Summer Book Binge

Hey, hello! It's Alexandra, returned from the void. Sorry for the prolonged absence. I've been busy doing a whole lot of nothing. You know, just the summertime usual. I haven't exactly been doing nothing, though. I've landed an internship working at the UCI art galleries (how swank), and I've been careening up and down the 5 alongside 18-wheelers on my way to and from orientation at Cal. Yay!

frands i made.
(pc to Marina, frand on the left)

Summertime, in the beginning, always feels like a rolling hill full of beautiful spring flowers and butterflies and maybe even a unicorn, where deer ticks carrying the viral pathogen for Lyme disease are nowhere to be found. You sit in awe, loathe to disturb the peace. Days slip by, then weeks, as you neglect your plans ("This summer, I'm going to hang out with friends all the time!" "I'm going to write a novella!" "I'm going to finish last summer's novella!", etc).  Then suddenly, four weeks into sitting and doing absolutely nothing, you realize that a crew of earth movers has showed up at the base of your hill and is planning on leveling the hill off for a new neighborhood of cookie-cutter suburban homes! No! There goes your paradise. 

My family's summer tradition is to go to the library and pick up a huge load of books. I usually round up at least enough books for me to a) make myself feel really intelligent and to validate my self worth, and to b) make me feel really inadequate when I've managed to finish less than half of the novels when they all come due. Part of the difficulty in finishing everything I've taken out is that I usually check out 89% classics, and then I sneaks in some fun, juicy reads just to keep things interesting. Once I start in on the fun, though, it's really difficult to force yourself back to Camus. For example, yesterday, I read one and a half Sophie Kinsella novels in about four hours, but today I stated a novel by Toni Morrison and a novel by Maxine Hong-Kingston. So I'm not that terrible, right?  

A slight downside to the huge library load right at the start of summer is that, for me, reading is such a compulsive and all-consuming task that I spend more days than I'd like to admit wondering if I've ever gotten up to brush my teeth. Gross, I know, but by the end of the book-binge, I generally feel as if I've lost all knack for social interaction, which is a great way to start off college, don't you think? Any way, I've spent too much writing this up--I've got 20 books left and only 40 days left until move in. Wish me luck!