WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS
This week, lots of good things happened. On Thursday I had did a placement test with a Deaf professor from Goshen College to see if I could test out of American Sign Language 1 (there are 5 semesters). I tested into ASL 3! I can’t remember the last time I was so proud of myself!
On Saturday the spouse and I headed to Ninja Golf! where they had free coffee and bundt cakes for members during these special early hours. We also finally started playing putt putt, which is the real reason for the membership, though we mostly use it for discount coffee and ice cream.
After we headed to Goshen to actually see the college I’ll be attending in the fall. It’s environmentally friendly, with lots of purposeful nature landscaping and is one of the greenest colleges — 100% of their electricity comes from renewable sources. You can scroll through some pics here.
On Saturday night I convinced the spouse to do #stabbysaturday with me. You log on to Shudder (a horror streaming app similar to Netflix), and on the home screen a movie starts playing automatically at 8:00PM. They’re cheesy 80s flicks; first was Sorority House Massacre, and the second was Pledge Night (most of the horror derived from the hazing actually, ew). Live Tweeting with other folks whom you don’t know but love horror and are watching too was really fun! I’ll do it again for sure.
THIS WEEK’S BLOG POSTS
So, I read and reviewed Disfigured by Amanda LeDuc. *insert Mario Bros. dying music* It was such a bummer, and so I scoured the internet and discovered lots of other books by disabled people about living with disabilities. You’ll see them in my new TBR list below.
Martha Moody by Susan Stinson was a great book, beautifully written and full of emotions I’m not used to reading about or experiencing. At the end of my post I mentioned that I am giving away several copies of Stinson’s novel, but I haven’t had any takers yet. This made me realized just how many of you don’t live in the U.S. I don’t want to exclude anyone, but mailing a book out of the country is prohibitively expensive. If I don’t hear from anyone, maybe I’ll give away some books as presents!
NEXT WEEK’S BLOG POSTS
Alison Bechdel has a new graphic memoir! Entitled The Secret to Superhuman Strength, Bechdel explores her relationship to mastering all forms of physical activity in an obsessive way, tying in how our cultural environment changes our connection to moving our bodies. Review Tuesday.
Sing, Unburied, Sing was the first novel I’d read by Jesmyn Ward, and I’m glad it’s one I read with my book club buddy, Biscuit. There’s lots to discuss here that likely I would have missed reading on my own. Or, maybe this is just an excellent book club book, leaving open all sorts of avenues for conversation? Review Thursday.
BOOKS ADDED TO THE TBR PILE
Owned Books on TBR at Beginning of Year: 242
Owned Books on TBR Today: 220
Grab the Lapels 
Congrats on your successful test, the college looks lovely and I’m very impressed by its eco credentials.
I picked up Sitting Pretty recently too.
Wishing you a great reading week
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Sitting Pretty looks so fun! It’s bursting with color and enthusiasm. Thank you for your kind words, Shelley 🙂
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Well done on the test. You go.
Re books added to your TBR, the only one I know is Ann Patchett’s Truth and beauty, which I remember finding interesting but it is so long ago now. I wonder what I would make of it now.
As for StabbySaturday, no way would you get my signing up for that! Even the name is off-putting! I am such a wuss when it comes to onscreen violence. I’m the one who jumps out of my seat even when I’m expecting the surprise horror.
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The funny thing is that while we were watching Pledge Night, everyone was freaked out by the hazing. When the dead guy/zombie/demon enters the scene, it was pretty tame by comparison! But watching everyone’s reactions and talking through the movies was a blast.
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I can imagine that … enjoying the chatting I mean!
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Congrats on testing so far ahead! That’s amazing!
You’ve added some really interesting looking reads this week. I’m looking specifically at Dead Leprechauns. :3
Yay, putt putt! We played putt putt while on vacation waiting for friends to arrive. We had a blast and plan on making it a more regular thing. We have a course in our hometown that we haven’t tried out yet.
That’s awesome that Stabby Saturday was fun! 😀
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I didn’t realize that Grady Hendrix had some older books. I looked a couple years ago and found only Horrorstor at the library, but now they have everything of his available in multiple formats. Clearly, the Hendrix train is running full speed ahead!
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I take it you very much enjoyed that book?
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I liked Horrorstor; it had a bit of a Clive Barker feel to it, almost like Hendrix was getting his feet wet in the genre. I’m loving My Best Friend’s Exorcism, which is very 80s, funny, relatable as someone who was a teen girl, but also, it’s getting more scary!
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I might have to add that author to my try-out list. 🙂
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Congratulations on getting into the ASL course. I wish more places had Goshen’s determination to be green. Good to see Future Girl in your TBR as recommended by (Australian deaf author) Jessica White. What’s the connection between Final Girls and The Final Girl Support Group?
