Thursday, March 15, 2012

Beware the Ides of March

My parents' anniversary is the today, which is vaguely ironic to the Rubio clan, because to remember the date my dad and siblings always say "Beware the Ides of March!" (okay, a little more awful than ironic, but the funny kind of awful for a bunch of literature nerds). So, at least none of us will ever forget their anniversary?

A quick recap of February and the first half of March:

The Tucson Festival of Books was tons of fun! I got to meet Luis Alberto Urrea, Cherie Priest and Mary Doria Russel (Jesuit priests in space!), plus there were lots of interesting panels and workshops that I got to attend. My favorite was the one about Nazis and creating a complex villain. Also, I spent so much money on books that it would be a little embarrassing if I didn't love all the books I bought. Got back into town just in time for the LibroTraficante caravan's meeting downtown. Lots of local writers showed up, along with La Mujer Obrera (which sponsored the event, and is a wonderful organization dedicated to Economic and Community Development, and Women's Empowerment). It was a wonderful success, and hopefully LibroTraficante is met with the same community support that it found here on every stop along its way to Tucson.

I started writing again! And okay, yeah, it is for my creative writing class mostly, but with the way censorship, politics and feminism have become so important to my life recently, this piece has already grown waaay past the 20 page requirement for my class. It's got the potential to be novel-length worthy, so hopefully I've not lost interest in it by the end of the semester.


Currently reading

The Scar by China Mieville
Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello
Birds by Aristophanes
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

I WILL finish The Scar before March is over, if only because I started reading it almost a year ago and put it away to do other things, which was a terrible decision since twenty pages after I stopped I found out that it is seriously one of the most interesting books I've read in a long while. I'll give the internet a review of it once I'm done.