I’m wading through some technical reading (yeah, I know, a family car trip is not the best time for that), but I wanted to post a comment about the great reading I’m going to be doing very shortly. I’m signed up to teach a course on “The Women of Southern Fiction,” a course I offered to teach since there seem to be interesting female figures writing fiction and in fiction of the South. William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, etc. So my summer reading (I LOVE MY JOB!) is to read and prepare class notes for the novels I’ve assigned my students in the fall. I’m reading some other works by the authors I’ve assigned, and it’s incredible fun. So nice to have control over the course I’m teaching and the books I’m teaching.
Oh, and in cleaning out my trunk of memories and papers I’ve saved from childhood, I stumbled across some really funny pictures of me in 5th grade, 10th grade, etc., when I had my hair up strangely, I looked uncomfortable, or I tried (failing miserably) to strike a serious and “thoughtful” pose. So nice to grow up and realize you don’t have to be painfully self-conscious forever, smiles really are the best way out of the situation, and though all fashion fads pass, some favorite shirts in the closet seem determined to stick around forever.
Erin
Alan Schmierer