For those who don’t know (or who may need to be reminded), one of the reasons I wanted to get hired on at UAB so desperately was because of their Education Assistance Program. After 6 months of employment, they pay tuition on up to 18 semester hours per academic year. After 1 year, they’ll do the same for Brian and will cover 50% for our dependents (yes, if I’m still at UAB when Taylor graduates high school, she’s going to UAB! Unless she has a scholarship for another college, of course.)
Then I started and got to looking at the degree programs. I was bummed. Seriously. All I’d ever wanted was someone to pay for me to go to school. I finally get there and I can’t find a blasted thing I want to take! Sure, I found a few things that sounded interesting, but I wasn’t really sure. Short version – I believe I’ve found what I want to do – I want to be an English major. “What the @#$% are you thinking?!” you ask? For the gyst of the answer, read the next paragraph then skip to the last paragraph. For what brought me to that answer, read the stuff in the middle. 🙂
Then last night, I went to a little group called BookTalk. They meet the first Tuesday of each month during the regular school year. About a month ago, I saw the book “Lost City Radio” by Daniel Alarcon was to be discussed. Thanks to amazon.com’s “Look Inside” feature, I was able to read a few pages and found the book interesting. I decided to go for it. I bought it used and cheap and proceeded to get laughed at by my husband as I read every chance I could get. My excuse every time was, “I only have a month to read this and I don’t have that much free time!!”
The group met last night (and, of course, it was the last meeting of this academic year – they’ll start back up in the Fall) and I loved it! The book was different from my usual Fantasy & Sci Fi fare. It’s based in a nameless South American country in the midst of civil war whose government at some point had renamed all the cities as numbers (I learned that this is something a few other noteworthy authors whose names I didn’t recognize have done). Lost City Radio is a radio show done weekly at the only radio station that was allowed to stay on the air. Norma takes calls from people who are looking for loved ones who have disappeared. She has a special connection – about 10 years earlier, her husband (a professor at the local university) had gone off into the jungle for research and not come home. As you can probably guess, her husband wasn’t just a researcher/professor.
I was worried they’d start getting into current issues and how the book applies / was based on / whatever. I read fiction for fiction. Yes, the professor’s character was based on the author’s uncle, and so based on something that really happened, but the book is – ultimately – fiction. But no one started in on that. I was pleasantly surprised. There was one lady who had known the author since his childhood (which wasn’t long ago – the guy’s 30 and slated as an up and comer!). The group leader very efficiently and nicely cut her short after a more than reasonable period of time and we were able to finish going around the circle giving our brief opinions. When he asked if he’d skipped anyone, the lady spoke up, “You cut me short…” and continued talking. A few chairs down, another lady stage-whispered, “She sure likes to talk!” LOL
I got a couple of minor outcries when I said it was predictable (it is, but it’s still a very very good read!! And I said so!). Someone did eventually pipe up about how the happenings in the book can be laid upon practically any country as a template and you can see how this is oh so very real, current, timeless, universal. That’s when I got to say my bit about reading it for fiction. The group leader seemed pleasantly surprised at my comment and asked for more detail. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really give more detail. They kept talking about how 1984’ish it was and some mention was made that “everyone has seen/read it” – I confessed I hadn’t. I also said that, perhaps if I read the author’s short stories (War by Candlelight – there’s a short story in there that gives a more accurate portrayal of what his uncle went through), I might view Lost City Radio differently, but for now, I read it as fiction. I realize that this kind of thing honestly, truly goes on in the world and that this book had some basis in actual events/people, but this book is – ultimately – fiction.
I thoroughly enjoyed the group. I love reading. I looked into the prospect of an English major today – trying to figure out if I should start undergraduate or graduate. If I start undergraduate do I have to take all those core classes again? If I start graduate, am I at a disadvantage since others have probably had all those undergraduate classes? What I found most amusing was a blurb on the department’s website, “Students graduating from UAB with a major in English have gone on to achieve advanced degrees from graduate and professional schools. They work in fields as diverse as book and magazine publishing, web publishing, teaching, law, medicine, library science, banking, and retail management.”
What were those last two? Banking and retail management? All I could think of were bank tellers and Walmart managers… how about you?
Oh yeah! The book I got for cheap on amazon.com turned out to be a first edition. I’m hanging onto it!!