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My daily perusals of the New York Times online today led me to this, a review of "My Little Red Book", by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff. I was attracted initially by the review's title: "In the Open at Last, a Secret All Women Share". I was sure I'd find something at least marginally offensive or just plain interesting. I was right on both counts. I am certainly interested in checking this book out. It is a collection of stories from women about the experience of their first period. It has oustanding potential.

On the other hand, reviewer Abigail Zuger, MD, rubs me the wrong way. In both title and her insistence that men should go outside and "toss a ball around for awhile" rather than read the book, Zuger seems stuck in the binary view of gender, deciding for others how their genders must present themselves. She further distances herself, as well as the book, from being overtly feminist. I can't speak for the book until I've actually read it, but Zuger assures us that the editors "manage to avoid both the chirpy 'You are a woman now' song of the Tampax box and the lugubrious musings on blood, moons and fertility of the feminist academic."

Still, I am very curious about the book. I am also curious about the subject. Take my first period for example. My mother had already been telling me for a few years that I would get my period "very soon". That never happened. I probably spent a few seconds every day for two years wondering if "this will be the day?" I was terrified it was going to happen in class, or without my realizing it until someone laughed and pointed to a bloodstain on my pants. I began asking my mother and sister how I would know? What does it feel like? I was never really satisfied with my sister's "like trickling blood" explanation, but what could I do? I started going to the bathroom a lot in 8th grade, when many of my other lady friends had already started. I had to check. I often convinced myself I could feel myself bleeding during class, so I'd run off to check.

The actual moment was more lackluster than most stories. I was at home. Going to the bathroom. For real, not in a paraniod "have I started my period yet?" way. As I was, for lack of a better way to put this, "cleaning up", the tissue came away bloody. I was terrified for a few seconds until I figured it out. I screamed "MOOOOOMMM!!!!" at the top of my lungs, she came, she gave me a tampon, which I refused to use because it terrified me, she came back with pad, and that was it.

Anyone else want to share their stories?

Oh my! I really really want to see this play: "In the Next Room (or the vibrator play)" by Sarah Ruhl.

It sounds like it deals with the themes of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, but with primitive electric vibrators! What more needs to be said? Anyone wanna sponser my trip down to Berkeley to review this?

Oh yes. All I need to do is finish making my pan-pipes. To spray paint silver or not to spray paint silver? That is this week's question.

When I was a kid, the local library had this contest or program (it was a long time ago, I don't remember much) where kids signed up with their Summer Reading Lists, checked out a book or two at a time, and the library kept track of how many books kids were reading. Because I started being a nutball at a very early age, I got really really into it. Now, that initial confusion over whether to call it a "program" or a "contest" may have a lot to do with the fact that whatever it was, a contest it became to me. I was determined to read more books than anyone else.

And so one summer, I spent all my free time reading. I must have been in 2nd grade. This was how my mother decided enforce a "no reading at the dinner table" policy. Apparently I was obnoxious. But I read a lot. After I had gotten through all the "Ramona Quimby"s and "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret", I even moved on to books I didn't really understand. This was the summer I tackled Shakespear. I read everything the library had, which was all of his major canonical work. So, technically, I can say I have read all of Shakespeare's plays. TECHNICALLY. A lot of them I don't remember at all. I finished them, but I was 8.

My summer reading is now actually about the joy of reading, instead of an obsessive desire to get a star with my name and a huge number on the wall of the library, or whatever the end result was of that program/contest. Since I am finishing off my last quarter of school, the last few months and the next few months to come will not contain much leisure reading. But I have my summer list all ready. In order. Really. They're in stack, in the order in which to be read, next to my bed. Here's my list:

1. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks. You've probably heard of it. The fictional book is written as a non-fiction account of, you guessed it cuz you're a smartie, the Zombie War. Which I'm assuming is exactly what it sounds like. It's been on my list for a really long time, but I never got around to getting a copy. Well, now I have it and it's ready to be read.

2. Cast Me Out If You Will by Lalithambika Antherjanam. This is a collection of short stories and memoir by this amazing Indian writer, feminist, and social activist. The title speaks to the experience of many young women of being "cast out", or "being declared dead to the community", if they deviate from prescribed normative roles.

3. fledgling by Octavia Butler. I fell in love with Octavia Butler's writing a few months ago. Her engaging writing style will no doubt add to this novel, whose back cover description had me taking it home after the first three lines: "Shori is a mystery. Found alone in the woods, she appears to be a little black girl with traumatic amnesia and near-fatal wounds. But Shori is a fifty-three-year-old vampire with a ravenous hunger for blood". Yeah. I'm excited.

4. Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman. This is just a collection of some of Gaiman's short stories. I've read a great deal of his work, which varies from novels, to short stories, to comics (like Sandman, Black Orchid, and a short stint for Miracle Man), but I have yet to read this collection. It's supposed to be pretty fantastic.

5. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder. Non-fiction about a man who brought cures for diseases and other medical supplies to people in need around the world.

6. Selected Poems of Ezra Pound. Not because I haven't already read Pound; just because sometimes you need some awesome poetry.

7. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Because I am ashamed I haven't already read this.

8. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future by Riane Eisler. Non-fiction about evidence of ancient cultures practicing goddess-worship, the importance of women in historical societies, and even feminist slant in the teachings of Jesus. I have been wanting to read this for a really really long time, but it keeps getting postponed. Now it's on my list. Which is online. I have to stick to it.

Hey, everyone. Sorry it has taken so long-- the life of a student can be crazy sometimes! Anywho, let's just get down to it. What is Channel-Surfing the Apocalypse? For starters, it's a really great book by Susan Smith Nash, "a day in the life of the fin-de-millenium mind". I read it a while ago and was completely blown away. It is really a collection of short stories, but after a while you start to realize that they intersect. The same characters start appearing in multiple stories, often in a continuation of what was going on with them a few stories earlier. The short stories are all really just snapshots of people's lives. Nash is channel-surfing these people's stories, catching glimpses of lots of "channels", or lives, and sometimes coming back for another peek at them. Despite the brevity of the narratives, Nash writes each character and story with incredible passion and tenderness.

That's kind of how I feel sometimes. I have a lot of different interests that I am really passionate about, but I can't pay attention to everything at once. Most of my interests involve theory and reading, but I can't multitask those things very well. I focus on one thing at a time but change frequently. I want to channel-surf what's going on in the world, in academia, in the books I'm reading, in my college seminars, and in really great conversations I have with friends (especially when they involve hot chocolate). There is so much stuff going on not only in my personal life, but in the world around me. It is all interesting, but more than that, it is all so important. Everything is connected and the smallest action can have the most profound impact on life.

I am haunted by single lines in books, panels from comics, pictures, and things people say. I want to have a record of it somewhere because you can get so caught up in trying to take everything in that sometimes it is difficult to revist those moments or that really great thought you had. I want to share those moments with others and I want other people to share their own moments, too. It really is those small things that have such enormous consequences for us. It's that single advertisement that makes us scrutinize our bodies, or book that opens a whole new world.

So here it is. A record of my channel-surfing, connected to lots of other people who all have great things to say.