I have brain-drain from lots of dissertation chapter editing, so it’s mostly links tonight:
I keep tagging things to post here and didn’t even have the time to start a post until Wednesday — when I once again had to get the site taken down to address another security issue. Sigh. And once again, all is now fixed and fine. But I do wish whatever opportunistic bot has grown fond of my site would leave it alone.
Here are some of the things I’ve been wanting to link:
The other thing that’s been holding my attention this week while I should be working on more diss revisions is the uprising in Egypt. I’ve been to Egypt once, in the summer of 2000, just after my first year of college. The tourism industry there was still reeling from the attacks on tourists in the 1990s, and of course it would grow even worse after 2001. My experience of the country was entirely a tourist’s experience and fraught with all the troubling dynamics that accompany American tourism, plus a few extra twists to those dynamics introduced by the fact that I was blonde, barely eighteen, not a speaker of Arabic, and traveling with my parents. And it was also amazing, for all the reasons you’d expect given my history geekiness — the river, the temples, the star-painted ceilings, the Hellenistic-era graffiti, the little round bellies on the relief sculptures. The National Museum, which people on the street linked arms to protect after looting during the protests this week, just as they did the Library of Alexandria.
I remember our female Coptic Christian guide in Cairo — every time violence against the Copts is in the news I think about her — and the young man who guided our group on the Nile. I’ve been hoping that they’re safe. Now I also hope that they’re exhilarated. I’m so glad Mubarak has finally stepped down and has ceded power to the military, who seem, at least, to be more open to the people’s demands than he ever was. And I wish every bit of good luck in the universe to the Egyptians and their hard-won democracy.
]]>I’m now pretty brain-drained from migraine medication, but I do have links to share:
First, a story about ancient stone tools discovered on the coast of Crete — on a section of shore covered in soil deposited 100,000 to 190,000 years ago. The tools themselves may be as old as 700,000 years. Previously, the oldest stone tools on Crete were around 10-20,000 years old, so if the dating of these tools is accurate, humans (or pre-humans) were seafarers a lot earlier than previously thought. CRAZY.
New studies of King Tut’s remains reveal that he died of malaria and a broken leg — the hole in his skull was not the cause of death. I could not stop imagining Temperance Brennan speaking the text of this article while I read it, except she’d probably be pricklier and use larger words.
An excellent post about what makes a good title for a story, and how helpful bad titles can be.
]]>And some Friday afternoon links:
Partly due to the continuing pseudonymity of her subject, Williams couldn’t find a magazine willing to buy this article, so she decided to print it herself. She cites Radiohead’s In Rainbows experiment as an inspiration; everyone on Twitter is calling it “indie journalism.” I’d call it one of the best profiles I’ve read lately (between this and Rebecca Skloot’s book, it’s been a good week for nonfiction!).
Also: I’ll testify that an appeal from an individual author can influence me in ways a larger publication can’t — I gave a donation for this article, but I read the Times magazine online every week. (Then again, if Williams wanted a donation every week, I might grow less willing to contribute, too.) It’s an interesting concept, and I’ll be curious to see how well it works for her.
]]>The most fun part of MLA is the exhibitors hall, where publishers set up giant displays, sometimes complete with wine and cheese. I didn’t buy anything — I try to travel light, and also, I’m a poor grad student — but I was lucky enough to snag an ARC of Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. I’ve been aware of this book for a while, thanks to having read some of Skloot’s science journalism and then stumbling across her Twitter feed months ago. Then Skloot herself was on the cover of the issue of Publishers Weekly that reviewed Alcestis – wacky. Anyway, I really love good science writing and hardly ever have a chance to read it these days, so I grabbed the offered ARC from the nice Random House booth person and started reading as soon as I got back to Texas.
This is a stunning book. The story itself is inherently fascinating, but Skloot also does a brilliant job of weaving together her own history with HeLa — the years of research, the frustrating, contentious, and ultimately rewarding relationships she developed with Henrietta Lacks’s family — with the narrative of Henrietta’s death and subsequent “immortal life” in biomedical research after a cluster of her cancer cells were taken by doctors in the “colored” ward at Johns Hopkins in the 1950s. Lacks’s adult children, still suffering the effects of poverty, discrimination, and abuse, struggle to comprehend the facts of the strange life of their “mother cells.” They’re simultaneously desperate for Skloot to publish her story and fiercely afraid that she intends to take advantage of them.
I can’t recommend this book highly enough (and as you can see on Skloot’s page about the book, I’m not the only one). This is the kind of work nonfiction writing is meant to do.
]]>Via my friend Elizabeth Scott (whose lovely Something, Maybe is now in bookstores!), a fascinating link about the cover design process for a new book about Columbine.
A New York Times article about a 40-foot clonal amoeba colony in a cow pasture near Houston.
In other news, I’ve started doing more in-depth research for my new novel idea. There’s nothing quite so giddiness-inspiring as walking around the library collecting an armful of books for a new research topic.
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