Did you know that an early-2000s Toyota 4Runner and a late-80s Saab convertible have veeeeery different turning radii? Still getting used to that. I’d just achieved basic competence with manual driving in the Saab, enough that driving an automatic now feels strange (words I never thought I’d type!). Next I need to master the Toyota’s 4-wheel drive, before the Ohio winter, at least.

I thought I might be able to attend the Lambda Literary Awards this week, but the above circumstances and others conspired against it, so I’ll be cheering the ceremony on from Texas while my lovely editor Juliet Grames attends the actual shindig. And on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I’ll be spending time on campus again for the third and final TILTS conference of the year, which has an impressively varied lineup of speakers.

I’m back to working on Killingly, and I’m also back to course planning. Given all the noise about the goofy Family Radio apocalypse predictions, my post-apocalyptic & dystopian novel course feels trendier than ever — I’m excited to delve into those trends with my students and talk about their cultural underpinnings.

Soon, moving! And packing! Gah.

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.

Can you tell that Inge's head is upside down in this photo?

That’s Inge declaring ownership of the box in which a copy of my (giant) dissertation is sitting. The diss. is with my committee members now, and we’re working on scheduling a defense in late April. There’s still work to do, of course. But: whew. That is the sound of me taking a short breather. (And doing some Killingly work, I hope!)

The book sitting on top of my dissertation draft includes my first substantial scholarly publication. It’s an edited collection entitled Masters of the Marketplace: British Women Novelists of the 1750s – my essay is about Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote. The book looks beautiful, don’t you think?

(Inge is not responsible for making this week exciting and busy — thankfully — but she and Saki have definitely helped make it more enjoyable. Except for when they decide to race around the apartment just as I’m falling asleep.)

I’ve also learned that Alcestis is a finalist for the BSFS Compton Crook Award for 2010, with results to be announced in early April.

Finally, don’t forget that the Goodreads giveaway of three paperback copies of Alcestis ends March 15th!

After I catch my breath a bit, I’ll be back with more links and perhaps more news.

The book I am reading: I’m about 3/4 of the way through The Ambassadors, which I’d tried once before and hadn’t gotten into. I love James, though I think I’m more comfortable with the middle period than his late style (I haven’t read The Golden Bowl or The Princess Casamassima yet, though). The Ambassadors is — well, it’s an entire book about whether one young man will choose to leave one place and go back to another, from the POV of a fifty-year-old friend of the family who overthinks everything. It makes me want to flee to Paris myself, or rather to the Paris in the book. It’s a ridiculous book, in some ways — it has essentially no plot and the majority of the action involves characters turning each other’s words around and emphasizing things when they talk — but it’s very beautiful, too. I’m really enjoying it.

The book I am writing: Killingly — my 1890s New England Gothic about a disappearing college girl and her unusual best friend. And I recently finished writing a book-length dissertation, which should count for something, I think.

The book I love most: I’ve seen a lot of people refusing to choose, and I sympathize. Today I would say Middlemarch. Tomorrow it might be Persuasion, or Portrait of a Lady, or Possession.

The last book I received as a gift: There is a wrapped book sitting downstairs waiting for me to open it on my birthday tomorrow. I’m trying to remember what book I was given most recently before this. Possibly a gluten-free cookbook from family at Christmas?

The last book I gave as a gift: Hermione Lee’s A Very Short Introduction to Biography, which is really charming and well-put-together.

The nearest book on my desk: The fantastic Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington, A. C. Elias, Jr.’s 1997 edition from the University of Georgia Press. It’s two volumes totaling 845 pp., the second being only notes. LP is one of my dissertation subjects, and she’s probably the one I’d most want to invite over for tea. The gossip would be exquisite.

PS. Don’t forget about the Con or Bust auction entry for Alcestis — bidding ends on Sunday.

And then I had a book launch party in February. I went to Wiscon for the first time in May, and taught a fiction workshop this summer. I’ve been on fellowship all year and I still have six more months of fellowship funding to go.

