Hey, so, it's January 1st, 2011.
I began Wrap-up Season on December 1st, but here I am a month later with all kinds of stuff left to wrap up! I wanted to write two posts on "Books That Left Me With Somewhat Mixed Opinions" which would have included all kinds of 200 word takedowns on such eminent books as Moby Dick, The Red and the Black, Sophie's Choice, Persuasion, and, well, all kinds of stuff.
I wanted to have a post where I excerpted from the roughly 10-15 reviews that mentioned the three stories I published this year. (Yeah, I know about pretty much every internet post that contains my first name. [For instance, Lois Tilton mentioned it in her year end summary of top fictions that have appeared in various magazines! In Locus!])
I wanted to write about all kinds of things. But I didn't get around to it. December's been a pretty busy month. I was racing to meet my goal of 280,000 words for the year and 25 stories for the year. But mostly, my mind just turned in other directions. Summation requires a certain joi de vivre that has been slow in coming for the last two weeks. I wasn't really depressed, but I was feeling a certain melancholy. Melancholy is the way I handle major life transitions. There's a sorrow for the things I am about to leave behind, and I mourn them before they pass.
So my heart hasn't really been in wrapping up, and January 1st allows me to officially give up on the whole thing.
2010 was a really great year. It did not begin so well. The first third of it involved me getting rejected by eleven graduate programs. But selling three stories, writing 27 stories, and finishing a novel made it pretty good. Of course, as is probably the case for most of us, the real joys of the year had very little to do with writing, and are not really anything I feel comfortable talking about on a blog. But suffice it to say that my life really changed, and one of the results of that change was that I was able to commit to writing in a way that had not been possible for me before. That commitment bore immediate fruit, in terms of my sale to Clarkesworld, and the presence of this awesome, delicious fruit reconfirmed the wisdom of making those changes.
Furthermore, locking down all of that personal stuff has allowed me to do something I've wanted to do for awhile. I'm leaving D.C. and returning to the West Coast (probably Oakland)*. Right now the plan is to continue working for the World Bank for at least another six months, but I will be doing so on kind of a long distance basis.
I'll be sad to leave D.C.
This is the city where I did a substantial amount of my growing up. My family moved to one of D.C.'s Maryland suburbs when I was in 3rd grade (maybe 1993?) and moved to D.C. proper when I was in 7th grade (wanna say...1997?). This was my home base all through college. My parents moved to India around eighteen months ago when my brother went to college, but I've been holding down the house for them. Now that I'm leaving, the place will pass into other hands. It might be the last time I'll see it. It'll definitely be the last time I live in it. My cat, who's been with us for fourteen years, is moving to Delhi too, next week. And as she flies East, I'll be driving West.
But, it's time for some new things.
Oh, the one part of Wrap-Up Season that I will proceed with as planned is posting a list of all the books I read. I kind of wavered on this, because the main purpose of posting it is just to be all like, "Well, I read alot of books this year" (roughly 180). And boasting is not a very attractive trait in a person. On the other hand, I really do like it when people post the books they've read in a year (for instance, look at Art Garfunkel's totally sweet list of every book he's read since 1968). So I decided to post the list without comment.
