I assigned the Nora Ephron essay “A Few Words About Breasts” to my essay-writing class (Bulgasari helpfully provided a link to that essay in this comment), and the reaction was quite interesting. Some of the students claimed they were so shocked that teenaged American girls are so anxious about breast development, claiming adolescent Korean girls aren’t. (Lime calls bullshit on that, however.) Others admitted they were — and in a couple of cases, still are — anxious about it. Others found the myths Ephron discusses amusing, like this one about her friend’s response to the failure of young Ms. Ephron’s …
Month: September 2008
“Realer” vs. Real Life
Real life is nuts, is screwy, and I just don’t feel like writing about it now. Except to sigh. But I did get some editing done, and finally, a story I started in 1999 is ready to go out the door. The title is “Realer,” and it’s a far different story than it was when it started out–but better, at once more brutally real and more hopeful. I think, anyway. That’s one more story to put into my send-pile, I guess. Since it’s appropriate for all ages, I think I’ll be saving it till I hear back about “Vortex, Inverse” …
Reading Now, Reading Then
These days, I’ve made a holiday project of finishing all the books I started prior to 2012, or at least trying to finish them — though I am also trying to get better about setting aside a book when I truly don’t like it after 100 pages or so. Discussing my reading beyond that is a slightly uncomfortable subject, for a few reasons. One of them is that I am not a reviewer, and don’t find it particularly politic to slam stories I don’t like in public. I am all for praising the ones I did like, but that also …
In Case You Couldn’t Login…
It was because of a plugin I’d installed that thought you were an evil spambot bent on ruining my website. Apologies; it didn’t mean to misconstrue. It’s just your haircut. It knows better now. Won’t happen again. We promise.
Matt on Symmetry in The Host
For those into Korean cinema, Korean SF, or both: Matt’s written up a good post on The Host and the role of symmetry in the film, and linked my posts on the Host (starting here). I’ve commented to expand (slightly) on his observations. Check it out! As for me, I’m planning on working on a paper on the film and its political elements, somewhat expanding on my observations in the posts I’ve made here, and on the paper I’ll be presenting in a couple of weeks. I’ll be working on that sometime in the next couple of months, time permitting, …