foucault can go...

One of the pleasures of grad school is reading authors who for the most part were deemed irrelevant at the end of the last century by most of ordinary society. But am I really in normal society? No. Exhibit A: Foucault. While this French philosopher by all means has some influential and insightful ideas, reading him is literally like trying to read Russian. Which I do not speak. Or read. But through these really difficult authors which I have had to read for a few years now, including senior year of college, I have come to appreciate theoretical literary and artistic criticism much more than I ever thought I would. I still don't have too much of a fondness for Foucault, but I do quite enjoy Marx and Engels (especially the fact that they both had a passion for good wine), as well as some more modern postcolonial theory. While challenging, I have actually picked up quite a bit from many of the authors, and I am the better for it. So here's a challenge to you: read something that makes you think. No, it does not have to be all of Capital by Marx, but something that is much shorter can make you think just as much as a one-thousand page book. May I suggest something by Althusser or Horkheimer to get started? Do it, you will feel smarter and I know that some people are as crazy as me. I'm still not into Foucault though. He can go off and do some things that are too scandalous to put into writing. At least here anyway...

rediscovery.

I love finding things that you forgot about and then enjoying them again. This may just mean I have a bad memory, but when I find these forgotten things, I get really happy. Today it was my love of Argentine culture. Argentinos speak with a very distinct accent, and while I was listening to this song at work, I felt like I found a memory that made me really happy as I listened to the lyrics. Yes, the song is in Twilight, but the singer is an incredible Argentine actress who I first found out about during my junior year there. It didn't take me back to Argentina, per se, but rather to my love of literature and music from there. At work I also stumbled across a book by one of my favorite Argentine authors, Julio Cortázar, and I figured fate had to be at work somehow. So when I got home I dug my way out of Mexican paintings and back into some guacho stories and malbec. Well, mainly the malbec, but it still counts as apreciación argentina. 

http://bit.ly/Axbzsc

Well, I know this is me musing on wine and literature, but I really enjoy stumbling on these things once lost, and now found. Stay tuned! I tried out a DIY project and will be posting a how-to soon! Besos, che. 

i push books.

I really like books. Not just reading them, but they way they smell, feel, and the atmosphere they put in a room. Just ask my poor mother who has been dealing with my enormous book collection for years now. Books add something to my life in a way I just can't explain; they make me happy, nostalgic, and hopeful at the same time, and they have for as long as I can remember. For this reason, I push books. Some people may push drugs, alcohol, but I highly encourage the ingestion of books.


El Ateneo bookstore in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010.

Don't get me wrong, I love my Kindle, MacBook, and iPhone as much as the next modern twenty-something girl, but I think it is important to not let the role of the book fall by the wayside. Books hold so much - history, adventure, knowledge - and when we forget that we lose something. There are some books that you won't find digitally - and these are the books we cannot forget. Remember your favorite book that your mom read to you when you were little? Would it have been the same on an iPad? I think you can safely say no. There are also so many amazing books that tell you about culture - pick up an Emily Post book from the 1940s. I mean, isn't it cool? You can see how your grandparents thought and what they learned. In the same way your kids will pick up Harry Potter and learn something about you, you can learn something from an old book. Now you should take this with a grain of salt. I do (gladly) get paid to work in a library. This is actually the fourth library and/or archives I have worked in during my life. I mean, I was such a nerd that the summer after 6th grade I spent time volunteering at a library. But, I love them because they have books, which for me are really a portal to experience something different outside my hectic life. So the next time you read something online or on a Kindle, or hell, even on this blog, take a moment to remember what inspired writers for centuries, and what still inspires me, and perhaps you, today.