I wrote a draft of my dissertation, and I started writing Killingly, just a little bit. I revised “The Former Hero,” which I started in 2000, during my sophomore year of college — I can even remember the unfortunate college futon I was sitting on while I typed up notes from my copy of Much Ado. I think it still needs more work, but sometime I’ll get it right. Maybe in another ten years. (This interview with Michael Chabon is a good reminder that even the stubbornest projects can yield something excellent in the end, even if it’s a completely different something from what you intend.)

Tonight I’ll be outside Austin, at a house where you can actually see stars. (The house with the Nubian dairy goats, for those of you who have heard me rhapsodize about them before.) I won’t be tipsy, because I’m driving, but I expect that I will be happy. There’s a lot I want to get done in 2011, starting with finishing the final draft of my dissertation, and it may be something of a rough year. But I hope it will be a good one, too.

Happy new year to all of you.

So! Here are a small number of books and other things I’d recommend if you’re still searching for last-minute presents:

• A Very Short Introduction to Biography, Hermione Lee. A nicely sized survey of the history of the genre. I’d probably use this as a text if I ever get to teach one of the classes on biography that I’ve designed syllabi for, and not just because it’s full of useful information — it’s also an enjoyable read.
• Georgette Heyer’s Regency World, Jennifer Kloester — for friends of yours who really want to know all the workings of the ton. (And I’m going to stop there with books or I’ll be adding to this entry all day.*)
• Qwirkle, a game marketed for children but hilarious when played by grown-up humanists. You want the cubes, not the tiles.
• Robyn’s Body Talk Pt. 1 and Janelle Monae’s The ArchAndroid, for people who need some good pop music.
• Small batch jams from Confituras, a local Austin business. (I believe all their offerings are gluten free.) They wouldn’t arrive in time for Christmas, by now, but would make a nice present later too.
• Pears from Harry & David. These are grown near where my mother lives in southern Oregon — we drive by their orchards on I-5. They’re actually kind of worth it as a splurge.

Plus a few links before I retreat back to the land of dissertation and other grad-school-related stress:

• An article title I could’ve written myself: Your Attacks on Genre Fiction Grow Tiresome.
• Lit Folks Are Hip. The captions say so.
• Sara Ryan’s interview with Jenny Davidson — I’m saving this till after I’ve read The Explosionist, but I’m actually also using one of Davidson’s academic books for diss research right now, so I was happy to see this, which focuses on her fiction.
• The Lapham Quarterly‘s fascinating piece on the dwindling and disappearance of Barbara Follett, child prodigy of letters.
• A Roman-era statue emerges from the sea on Israel’s coast.
• The Google Labs ngram viewer, if you haven’t played with it yet. There are apparently some questions about the reliability of its dating metadata, but it’s still a nice hint of the ways large-scale research in the humanities can evolve from here.

* You could also, if you were so inclined, pre-order the Alcestis paperback for someone you love! It’s out February 1 but will probably ship early from Amazon (the hardback sure did), and of course the e-book version (Kindle, Sony Reader) gets delivered instantly.

My dissertation is about antagonism between literary women in the early eighteenth-century, so I was amused to read this piece by Jessa Crispin about searching for positive depictions of female friendship in recent novels, which includes charming email correspondence with her own best female friend.

Slightly related: this flowchart of reductive characterizations of women in fiction.

One blogger’s thoughtful response to Lionel Trilling’s essay on Mansfield Park (which you can and should find in this book, if you haven’t read it — unsurprisingly, it’s delightful).

• A. L. Kennedy interviewed about her new short story collection. I laughed at the last question, as will you all.
• Dinosaur Comics on TERRIFYING ROMANCE STORIES. Whenever I want to post about romance in the future, I may do it with dinosaur clip-art. It just makes everything better.
• FDR’s Third Inaugural recorded. No sound, but it is in color.
• Matt Gross’s new travel column for the Times begins with an article about Tangier, a place I would really like to go, assuming I could find a way to feed myself there (couscous everywhere, I imagine).
• And on that note, today is Celiac Awareness Day. I don’t talk much here about having celiac disease, partly because all it really means for me is that I have to eat gluten-free forever and ever. But 97% of people who have it remain undiagnosed, and undiagnosed celiac means severely elevated cancer risks and more unpleasant stuff. (It was even the mystery illness on House once! I felt validated and also amused.) If you have ongoing health problems, do yourself a favor and get the blood antibody test, just in case.