Which one's better?

The students are choosing which novel they want to do their projects on. They've been asking me confounding questions like "Bone or The Kite Runner: Which one's better?" How can you even begin to answer a question like that? They're both great. They are utterly different. The both affected me powerfully.

I nearly lost it in the middle of The Kite Runner. I was listening to the audiobook, read by the author. If you've read the book, you know the scene. I was crying and I had to stop the book, and then i went and found L* and told her "Why did you have me read this book?!?"

Bone is affecting in a whole other way. It's about a family of sisters, so that makes it ring true for me in all these different ways. It's emotional, and beautiful. I started reading it again as soon as I finished it. I don't do that too often, but I hadn't read the book straight through--there was a lag of a week or two at one point.

I'm reading Jessica Hagedorn right now. I love her. I think I resisted reading her for years, because of the title of her first novel. (I know, I know. I got over it). And the Gangster of Love! wow! I have to consciously resist thinking of Hagedorn as M2F. She's so good!

At first I was afraid no one would pick The Farming of Bones, or West of the Jordan.

L* and I have both been saying we need to start reading all the fabulous books from the last ten years. What with dissertations and new jobs, we're really well-read on the eighties, thru the mid-nineties, and on brand new stuff, but rather weak on the in-between stuff and on authors outside of our focus areas. Her folks give us good tips, too, because they know what books everyone is reading.

Thank god for the profs I TA'd for as a grad student, because I really had to go outside my comfort zone and confront my own ignorance and resistance, but I learned a lot from them.