Being Too Ambitious, Perhaps

A friend of mine has been nagging at me for helllaaaa days about blogging. Quite frankly, I haven't really had the time or energy to do so recently because of my internship. I don't like feeling so drained sometimes! (But it's drained in a good way, I suppose, since I really love what I'm doing.) The result of my being so busy is that I've had little time to read, think, and write as much as I would normally like.

I've been waayyyy ambitious with starting books and not finishing them all within the time frame I want. In fact, right now I have literally a pile of books that I've begun reading but have not finished:

-Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel
-Folktales from India
-The Arabian Nights
-The Histories by Herodotus (which I am trying to reread for like 3rd time . . . I get so lost in all the names! and Herodotus, the so-called Father of History is not great with providing an understandable sense of time and place . . )

I'm going through such an ancient myth faze right now.

I have, however, finished reading Helen of Troy by Bettany Hughes. This book is basically an exploration of Bronze Age Mycenaean culture to explain the truthmyth of Helen of Troy/Sparta. I love ancient Greek myths and culture, so that was pretty much my motivation for picking up this book. And it was on sale.

It's a fairly good read, since Hughes definitely writes in a way that I like. There is no doubt that she sounds very academic, but she surprises me, the reader, every once in a while with extremely blunt profanity. She tosses in "shit" and "fuck" into her sentences as if they are nothing, but they certainly have the sort of violent impact that other words cannot provide. It actually reminds me a bit of the way I write, because I tend to throw swear words into my writing because sometimes it just takes some loaded word to convey a more forceful, impassioned meaning. More affirmation for me, I suppose, that academic writing can be even a bit transgressive.

Hopefully as my internship winds down, I'll be able to finish these books that I've started so that I can start new ones and write and think some more.

Like I wrote, I'm definitely going through an ancient myth faze right now. I'm exploring old cultures and old icons of beauty, rage, delight, regeneration, and whatnot hopefully so that I can create a new, complicated goddess like Bhanu Kapil asked me to. What a challenge . . . I hope I'm up for it.