five questions: books, vegetables, and imaginary vidding
I asked kassrachel to interview me, since I've never done the interview meme before and I trusted her to ask thoughtful questions, which of course she did; and so I pass the meme along to anyone who's interested.
Here's how it works:
1. If you want to be interviewed, leave a comment here.
2. I'll ask you five questions.
3. You'll post the answers on your own blog or lj, along with these rules.
4. If anyone replies, asking you for five questions, you'll ask them.
1. With what fictional character do you most identify, and why?
Oh boy. Depends on the day? When I was writing the dissertation, I felt a lot like Tristram Shandy (whose writing could not keep up with his living), with moments days of Mr. Earbrass (...with pen, ink, scissors, paste, a decanter of sherry, and a vast reluctance...). I have a longstanding sense of affinity with Kerewin Holmes of The Bone People, who is asexual and intermittently creative and not particularly nice. On a day-to-day basis, probably a cross between Willow Rosenberg (motivated geek) and Jaye Tyler (snarky slacker). And I aspire to identify with Mr. Keating from Dead Poets Society, for reasons that ought to be obvious to anyone who's seen the movie. *g*
2. What vegetables are best for eating in February, and how should one prepare them?
Winter is the perfect time for slow-cooking dishes that warm up the kitchen and make the whole house smell good. Winter squash (butternut, buttercup, kabocha, red kuri, hubbard... pretty much any type except acorn, which I find bland) and root vegetables (potatoes, onions, carrots, parsnips, celery root, turnips, rutabaga, sunchokes if I'm lucky enough to find them) are my staples all winter long; I eat squash in soups and stews and gratins, and root vegetables roasted or stewed or mashed (two parts potato to one part celery root, mashed with a bit of yogurt and dill, is terrific comfort food for me). I also eat a fair amount of cauliflower, which I usually prepare Indian-style, either curried with potatoes (aloo gobi) or steamed lightly and fried with fenugreek seeds and other spices.
By February, though, I'm usually longing for green things, so I eat a lot of kale - mostly in soup, with beans or lentils or potatoes - and also a lot of broccoli. When I was first learning to cook vegetarian food, I imprinted hard on broccoli and fried tofu with spicy peanut sauce over brown rice, and this, too, continues to be serious comfort food for me. I also like broccoli in fried rice, with onion and carrot and scallions and fried egg and lots and lots of garlic and ginger.
3. Imagine that a studio releases to the world dvds of previously-unreleased source material, which open up new vidding possibilities involving characters you love. What scenes or moments are there?
The rest of the first season of Firefly. Actually, no - as long as this is my imagination we're talking about, let's say the rest of the first three seasons of Firefly (with the movie set between seasons one and two). We'd see Mal moving from cranky to bitter without Inara to tease him and Book to advise him. We'd see Kaylee and Simon making a go of it for a while and then realizing they aren't as right for each other as they'd made themselves believe. We'd see the search for a new pilot, because River's a lot saner now but still pretty damaged. We'd see Zoe having trouble recovering from Wash's death - still competent, because that's Zoe, but locked down inside - and Mal not sure how to help, how to be her friend as well as her captain. We'd see Jayne undergo an experience that changes him, probably not for the better. We'd find out more about Inara's history, and maybe run into some figures from Book's past who'd give us some clues as to how a preacher knew so much about crime. And a hundred more things that I can't even imagine, which is why I need the show.
FOX sucks.
4. What books were most formative for you as a kid, and what did you glean from them?
I've written before about books that have been especially important to me, but "most formative" is a different question, and thus my answers, though related, are correspondingly different.
Most formative... Well, the Chronicles of Narnia, for sure; that's where my love of fantasy began, and also my love for stories that go on and on. The Little House books were also formative in that regard; I loved that there were so many of them! (This was especially important because I didn't have many books as a child - my parents read magazines and newspapers, but not books, so books were not and still are not part of normal life for them - and after we moved when I was seven I had only infrequent access to a library.) I was thus prepared, early on, for fantasy series and for long Victorian novels, and also for the complex continuing narratives of the TV shows I most love. And then the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which continues the fantasy theme but also is the first book, or rather set of books, that I talked about with other people - an activity I loved so much that I now do it professionally. *g*
The other reading material that was really formative for me was Cricket magazine. I think my first-grade teacher must have convinced my parents to get me a subscription, and then we found all the back issues (ALL of them - nearly eight years' worth) at a garage sale for ten dollars, and I convinced my parents to buy them for me, and I read them cover to cover, in order, for WEEKS. Cricket was my first exposure to poetry (including the work of W. B. Yeats and Nikki Giovanni and e. e. cummings). I stopped subscribing in... late middle school, maybe? But I kept all my back issues, and when we had a garage sale the summer after I graduated from high school I sold them all for about twenty bucks to a girl, maybe eight or nine, whose eyes lit up when she saw them.
5. You're throwing a dinner party and can invite anyone you want, fictional or historical. Who gathers at your table, and what do they talk about?
Charlotte Perkins Gilman and George Eliot, for sure, and oh! Aphra Behn! And A. S. Byatt, and Toni Morrison, and Virginia Woolf. And one more... Zora Neale Hurston, I think. (This is my own personal version of Top Girls, isn't it. Maybe I should invite Caryl Churchill. Heh.) They'd talk about writing, of course, and what that's been like for them, and, for the ones no longer writing, what kinds of books they'd like to be writing now, if they could.
