There's 104 Days of Summer Vacation and School Comes Along Just to End It.

"So the annual problem for our generation is finding a good way to spend it."
Thus are the immortal words of the Phineas and Ferb theme song. And they couldn't be more true, even for a college student. Free time is on a premium especially in college, and now that the semester is over I have all this time on my hands that I definitely do not want to squander. In addition to doing re-writes and editing of my book. I have an ever increasing stack of books I'm hoping to accomplish reading over summer break. And oh yeah, start working on my thesis. That would be good too.
Currently my reading list consists of these titles in no particular order:

Bone, Fae Myenne Ng

Caramelo, Sandra Cisneros

Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis

Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis

Perelandra, C.S. Lewis

That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis

The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde

The Jane Austen Book Club, Karen Joy Fowler

A Sound Of Thunder, Ray Bradbury

The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie

I'm sure it will be added to as I find more books, but I think right now this is a manageable list and I don't want to get too distracted and not finish some of them like last summer. (some of these are actually left over from last summer's reading list).
I've tried to keep a balance between more literary titles, short stories, and fluff books. I do want to keep up on reading good literature but also it is summer break, so fun silly books are a nice respite. Plus I have a good amount of more serious books to read as I've received several books from Professors this semester.
As a writer and an English major it's important to read a wide variety of genres and not just get stuck in the rut of what you are more interested in. For instance, I write fantasy, so I try to read some current and classic fantasy just to keep up with the trends and tricks of the genre, and because I enjoy it. However, I also try to read outside that genre in more literary or general fiction type books. Recently I've been on a kick of reading books that are retellings of stories from classical mythology. I think reading Orpheus Lost by Jeanette Turner Hospital sparked that interest. As the title would suggest, that novel is a modern take on the Orpheus tale. Two of the books on my list also retell myths, Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis retells the myth of Cupid and Psyche and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, by Salman Rushdie is another retelling of Orpheus. Needless to say I am really excited to start tackling this book list.

Five Iron Frenzy, they were really, really, really good.

Once upon a time in a Galaxy far far away at the turn of the millennium, there was a great ska band known as Five Iron Frenzy, or FIF.
They were a great band that gave us the gift of six years (1997-2003) of awesome, goofy, humorous, and trumpet filled ska songs. They were even sillier than Relient K. Like wayyy sillier. One of their best EP's, Quantity is Job 1, includes "These are not my pants" (The Rock Opera). This goofball song series is about the epic saga of pants without an owner and is done in different styles of music ranging from Meatloaf to heavy-metal. There is an awesome youtube rendition of it where some teenagers with too much time on their hands re-enact the entire opera.

One of FIF's best songs is also found on this EP, My Evil Plan to Save the World. Probably one of the catchy-est songs ever.

Relient K did a tribute to them on their last B-sides/EP: "The Bird and the Bee Sides." Their tribute consists of two songs: "Five Iron Frenzy is Either Dead or Dying" and "Five Iron Frenzy is Either Dead or Dying (Wannabe Ska Version)."
Both are full on tongue-in-cheek Relient K-ness which is truly an homage to the great FIF.
Thus with Relient K, I say: "Five Iron Frenzy, they were good, they were good, they were really really really good. Five iron frenzy And when you see them
We really really think you should Thank them for being so cool and so awesome And thank them for being so neato."

C.S. Lewis wrote poetry?

Honestly who knew? I didn't. I was doing some research for my Senior thesis on Tolkien, Lewis and their contribution to the fantastic genre via the Inklings circle and I stumbled across an entire book of poems by Lewis, published posthumously.
Looking through it, I found this awesome little wonder which is quite good. He basically is writing about how he is not like the great poets. Best of all, he harshes on T.S Eliot and Wordsworth a little.
Here it is:





A Confession, By C.S. Lewis
I am so coarse, the things the poets see
Are obstinately invisible to me.
For twenty years I’ve stared my level best
To see if evening–any evening–would suggest
A patient etherized upon a table;
In vain. I simply wasn’t able.
To me each evening looked far more
Like the departure from a silent, yet a crowded, shore
Of a ship whose freight was everything, leaving behind
Gracefully, finally, without farewells, marooned mankind.

Red dawn behind a hedgerow in the east
Never, for me, resembled in the least
A chilblain on a cocktail-shaker’s nose;
Waterfalls don’t remind me of torn underclothes,
Nor glaciers of tin-cans. I’ve never known
The moon look like a hump-backed crone–
Rather, a prodigy, even now
Not naturalized, a riddle glaring from the Cyclops’ brow
Of the cold world, reminding me on what a place
I crawl and cling, a planet with no bulwarks, out in space.

Never the white sun of the wintriest day
Struck me as un crachat d’estaminet.
I’m like that odd man Wordsworth knew, to whom
A primrose was a yellow primrose, one whose doom
Keeps him forever in the list of dunces,
Compelled to live on stock responses,
Making the poor best that I can
Of dull things…peacocks, honey, the Great Wall, Aldebaran
Silver weirs, new-cut grass, wave on the beach, hard gem,
The shapes of horse and woman, Athens, Troy, Jerusalem.

When finding a poem like this I can't help but get ecstatic. So of course I had to read it at the Annual Poetry Bash at OU. It was fun times. The Poetry Bash is always great but I was a tad disappointed there were less people there this year. Maybe it was the wonderful weather. Which makes no sense because nice weather makes me want to read more poetry and literature. Anyways it was still a great time with the people awesome enough to show up.
So now I think this is going to be one of my favorite poems ever. Definitely going on the list along with Ballad of the White Horse, The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock, and The Eve of St. Agnes.