Songs that voices never shared, 'cause no one dared

to take a grad student in their acapella group. I must admit that I'm disappointed. I thought the auditions went very well, and (perhaps a bit arrogantly) I assumed that all my previous experience would make me more attractive to groups. Perhaps they thought I was overqualified, and thought that I would try and take charge, not understanding that I was looking forward to not being in charge. But I didn't even get a callback, which doesn't do wonders for my perception of my singing ability. In all fairness, they had a heck of a lot of people trying out (auditions were every 10 minutes from 6-11 pm) and they were very selective, with each group only calling back about 8-10 people. They might also have known that my degree is only for 1 year, and not wanted to spend the time teaching me when I'll be gone next year. I know there are a lot of factors that go into selecting new members: which voice parts you need, temperament of the group, availability, voice quality, musical ability, etc. It's just frustrating because the other vocal groups like choir meet during the time I have classes, so I can't participate in those. I really wanted something fun to look forward to, and to get back into singing. At least I'm in the folk group for mass, but that's not the same either.

Most recently read: Sophie's Choice, by William Styron. I actually started this a while ago, but I kept reading other things in the middle of it. It was on the classics shelf in the library, and I had never heard of it or the author, so I decided to pick it up. The back cover says:

William Styron's most complete and ambitious novel begins with a young Southerner journeying North in 1947 to become a writer. It leads us into Stingo's infatuated yet uneasy involvement with his neighbors: the demonically brilliant Jew, Nathan, and his Polish lover, Sophie, a beautiful woman with a number tattooed on her arm and an unbearable secret in her past. And finally Sophie's Choice leads to an unblinking confrontation with what can only be called pure evil.

I didn't really get most of that from reading this book...I certainly didn't consider Nathan to be "demonically brilliant." Intelligent, yes, and with a seductive personality for the protagonists that didn't really carry through to me. And maybe Sophie just rambled so much about many bad things that I didn't get the specifics of what was unbearable. But if there was supposed to be a big dramatic moment for this "confrontation with pure evil," I missed that. Other Holocaust novels portray the evil much better than this one. I wouldn't have called this book a waste of my time, but it didn't really give me anything either, especially since a good deal of the book is devoted to Stingo's obsession with sex and the fact that he is a virgin and his remedy for that condition.