And of course they would also talk about the food, which would be excellent. *g*
Here's how it works:
1. If you want to be interviewed, leave a comment here.
2. I'll ask you five questions.
3. You'll post the answers on your own blog or lj, along with these rules.
4. If anyone replies, asking you for five questions, you'll ask them.
1. With what fictional character do you most identify, and why?
Oh boy. Depends on the day? When I was writing the dissertation, I felt a lot like Tristram Shandy (whose writing could not keep up with his living), with moments days of Mr. Earbrass (...with pen, ink, scissors, paste, a decanter of sherry, and a vast reluctance...). I have a longstanding sense of affinity with Kerewin Holmes of The Bone People, who is asexual and intermittently creative and not particularly nice. On a day-to-day basis, probably a cross between Willow Rosenberg (motivated geek) and Jaye Tyler (snarky slacker). And I aspire to identify with Mr. Keating from Dead Poets Society, for reasons that ought to be obvious to anyone who's seen the movie. *g*
2. What vegetables are best for eating in February, and how should one prepare them?
Winter is the perfect time for slow-cooking dishes that warm up the kitchen and make the whole house smell good. Winter squash (butternut, buttercup, kabocha, red kuri, hubbard... pretty much any type except acorn, which I find bland) and root vegetables (potatoes, onions, carrots, parsnips, celery root, turnips, rutabaga, sunchokes if I'm lucky enough to find them) are my staples all winter long; I eat squash in soups and stews and gratins, and root vegetables roasted or stewed or mashed (two parts potato to one part celery root, mashed with a bit of yogurt and dill, is terrific comfort food for me). I also eat a fair amount of cauliflower, which I usually prepare Indian-style, either curried with potatoes (aloo gobi) or steamed lightly and fried with fenugreek seeds and other spices.
By February, though, I'm usually longing for green things, so I eat a lot of kale - mostly in soup, with beans or lentils or potatoes - and also a lot of broccoli. When I was first learning to cook vegetarian food, I imprinted hard on broccoli and fried tofu with spicy peanut sauce over brown rice, and this, too, continues to be serious comfort food for me. I also like broccoli in fried rice, with onion and carrot and scallions and fried egg and lots and lots of garlic and ginger.
3. Imagine that a studio releases to the world dvds of previously-unreleased source material, which open up new vidding possibilities involving characters you love. What scenes or moments are there?
The rest of the first season of Firefly. Actually, no - as long as this is my imagination we're talking about, let's say the rest of the first three seasons of Firefly (with the movie set between seasons one and two). We'd see Mal moving from cranky to bitter without Inara to tease him and Book to advise him. We'd see Kaylee and Simon making a go of it for a while and then realizing they aren't as right for each other as they'd made themselves believe. We'd see the search for a new pilot, because River's a lot saner now but still pretty damaged. We'd see Zoe having trouble recovering from Wash's death - still competent, because that's Zoe, but locked down inside - and Mal not sure how to help, how to be her friend as well as her captain. We'd see Jayne undergo an experience that changes him, probably not for the better. We'd find out more about Inara's history, and maybe run into some figures from Book's past who'd give us some clues as to how a preacher knew so much about crime. And a hundred more things that I can't even imagine, which is why I need the show.
FOX sucks.
4. What books were most formative for you as a kid, and what did you glean from them?
I've written before about books that have been especially important to me, but "most formative" is a different question, and thus my answers, though related, are correspondingly different.
Most formative... Well, the Chronicles of Narnia, for sure; that's where my love of fantasy began, and also my love for stories that go on and on. The Little House books were also formative in that regard; I loved that there were so many of them! (This was especially important because I didn't have many books as a child - my parents read magazines and newspapers, but not books, so books were not and still are not part of normal life for them - and after we moved when I was seven I had only infrequent access to a library.) I was thus prepared, early on, for fantasy series and for long Victorian novels, and also for the complex continuing narratives of the TV shows I most love. And then the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which continues the fantasy theme but also is the first book, or rather set of books, that I talked about with other people - an activity I loved so much that I now do it professionally. *g*
The other reading material that was really formative for me was Cricket magazine. I think my first-grade teacher must have convinced my parents to get me a subscription, and then we found all the back issues (ALL of them - nearly eight years' worth) at a garage sale for ten dollars, and I convinced my parents to buy them for me, and I read them cover to cover, in order, for WEEKS. Cricket was my first exposure to poetry (including the work of W. B. Yeats and Nikki Giovanni and e. e. cummings). I stopped subscribing in... late middle school, maybe? But I kept all my back issues, and when we had a garage sale the summer after I graduated from high school I sold them all for about twenty bucks to a girl, maybe eight or nine, whose eyes lit up when she saw them.
5. You're throwing a dinner party and can invite anyone you want, fictional or historical. Who gathers at your table, and what do they talk about?
Charlotte Perkins Gilman and George Eliot, for sure, and oh! Aphra Behn! And A. S. Byatt, and Toni Morrison, and Virginia Woolf. And one more... Zora Neale Hurston, I think. (This is my own personal version of Top Girls, isn't it. Maybe I should invite Caryl Churchill. Heh.) They'd talk about writing, of course, and what that's been like for them, and, for the ones no longer writing, what kinds of books they'd like to be writing now, if they could.
And of course they would also talk about the food, which would be excellent. *g*