| Letters of Heloise and Abelard | Abelard, Peter and Heloise d'Argenteuil |
| Rashomon and Other Stories | Akutagawa, Ryunosuke |
| The Clouds | Aristophanes |
| The Handmaid's Tale | Atwood, Margaret |
| The Dyer's Hand and other essays | Auden, W.H. |
| Sense and Sensibility | Austen, Jane |
| Persuasion | Austen, Jane |
| Northanger Abbey | Austen, Jane |
| City of Glass | Auster, Paul |
| Tell It On The Mountain | Baldwin, James |
| Giovanni's Room | Baldwin, James |
| Notes of a Native Son | Baldwin, James |
| Crash | Ballard, J.G. |
| Lost in the Funhouse | Barth, John |
| Chimera | Barth, John |
| Mythologies | Barthes, Roland |
| Simulacra and Simulation | Baudrillard, Jean |
| Waiting For Godot | Beckett, Samuel |
| The History of the Caliph Vathek | Beckford, William |
| Ravelstein | Bellow, Saul |
| Humboldt's Gift | Bellow, Saul |
| Mr. Sammler's Planet | Bellow, Saul |
| Seize The Day | Bellow, Saul |
| Valiant | Black, Holly |
| Manifestoes of Surrealism | Breton, Andre |
| Jane Eyre | Bronte, Charlotte |
| Wuthering Heights | Bronte, Emily |
| World War Z | Brooks, Max |
| Factotum | Bukowski, Charles |
| The Master and Margarita | Bulgakov, Mikhail |
| Reflections on the Revolution in France | Burke, Edmund |
| Naked Lunch | Burroughs, William S. |
| The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays | Camus, Albert |
| Death Comes For The Archbishop | Cather, Willa |
| Oh Pioneers! | Cather, Willa |
| My Antonia | Cather, Willa |
| Journey To The End Of The Night | Celine, Louis-Ferdinand |
| The Big Sleep | Chandler, Raymond |
| Stories | Chekhov, Anton |
| The Man Who Was Thursday, a nightmare | Chesterton, G. K. |
| The Lifecycle of Software Objects | Chiang, Ted |
| Disgrace | Coetzee, J. M. |
| 'Twixt Land and Sea | Conrad, Joseph |
| Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction | Culler, Jonathan |
| Barthes: A Very Short Introduction | Culler, Jonathan |
| Undead and Unwed | Davidson, Mary Janice |
| Confessions of an English Opium-Eater | De Quincey, Thomas |
| A Journal of the Plague Year | Defoe, Daniel |
| The Jewel-Hinged Jaw | Delany, Samuel |
| The American Shore | Delany, Samuel |
| Bleak House | Dickens, Charles |
| 334 | Disch, Thomas M. |
| Songs and Sonnets | Donne, John |
| The Double and the Gambler | Dostoyevsky, Fyodor |
| Demons | Dostoyevsky, Fyodor |
| Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass | Douglass, Frederick |
| Year's Best Science Fiction: 26th Annual Collection | Dozois, Gardner (ed) |
| The Souls of Black Folk | Du Bois, W. E. B. |
| First Essays | Emerson, Ralph Waldo |
| The Sound and the Fury | Faulkner, William |
| The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam | Fitzgerald, Edward |
| Pat Hobby Stories | Fitzgerald, F. Scott |
| The Great Gatsby (reread) | Fitzgerald, F. Scott |
| Sandman: #1-75 | Gaiman, Neil |
| On Becoming A Novelist | Gardner, John |
| Faust, Part One | Goethe, J. W. von |
| Tales | Gogol, Nikolai |
| I, Claudius (reread) | Graves, Robert |
| The Third Man | Greene, Graham |
| The Maltese Falcon | Hammett, Dashiel |
| Red Harvest | Hammett, Dashiel |
| The Glass Key | Hammett, Dashiel |
| The Dain Curse | Hammett, Dashiel |
| The Thin Man | Hammett, Dashiel |
| Mathematician's Apology | Hardy, G.H. |
| Mayor of Casterbridge | Hardy, Thomas |
| The Blithedale Romance | Hawthorne, Nathaniel |
| The Scarlet Letter | Hawthorne, Nathaniel |
| Catch-22 | Heller, Joseph |
| The Sun Also Rises | Hemingway, Ernest |
| Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding | Hume, David |
| Berlin Stories | Isherwood, Christopher |
| A Single Man | Isherwood, Christopher |
| Varieties of Religious Experience | James, William |
| Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man | Joyce, James |
| Dharma Bums | Kerouac, Jack |
| Unaccustomed Earth | Lahiri, Jhumpa |
| The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo | Larsen, Stieg |
| Babbitt | Lewis, Sinclair |
| Main Street | Lewis, Sinclair |
| Arrowsmith | Lewis, Sinclair |
| Elmer Gantry | Lewis, Sinclair |
