Another Day in the Trenches

Lately I’ve been wondering if everyone thinks I’m a whiner. No doubt some people think I’m a whiner, but does everybody? A couple of weeks ago I had dinner with an old college friend, and I swear I heard her call me a wimp. I think she said, “One year is a long time if you’re a wimp,” in reference to my having said that I had looked into becoming an x-ray technologist at one point, but decided not to since the program was a year long, and I had already decided to get my MLIS in two years’ time. Anyway, that’s probably not what she said but I couldn’t figure out what else it could have been. What sounds like 'wimp' and makes sense in that context? Nothing that I can think of. Maybe she only said it to get back at me for saying that I have to wear socks and tennis shoes and look like a retard when I go anywhere, only to remember as I was saying it that she was wearing socks and tennis shoes [with shorts]. I’m sure everyone is tired of hearing me complain about how much I hate DC, though, which is probably why none of my friends are emailing me anymore.

So, to get off the whining tanget, I'm going to talk about something else today. Since I am supposedly a librarian, it seems appropriate to talk about books. I just got done reading 'The Feminine Mystique' by Betty Friedan, for the Banned Books Club that I just joined (we read banned books, we don't ban them ourselves). In some ways it was predictable; obviously I had known that the 50s and 60s were a very repressive period for women. What I didn't realize was how repressive it was, nor how much of a backslide these two decades were for feminism in general. I mean, I knew the first feminist movement had taken place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but I guess I had figured that women were slowly gaining rights from the time they got the vote until now. Not so, apparently. Friedan puts forth some pretty good theories and some appalling statistics (a huge jump in the number of post-World War II women who were getting married in their teens, as opposed to women in the 1930s and early 40s), but she's way off regarding other things like homosexuality. But you have to give her credit because this book was really one of the main catalysts for the feminist movement in the 60s and 70s, and she wrote it while being a 'housewife.'

Now I've moved on to another really uplifting book, 'We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families,' by Philip Gourevitch. It's about the Rwandan genocide - fun stuff! However, it's not as depressing as you would think (that sounds really insensitive, I know); it's very well-written and I highly recommend it so far. Interesting tidbits about France in there as well - I'm not anti-France, but it proves Americans aren't the only f*ckers in the world. It's a good wake-up call for self-absorbed people like me.

Anyone got any other recommendations as for good reading? As soon as I finish this book I'm headed back to fiction for awhile, although I've also been wanting to read Sarah Vowell's stuff.

P.S. The interview yesterday - very nice and informal. Too bad it took an hour and 40 minutes to get there. The Mary Thelen interview is this afternoon; really looking forward to that one.