You can also see a list of other books that are scheduled for future chats, or are being considered for scheduling, on the Feminist SF wiki.

Hope to see some of you on Twitter discussing the book!

Then read Kari Kraus’s op-ed in the Times about digital preservation and archives, which opens by discussing Bruce Sterling’s donation of his archive to the Ransom Center.

I also liked this post by Molly Wizenberg, talking about the kind of writing-avoidance we all practice sometimes. (You can tell me that you don’t, but I won’t believe you.)

Second: Diane Havens, the wonderful narrator of Iambik’s audiobook of Alcestis, answers five questions, some of which make me blush. Iambik is offering Alcestis at a 50% discount in June — enter the code “#jiam2011″ at when prompted at checkout.

Third: #YAsaves. I wish I had time to write up a full and thoughtful post about this, but since I’m swamped with moving preparations, course prep, and writing, I’ll just direct you to this excellent overview at Publishers Weekly and to Sherman Alexie’s heartbreaking and inspiring piece in the WSJ in response to Cox Gurdon’s classist stupidity. (It’s not just that Cox Gurdon dismisses teen readers who aren’t sheltered and privileged — it’s that she doesn’t even seem to know that other kids, less lucky kids, read. Or exist, for that matter.)

Today I cleaned out — well, 95% cleaned out — the cube I’ve been sharing with T. since 2005, our second year in grad school. Then I stopped at the co-op and ran into Rita, who sold us Lahrs the Saab. I’ve been experiencing a lot of serendipitous meetings lately, even though many of my friends from graduate school have decamped for other cities. It’s strange to be getting ready to leave myself. I’ve been living here for seven years now, and I’m going to miss it terribly, excited as I am about my new job in Wooster.

And now, links to share!

First of all, the fabulous Malinda Lo recommended Alcestis (as well as books by Jacqueline Carey and Robin McKinley) in a short piece she did for NPR last week. This was up on NPR’s Facebook page, as well, which resulted in a number of my friends leaving “holy crap, I know her!” comments on the NPR post. Sometimes social media does give one a warm and fuzzy feeling!

On Thursday night, the 2011 Lambda Literary Awards were announced. Alcestis didn’t win its category, sadly, but it sounds like it was a great evening, and all the winners deserve many congratulations!

250 books by women all men should read. (Also all people, but this is a response to an unsurprisingly dude-dominated reading list from Esquire.)

The opening of Jeffrey Eugenides’s upcoming The Marriage Plot. I want it now.

A Times travel piece on Lake Geneva, emphasis on the Byron/Shelley/Polidori era of its history.

A super sensible piece on ebook piracy by Cecilia Tan.

A Q&A by lovely Austin bookstore BookPeople with Robin Black, primarily about her short stories.

The real origins of Memorial Day.

For some less-heartening news, “worst carbon emissions ever leave climate on the brink.” And Laila Lalami posts Tom Lutz’s open letter to his UC Riverside colleagues and students about the demolition of the UC system. I’m not sure which of those links is scarier.

I’m still finalizing my reading lists and syllabi, which means that I’m still reading post-apocalyptic novels, though now I’m back to some I’ve read before. At the moment I’m re-reading Riddley Walker. I’d forgotten just how virtuosic it is. I wish everybody who loved Cloud Atlas knew about this book, too.

The Giver, Lois Lowry
Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban
The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness
The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Battle Royale, Koushun Takami (film)
Feed, M. T. Anderson
How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
Moon, Duncan Jones (film)

I’m trying to nail down the book list so that I can submit it to the Wooster college bookstore, but I’m stuck on one final decision — whether to take out The Knife of Never Letting Go, which pairs with Riddley Walker, and swap The Parable of the Sower into its place. There are elements of TKoNLG that I’d really like to discuss, the book’s engagement with gender and masculinity being the most obvious, and I wish Parable were a little shorter (and better edited). But I think the scope of Butler’s book matches up better with the scope of Hoban’s, and I’m leaning toward including it instead. Thoughts? Opinions?

Really what I need is another month in the course so I could teach TKoNLG along with His Dark Materials (and not just because they both have knives in their titles).

Last Friday, I defended my dissertation in the Fleur Cowles Room at the Harry Ransom Center. (You want to follow that photo link, I promise.) Fleur Cowles was one of the sponsors of the internship I participated in at the Ransom Center, so it felt like a nice conclusion to my years as a graduate student to be in that pale-yellow room full of paintings of tigers and flowers and at least one unicorn. The defense itself went swimmingly, as did the dinner and drinks we decamped for afterward. It was really nice night.

This week, I finished up the line edits I’d made while re-reading the dissertation yet again before the defense, and yesterday I officially filed to graduate. A very strange feeling, I can tell you. But pleasant, too. I’m looking forward to being back in the classroom.