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There isn’t a connection between the two final girls books. A “final girl” is a horror trope. There’s always one young woman, who remained sober and clothed the entire movie, who survives the slaughter around her. Now, there are a few books about what happens to that final girl after the movie is over.
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Thank you, I was hoping you’d tell me what it meant. I don’t watch horror movies, or even read movie discussions these days, so I wasn’t aware.
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Lately, I’ve watched a few Aussie horror movies. They tend to tie in A) scary wild life, or B) abuses against Indigenous people.
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Well done on your test, and I will look forward to reading your reviews of the disability-centric books.
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I’m interested in the ones with personal stories from a variety of folks. Reading one book and thinking that it’s fully representative is always a mistake, one I am guilty of occasionally.
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Congrats on the test! You should feel proud of yourself.
Truth and Beauty was very good. Have you read Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face? She was Patchett’s good friend and the subject of Patchett’s book. It would be interesting to pair those reads. I read them both a long time ago and might reread them sometime.
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I haven’t read Grealy, but I had read that she was the friend in Patchett’s book. That’s interesting to know that two books exist about this woman, and I wonder how she felt about being in Patchett’s book and having her story told by another person.
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I *think* she had already passed away when Patchett’s book came out?
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Lots of Grady Hendrix on that TBR! I’m excited to see it. And congratulations on the test score-wow! And the new college you are going to sounds beautiful, yay for environmentally friendly places!!!!
And Stabby Saturday-could there BE a better name????
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Grady Hendrix is suddenly everywhere, meaning my library bought all his books. It used to be they only had Horrorstor, but now they have the whole backlog of his work.
#StabbySaturdays was SO. FUN. Reading everyone’s reactions while they were watching was great, and all the gifs people included? PERFECT.
I’m nervous about starting school again. I mean, I have to get a student ID and parking pass, right? These are things I’ve forgotten how to do. :3
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Don’t be nervous, you are going to crush this!!!! You navigate much more difficult things on the regular, I think you’ll surprise yourself at how easy this will be!
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You know, you’re probably right. You’re one of those bloggers I’ve been following for so long that you’ve watched as I’ve changed jobs a few times!
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sure have! You go girl.
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Yay! Congrats on your test! And the college sounds great – very cool that it is so environmentally friendly. Sing Unburied is on my TBR so I’ll look forward to hearing your thoughts on it.
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Thank you for your kind words, Karissa! This seems like the sort of small, community-oriented campus that I can see you loving. What kind of college did you go to? I can’t remember.
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I went to the University of Victoria, which is pretty medium-sized (though that’s compared to other Canadian schools). You’re right though that I loved how community-oriented it was. The campus was small enough that you knew where everything was and you were always running into people you knew. When I started there, it was known for being overrun by wild rabbits and having a very lax attitude toward smoking pot in public!
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HA! Okay, this comment utterly made my day for all the funny things I got to imagine as a result. I now see in my head the rabbits smoking pot.
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Hahaha! I mean, maybe the rabbits were getting a contact high, who knows? They were well protected by campus security though. In my first year, someone got expelled for shooting a bunny through the ears with a bow and arrow. (The rabbit survived and was adopted.)
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I mean, that was a trick shot but still wrong. Good on the school for protecting animals.
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They also definitely culled large numbers of them over Christmas every year so it was a mixed protection but it is good that they didn’t allow people to abusive them.
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I know Michigan is the deer state, but they also have to have a hunting season with X number of licenses because the population grows too fast and becomes dangerous to humans (both for disease and vehicle crash reasons).
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It does make sense. We have a similar situation with deer here. The rabbits and the deer thrive because they can live among people in a way that their predators can’t.
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Even though I didn’t love the one Patchett novel I’ve read so far, I am really interested to hear what you think of Truth and Beauty – I don’t think we have enough nonfiction about friendships and I am always up for reading more about it!
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Also, congratulations on testing out of two semesters of ASL, that’s amazing!
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Thank you! I was surprised, but like I said, I moved forward with more bravery after talking to you about working with translators in the medical field.
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I think the only nonfiction book I’ve read about nonfiction was Love is the Thread by Leslie Moise. Nothing about dating or work or children. Just straight-up friendship.
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Wow! What a week! 😀
Congrats on killing it with your testing and being able to skip so far ahead. That’s fantastic!
#StabbySaturdays sound so fun. What a cool idea.
The books you added to your TBR List look really interesting, too. 🙂
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I’ve been sniffing around on Twitter, and I think #stabbysaturdays was something they only did two weekends in a row and isn’t really a permanent thing? I hope it comes back!!
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Yeah, that should totally be a permanent thing. 🙂
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#StabbySaturday was not a permanent thing! Even my husband, who does not love horror, had a blast when we live Tweeted the movies 😦
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