Space Station Mir

Happy Top Ten Tuesday! I think about this a lot because I do teach classes! But instead of my more hum-drum reading lists for English Composition, which you can find here , here are the reading lists for imaginary classes I'd like to teach: Early Modern British Literature (Note: would not necessarily teach in this order) 1. King Lear by William Shakespeare 2. Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare 3. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare 4. Hero and Leander by Christopher Marlowe 5. Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe 6. Comus by John Milton 7. Penshurst and other poems by Ben Jonson 8. Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum by Aemilia Lanyer 9. The Poems of Katherine Philips (No Image Available) 10. Assaulted and Pursued Chastity by Margaret Cavendish Extras: The Sonnets, selected poems from John Donne, selections from The Jew of Malta and The Duchess of Malfi , selected poems and speeches from Elizabeth I Utopian and Dystopian Li...

43. The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan I attended an event with Amy Tan a few years ago where she read from this book, and I've wanted to read it since. That was before it was published, and it took a few years, so by the time I found it again, it was a bargain hardcover at B&N. The premise of the story is unbelievable and shocking to me, and many of the events are hard to stomach because of the sheer powerlesssness of the primary female character. That said, the characters are interesting and their stories weird and wild. The writing feels less like her other books to me, I'm not sure I can describe how. Less mystical, more practical, maybe. The subject matter of mother/daughter relationships seems familiar, but all the mothers and daughters are apart for most of the story, and their stories revolve around other people and situations, even if a large part of their psyches are tied to the alienation of their relationships. Read it if you're interested in courtes...

In 1997, Anita Diamant's The Red Tent smeared historical fiction in menstrual blood. Women, especially Jewish women, read it breathless with recognition, awe, and sometimes, outrage and disgust. Little women, like myself, read it at midnight out of the bathroom cupboard, so our mothers wouldn't catch us (maybe that was just me). I don't remember men reading it. I don't remember conceiving of either historical fiction or women's fiction as genres before I read it, but after I read it and listened to the adults around me, I knew it to be both. At the time, I didn't question that there were such genres as historical fiction and women's fiction, and Jewish fiction. I didn't question that the depiction in The Red Tent was grossly ahistorical. I loved it, but I knew our foremothers couldn't have worshipped pagan gods or held arcane rituals around their menstrual blood. The attack on Shechem could not have been about anything other than the rape of ...