And then: last night, Alcestis won the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction from the Publishing Triangle. I wasn’t able to get to New York to attend the ceremony, unfortunately, but I followed the live-tweets (!), and got a report from Soho’s Mark Doten, who attended on my behalf and accepted the award. I hear that some very nice things were said about the book, and I am so honored and touched. Here’s Lambda Literary’s lovely write-up of the awards ceremony, with a photo of the winners who were present.

On a sadder note, I was sorry to see earlier today that Joanna Russ has died after a series of strokes. If you haven’t read How to Suppress Women’s Writing, now’s a good time. (It continually makes me happy to know that there’s a UT Press edition of that book.) If nothing else, read the cover, which in itself is enough to get a good conversation started with students. I don’t know if I’ll have the chance to use the book or its cover next fall, but it’ll appear in one of my spring classes. For more about Russ and her literary career, see this excellent tribute at io9.

I’m still a bit dazed from the last few weeks, but I’ll be moving on soon to more course-planning and Killingly-writing. And planning my move to Wooster!

I’m in the last push toward finishing up my degree right now, but I’ve been saving up blog material. (And occasionally then deciding not to write a post on it because it was just too annoying to think about in any more detail, cf. Ginia Bellafante’s remarkably silly “girls can’t possibly like Lorrie Moore and The Hobbit at the same time!” review of Game of Thrones and her point-missing follow-up piece. Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

I have managed to go to a couple of readings lately, though — last night was Russell Banks, reading from his forthcoming Lost Memory of Skin, and I’m hoping to make it to Chimamanda Adichie’s reading on Thursday, also at the Joynes Reading Room at UT. A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to attend the benefit reading for Dean Young held here in Austin. Dean has since received the heart transplant he needed, but he and his family still need support. If you haven’t (or even if you have), do donate here.

1984, George Orwell
The Giver, Lois Lowry
Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban
The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness
The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Battle Royale, Koushun Takami (possibly the film version rather than the novel, or with only part of the novel, as the book is lengthy)
Feed, M. T. Anderson
How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
Moon, Duncan Jones (film)

The books are roughly paired: TKoNLG and Riddley Walker have a lot of similarities, as do The Hunger Games and Battle Royale, and the Anderson and Rosoff books make an interesting contrast (information overload vs. back-to-the-land fantasy). Never Let Me Go and Moon do some similar things investigating selfhood/individuality. Moon is a bit of a cheat since the main character’s not a teenager, but it’s very much about family and coming of age despite that. (Besides, in that scene in which the two characters mimic each other, they might as well be teenagers.) I still need to pick up Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower, since I grabbed The Parable of the Talents by mistake during my last trip to the library to harvest all their YA dystopian fiction.

I’m not sure if I’ll include 1984 and The Giver or not. I’d like to have that context, but I don’t want to over-assign reading, even though these books are fast reads, since I’ll be adding some secondary material too. And there are so many other primary texts I want to include and won’t have time for, already. I hate not putting His Dark Materials on the list, since it is entirely about the process of becoming an adult, but it’s fantasy rather than SF, and it’s long. As it is we’ll be reading a number of first books in trilogies — and talking about domination of the trilogy model in YA fiction, for sure — but I don’t think it would work to read only The Golden Compass.

Among other assignments, I’m hoping the class might be able to work together to build an online taxonomy of contemporary YA dystopia. (Me and Propp again, I tell you.)

This is all still very much in development, so: thoughts? Suggestions?

That print was produced only three years before this character visited Boston to investigate a report that a girl with a name similar to his missing daughter had appeared in the City Hospital. Pemberton Square, where the Boston police station was located in 1897, is close to Scollay Square — if I’m reading this map correctly, he would certainly have traveled down Court Street on his way to the station. He would have seen the recently constructed Ames Building; he might have passed Faneuil Hall.

In order to write this man, I’ve been reading things like the delightfully titled Congregationalism: what it is; whence it is; how it works; why it is better than any other form of church government; and its consequent demands. I’ve also been reading for fun. It’s bizarre and wonderful to have a stretch of time to myself without the immediate pressure of an academic deadline, even a distant one. I am preparing for my dissertation defense, and will be dipping back into that work for the next few weeks. But I’ve had time to browse the recently published books section at the UT library, the one with two-week checkouts. I can’t remember the last time I was able to do that and actually finish a book in time to return it. I’ve been reading short story collections, thinking about teaching next fall.

I’ve also been playing with TimeGlider, a tool for producing timelines — I need it to keep straight all the details from the newspaper clippings about the events in Killingly! So far, it’s working pretty well. Assuming Killingly appears in print someday, I’ll probably make the timeline public and link it here. Though I may take out some of my notes to myself — you know, the ones that say FIX THIS, WTF, etc. Writing a multi-POV, not-strictly-chronological novel based on a complex set of messily-reported real-life events is a sticky business.

Speaking of fantasy stories set in the UK, you should read Zen’s: “起狮，行礼 (Rising Lion—The Lion Bows).”