When I'm Not Reading

It's Thursday and I thought it would be a good way to use Missie's meme from The Unread Reader to explain why I haven't been around much.

 When I'm not reading, this is what my week is like on average:

Monday: I get up super early to make the hour and fifteen minute commute from my boyfriend's house to work. It's 40miles but lots of traffic. I spend my lunch hour doing reading for my classes, and when I leave work at 5 I either go to acupuncture (has helped me tremendously), or I go to class and go over my cataloging homework before our weekly quiz. Usually they let us out of class late and I get home around 10:30. I'm then up until 1 or 2 working on my reading for Tuesday night's class.

Tuesday: Fortunately I have a shorter commute during the week. This is a leave early day for me because I am in class from 3:30 until 9:30 (two classes). This is my very busy day because of the insane amount of reading for these classes (historical anthropology and archives). I get home around 10:30 and once again have about 2-3 hours of reading to do for the next day.

Weds: another leave early day for me. Once again my lunch hour is spent reading and writing for tonight's class - The Crusades. If I don't have a meeting (I'm very active in 2 student organizations and this has been a tremendously busy month for us) then I am typically home by 7:30. Sometimes I have book club, or sometimes I meet up with friends. I try to be home by 10:30 again because I have to do work on my online class: Public Librarianship.

Thursday. A full work day for me and no classes. Fortunately Thursdays are quiet at work so I can catch up on my online class if I get through my work in time. After work I go to my Grandmother's for "dinner and a story" and then it's home for laundry and reading. I average about 200-300 pages of reading a night for school. This is not light reading either - I'm taking a lot of notes and I am wring a lot of papers. I'm also in the process of packing since I will be moving in the next few months.

Friday: Another full day with no classes. Fridays are a lot like Thursdays for me, but this is the day I try to get some down time. If I don't go to karaoke with my friends then I work on packing and just plain zoning out in front of the tv with the dogs.

Saturday: I am starting a 1 credit internship/project for my archives class that involves me spending any free time for the remainder of the semester on saturday mornings working on this project. Then it's off to my boyfriend's house for the weekend for some downtime (that strangely results in me cooking for him for the week). And of course I have to make time on Sundays to do my homework!

   So as you can see, I haven't had very much time to read (or at all really). I'm realizing that I really took on way too much and I'm overwhelmed. I am so overwhelmed that I am flaking out, which is completely unlike me and I apologize to anyone that I've caused aggravation with because of my being over-extended. I fully expect to be my normal rational and dependable stuff by Jan 1.

Banned Book Week - Guest Post by Lily from Lillium's Realm

I couldn't let banned book week go by without having someone do a guest spot for me on their favorite banned book. It just so happens this is also my favorite banned book.

Lily from Lillium's Realm was so nice to write a post on To Kill A Mockingbird for me. Without further ado:


   Have you ever judged someone on the way they look? How about that guy behind you in line covered in tattoos and facial piercings? Or that lady with 8 kids and one in the belly? Or even that little old blue haired woman covered in cat hair? Or what about that group of young men just hanging out in front of the mall? When you walked past them did you hold your purse a little tighter? Try to keep an eye on them out of the corner of your eye?


  Everyone would like to say “I don’t judge people!” They lie. We all judge, all the time. It is one of the first things our parents teach us as children…remember “I’m not taking you to store with me, you’re dirty.” Or “You can not wear that to church.”?? We are all judged and we are all judging all the time, but the content of what we judge each other on is often the issue.



  In Harper Lee’s 1960 novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” we are introduced to Jem and Scout, the young children of Atticus Finch. The novel is set in 1930’s Alabama. The small town of Maycomb is suffering but Jem and Scout (who is really named Jean Lousie) don’t feel the Depression as bad because their father is a successful lawyer. As we are introduced to them we see the children acting like children do. Jem and Scout meet a new boy named Dill and Dill finds fascination with picking on local shut in, and in child pack fashion they do too. The main story line most remember though is the story of Tom Robinson, a local black man accused of raping a white woman. Unfortunately the town is mostly white and heavily prejudiced. Atticus agrees to defend the man, because he knows he is innocent. One of the scenes that sticks in my mind the most is where the night before the trial Atticus and his children face down a mob who is there to lynch Tom. Even though the mob is dispersed the trial begins and everyone is forced to inspect facts, but unfortunately this was not a Perry Mason ending with a nice bow on top.



This story has always stuck with me, always. I read this book when I was 12, and I was told I should not be reading “such filth” by my English teacher, no less. She told me the story was more apt to have me viewing my classmates by their race and not as people. I was outraged, as it was well known I had blonde hair and blue eyes and my family was from Germany. Want to talk about nasty? Look like me with my background the day after they show Shindler’s list in class. Good times. Anyways, she demanded I give my book to her and when I refused she wrote me up for insubordination. My dad framed the referral and put it up on the wall. There were amazing quotes from the book and ones I still use today. I actually wanted to name my son Atticus, but that was a big NO GO with his father. So to wrap this up I am going to close with my top quotes from the book:


They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience. ~ Atticus





“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for."


"There is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is the court."


"Pass the damn ham, please."



"You can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family, an' they're still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge 'em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don't."





"The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.”



and finally my fave line from the entire book:



"When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em."