Kaethe

work library has it. Trying to get it downloaded onto a device I can read it on. So much aggravation.

I have it on my phone, now. W00t! If I can get it on my Kindle I will be a very happy person for about 5 minutes, until something else comes along to annoy me. Fingers crossed. I wanted the Fire specifically to be able to take advantage of the extensive work elibrary.

Now I've run into problems getting the sundry devices onto the Wifi network. Sigh. It's not a big problem, just a little niggling one that's going to drag this whole thing out for the entire day.

Not to name names, but the app for reading this on my phone was not convenient.

But the essays, they are intriguing. But also, collectively a little clueless. So many contrast New England culture against [place where the author is now] which is utterly unlike Star's Hollow, for good and ill. Seriously? I realize that Connecticut is the Land of WASPs, the place where Pilgrims get all the attention, but seriously, the lack of history re the entire rest of the nation was off-puttingly White-minded and just wrong. No one should ever again get a book chapter out of ignoring 1) millennia of First Nations, 2) five hundred years of Norse, and English, and Irish exploration and settlement, mostly for the cod 3) French settlement in Acadia 3) more than two hundred years of Spanish exploration and colonization. Seriously, Plymouth wasn't even the first permanent English colony in what is now the USA during the 17th century: there were already three in Virginia.

Generally I love a pop culture essay. I enjoy someone taking a tv show seriously, seeing what it says about society, family, religion, adulthood. Of course, there are problems: backstory is incomplete, sometimes contradictory, often open to interpretation, and that's when these essays get really good. Because there is no objective reality, everyone ends up writing not about the show, but about themselves. It's a Rorschach test. Humans are social animals, and it desire to examine the related between us is just as strong when we're talking about imaginary people. In real life a person rarely has to choose between two romantic prospects, but as a mental exercise it makes us consider what is most important: do we prefer similar backgrounds, or shared passions? Charm or loving actions? What do we need to be content?

So, here I am, nothing like Lorelei, except I do live in a charming old small town, and I like junk food and old movies and coffee, and books examining what this all means.

Library copy