A Constant Pain A Thesis...

I'm getting there, slowly but surely. Hopefully my conference with my advisor today won't rip everything I've done to shreds, because I only have 5 more days to complete this thing. Though if we don't have to do the section on a conference proposal, then I'm in really good shape. It just seems generally ridiculous that I'm trying to do in two months what I did in a whole year at Bryn Mawr. Oh well. I'm not expecting it to be anywhere near as good--just done.

In other job searching news, my mom found out that Freedom has an English teacher opening, so I'm going to apply there. Wouldn't it drive John nuts if I got the job? ;)

Recently read: Pay the Piper and Troll Bridge, A Rock and Roll Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen and Adam Stemple. This series puts a new spin on fairy tales such as the Pied Piper of Hamelin, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and The Twelve Dancing Princesses, incorporating rock music into each of them in sort of a War for the Oaks way. But there's not really much to these books, partly because they are written for a younger audience. And while it's nice to have the lyrics to the songs in each book, I'd love to be able to hear them, because it's so hard to figure out what the rhythm of the lyrics should be without hearing the music--and I know the authors did.

Manstealing for Fat Girls by Michelle Embree. I should have stopped reading this when it was apparent that the writing wasn't going to get any better. Not much even happens in this book; the protagonist is dislikable, and I probably could have done a better job editing it. There's typos in some lines, for crying out loud! Yes, I know one or two isn't unusual, but there were enough to make me think no one was really paying attention to this book. Usually by the end of a YA book the protagonist goes through some sort of change, but I didn't really see that here--just a lot of espousal of drugs, underage drinking, shoplifting, and diet pills.

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. One of those YA supernatural romances, this one is about vampires. And it's pretty obvious from the start. The book had its good moments, especially in making the protagonist very clumsy--otherwise it might have sounded like a fanfic. And the clumsiness turned out to be important for the plot later. But when the protagonist doesn't connect dressing up in a fancy gown and having her boyfriend's sister do her hair and makeup with going to the prom--that I just didn't believe. Overall, I think that fantasy books that don't have romance as their main goal tend to do better than fantasy books that are intended to be supernatural romances.