The university closes early today, and doesn't reopen until after the new year. Hooray and hoorah!
With a few exceptions both political (this Sunday's march in solidarity with the people of Gaza) and social (a movie or two, a new year's eve party), I'll be reading and writing for the next 11 days. The reading will be a joy, especially because I've got a nice pile to pick from after I finish the book I'm currently reading, which is Joyce Carol Oates' latest novel and is very very good, better in my opinion than her last couple. I'm also quite pumped about getting some serious writing time; I'll be returning to my novel in progress, which I'd shamefully let lie fallow for a while but am now excited to get moving on again.
I don't expect I'll get to this book for a while, certainly not during the holiday break, but it's caught my interest, especially as I'm about to embark on an intense reading bloc. Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf. Although it's always necessary to take a leery approach to any of this evolutionary biology stuff, drenched in bourgeois ideology as most of it is and deeply political as it is despite all disclaimers, still I keep getting drawn to books like this. Earlier this week the Christian Science Monitor interviewed Wolf for a piece about the differences between e-reading and book reading--the differences in your brain, that is--and it looks like she made some interesting points. I've printed it out to read during the break.
What I won't do, if the days go as I hope, is blog. For the next 11 days I intend to turn on my computer only to write. Can I pull it off? Who knows. Wish me luck. And I in turn wish you rest, warmth, renewal, and good reading in 2010. See you on the other side.
