Just starting out...

Whew! I'm finally taking the first tentative steps of the journey through the long, dark tunnel of blogging technology!

I've gotten tired of forgetting what I just read last week, even though I wrote the title down on a scrap of a Post-it and put it in my car. I'm sick of giving a reader's advisory to someone, only to forget the author or worse, the title of the book whose plot and characters I remember so clearly.

In college, I read Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies. The first paragraph lays it all out there, just like I want to with this journal, saying:

Following the practice that has become the habit of my life, namely the devoted study of literature, one day as I was sitting in my study, surrounded by books on many different subjects, my mind grew weary from dwelling at length on the weighty opinions of authors whom I had studied for so long. I looked up from my book, deciding then to leave subtle questions in peace and to read some lyric poetry for pleasure...I thought I would browse through it to amuse myself.

I'm not including anything from my graduate classwork unless it's absolutely brilliant, so everything I throw out into the ether is simply something I picked up "to amuse myself." Enjoy!