| Dodsworth | Lewis, Sinclair |
| The Ask | Lipsyte, Sam |
| Gentlemen Prefer Blondes | Loos, Anita |
| Of The Nature Of Things | Lucretius |
| The Day The Leader Was Killed | Mahfouz, Naguib |
| News of a Kidnapping | Marquez, Gabriel Garcia |
| Chronicle of a Death Foretold | Marquez, Gabriel Garcia |
| No One Writes To The Colonel | Marquez, Gabriel Garcia |
| Clandestine in Chile | Marquez, Gabriel Garcia |
| Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor | Marquez, Gabriel Garcia |
| "The Mystery Knight" | Martin, George R. R. |
| The Communist Manifesto | Marx, Karl |
| They Shoot Horses, Don't They? | McCoy, Horace |
| Moby Dick | Melville, Herman |
| Billy Budd, the Sailor (an inside story) | Melville, Herman |
| Damn! A Book of Calumny | Mencken, H. L. |
| Miscellaneous Poems | Milton, John |
| Paradise Regained | Milton, John |
| Cloud Atlas | Mitchell, David |
| The Killing Joke | Moore, Alan et al |
| After Dark | Murakami, Haruki |
| Pnin | Nabokov, Vladimir |
| Lectures on Russian Literature | Nabokov, Vladimir |
| The Defense | Nabokov, Vladimir |
| Bachelor of Arts | Narayan, R. K. |
| Zombie | Oates, Joyce Carol |
| Scott Pilgrim: Vols 1-6 | O'Malley, Bryan Lee |
| Down and Out in Paris and London | Orwell, George |
| Homage to Catalonia | Orwell, George |
| Road to Wigan Pier | Orwell, George |
| Fight Club | Palahniuk, Chuck |
| The Bell Jar | Plath, Sylvia |
| Parallel Lives, Volume I | Plutarch |
| Parallel Lives, Volume II | Plutarch |
| The Crying of Lot 49 | Pynchon, Thomas |
| Even Cowgirls Get The Blues | Robbins, Tom |
| Another Roadside Attraction | Robbins, Tom |
| The Dying Animal | Roth, Phillip |
| Midnight's Children | Rushdie, Salman |
| The Female Man | Russ, Joanna |
| How To Suppress Women's Writing | Russ, Joanna |
| History of Western Philosophy | Russell, Bertrand |
| Franny and Zooey | Salinger, J.D. |
| Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters; and Seymour: An Introduction | Salinger, J.D. |
| Blindness | Saramogo, Jose |
| Macbeth | Shakespeare, William |
| Merchant of Venice | Shakespeare, William |
| The Tempest | Shakespeare, William |
| Henry IV, part one | Shakespeare, William |
| Henry IV, part two | Shakespeare, William |
| Kokoro | Soeseki, Natsume |
| Botchan | Soeseki, Natsume |
| The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas | Stein, Gertrude |
| Charterhouse of Parma | Stendhal |
| The Red and the Black | Stendhal |
| Eminent Victorians | Strachey, Lytton |
| The Prose Edda | Sturluson, Snurri |
| Sophie's Choice | Styron, William |
| Darkness Visible | Styron, William |
| Vanity Fair | Thackeray, William Makepeace |
| The Great Shark Hunt | Thompson, Hunter S. |
| Democracy in America - Volume One | Tocqueville, Alexis de |
| Anna Karenina | Tolstoy, Leo |
| What is Art? | Tolstoy, Leo |
| A Confession | Tolstoy, Leo |
| The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories | Tolstoy, Leo |
| War and Peace | Tolstoy, Leo |
| A Confederacy of Dunces | Toole, John Kennedy |
| Fathers and Sons | Turgenev, Ivan |
| Booklife | Vandermeer, Jeff |
| Letters on England | Voltaire |
| Candide | Voltaire |
| Philosophical Dictionary | Voltaire |
| The Secret Lives Of Men And Women | Warren, Frank (ed) |
| Up From Slavery, an autobiography | Washington, Booker T. |
| Double Helix | Watson, James |
| Best Friends Forever | Weiner, Jennifer |
| Bridge Over The San Luis Rey | Wilder, Thornton |
| Bellwether | Willis, Connie |
| Right-Ho, Jeeves | Wodehouse, P.G. |
| Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak-Catchers | Wolfe, Tom |
| The Pump House Gang | Wolfe, Tom |
| To The Lighthouse | Woolf, Virginia |
| A Room of One's Own | Woolf, Virginia |
| The Collected Stories | Yates, Richard |
*It feels kind of silly to talk about moving, when I talk about virtually none of the details of my private life, but I am always very disconcerted when the authors of blogs I read suddenly jump from one city to another, so I swore to myself an undying vow that I would mark my moves with a blog entry.