherever my mom was. It is awful to lose a pet who had been a part of our family for so long, but the memory of the happiness she brought us will certainly outlast our sadness today.

12/12/12

Today is 12/12/12 and unless someone comes up for a cure for death or we completely redo the Gregorian calendar system, this is the last time I expect to see the day, month, and year all be the same number. I clearly couldn't resist creating a blogpost to commemorate the day! Is it the luckiest day in our lifetime? Who am I to say? All I know is, I hate to pass up a good reason for a happy hour celebration, and I like to think that in 89 years, people will be just as excited for 1/1/01 as people were today for 12/12/12.

Alphabet Soup: PD at TOC, AAUP, and SSP

The students of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have returned, and that can only mean one thing: summer has come to an end. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you look forward to winter (which I don’t) or if you had a bad summer (which I didn’t). I got to go home this summer to visit friends and family, got to go on a few trips, and got an iPhone, which may as well be surgically attached to my hand. In the midst of all that fun, I also had some great experiences that helped me to sink my teeth a little deeper into the world of scholarly publishing. When you move halfway across the country for a job and then that job provides you with wonderful professional development (PD) opportunities, that is a very good thing. In addition to the University of Illinois Press sending a number of people from our marketing and acquisitions department to Mini O’Reilly Tools of Change Chicago (TOC), many of us were also given the opportunity to attend the Association of American University Presses (AAUP), which, in case you don’t know, is like Mecca for university press folks.

As if those opportunities weren’t enough, I was also a recipient of an early-career professional travel grant from the Society of Scholarly Publishing (SSP). To understand the level of excitement that came with the news that I received the grant, you will also need to know that I had applied for an SSP annual meeting travel grant multiple times as a student. Finally, this summer, victory was mine! Attending the conference was a valuable experience: I was able to immerse myself in scholarly publishing dialogues that extended beyond university presses, I was a part of an incredible cohort of fellow grant recipients, and I was paired with a generous and kind mentor. The only thing we were asked for in return? We were asked to write a letter after the conference to discuss our experience and provide overall feedback. If you are curious to hear my expanded thoughts on the meeting, they are here for your reading pleasure.

I would like to start off by saying thank you to the Society for Scholarly Publishing for incorporating student and early career professional development grants into their yearly practice. The early career grant afforded me the opportunity to attend the conference, which I would have been unable to do otherwise, and I had a valuable, educational, and professionally fulfilling experience. I think the greatest benefit of the grant include the pairing with a mentor—my mentor, Alice Meadows, was very generous with her time and left such a positive impression that I would never hesitate to contact her in the future for mentoring and advice. The other great benefit of the grant is that the grant recipients functioned as a cohort throughout the meeting—this is an incredible bonus when you are attending a conference for the first time and you do not know anyone else. Dinner the first evening as a group was instrumental in forming ties, and it was wonderful to see familiar faces in the crowd as we attended meetings and events throughout the remainder of the meeting and discuss our thoughts and impressions of the sessions and our roles in publishing. I was even able to connect with one grant recipient and with the SSP President at AAUP in Chicago.

There were many ways in which my expectations of what I would learn at the SSP Annual Meeting differed from what I actually learned. In selecting the sessions to attend, it was obvious that the meeting was geared not only toward journals, but toward the sciences. I went into the meeting expecting to learn a great deal about journals; however, I was often surprised about how many of the topics discussed in relation to journals can be applied more broadly to scholarly publications overall—indeed, books can learn from the trials of journals in regard to open access, peer review, and using metrics. That being said, as a person who works in books in the humanities, I would have liked to see more panels on topics more related to my professional field. I was shocked to hear a gentleman in an elevator with an SSP name badge explain to a hotel guest that the meeting was about science journals—scholarly publishing is much broader than that! 

For me, a devoted reader of the Scholarly Kitchen blog, the absolute pinnacle of the meeting was meeting Kent Anderson. I got to shake the hand of the editor-in-chief of one of the best sources for scholarly news and discussion! Other highlights included the panels themselves. The session on libraries as publishers was interesting and made me think about how the University of Illinois Press can form a stronger relationship with the University of Illinois Library and perhaps utilize the strengths of the library in our projects, especially where ancillary content is involved. Perhaps the most exciting session was Publishers! What Are They Good For? This session made clear the conflict between the traditional ways of publishing and new theories and practices about activities like peer review. David Crotty of OUP and Jason Priem engaged in a lively debate about the interpretation and use of metrics in peer review. From this panel, I took away a sense that the future of publishing would never be traditional practices traded in for new technologies, but instead the future of publishing and peer review will pick methods that can enhance our foundational procedures and move them forward to be more efficient and useful to bettering scholarship. Another highlight was Making eBooks Easier. As a reader of electronic books, and as a person at a press who is moving into the ebook world, I thought this panel was fascinating, especially in how it drew attention to the benefits of having a universal but modular platform that would set standards and provide consistency for ebooks. 

As I returned to work after the meeting, I realized I was energized and full of ideas that I had been exposed to at the meeting. I was able to report to my department about the things I had learned, and although it has not led to the implementation of big ideas or changes (yet), I was able to take away from the meeting a more well-rounded view of how my sector within scholarly publishing can be more innovative, more adaptable, and to steal from the conference theme, be more social, mobile, agile, and global in how we approach some projects. In terms of professional development, I think one of the most important things I gained from the conference was the confidence to approach and engage in conversation with people in the publishing industry. As someone relatively new to the industry, this conference provided an ideal opportunity to mingle, network, connect, and trade stories about how other people do their jobs. 

So, what am I going to do next? I'm going to get back to reading some books!

From the Desert to the Prairie

Today, for the first time ever, I was unable to open the window of my car because it was frozen shut. There was too much ice, and the poor little motor in my window just couldn’t do it. Yes, folks, this is my first winter, and I don’t like it one bit. This whole season thing has taken me quite by surprise. To make it worse, it seems undeniable that this is one of the mildest winters in recent memory! What will I do when winter sets in for real?

Fall had its perks, but the short days, dreadful weather, and ice that stays in the shadows to surprise you when you slip on it are just are not fun! I hail from a place where there are two discernable seasons: hot and less hot, and right now is the wonderful, glorious, spectacular less-hot season in Phoenix—and Facebook posts keep reminding me that I am missing it. There are so many new things to deal with in this climate! The newish, often-challenging job at UIP is cake compared to the meteorological issues! Just off the top of my head, here is a list of things I’ve had to obtain since moving to Illinois that I’ve never had to own before, and most things on the list I never even realized other people had to buy.

Cuddl Duds

ear muffs

fur-lined boots

ice scraper

lawn waste bags

non-AZ driver’s license and plates

rake

snow shovel

yak traks

My feet haven’t even slipped into my comfy flip-flops in weeks, if not months, and it is such a strange adjustment! The cute, fashionable mittens that were always just right for riding my bike in the cool, December, Tempe air now don’t even cut it for a walk out to the car to scrape the ice of my windshield. I know I am lucky to be able to ease into winter with unseasonably reasonable weather this Champaign-Urbana winter, but, I must ask, when does winter end?