renaissance information, sisters, and yiddish

First, thank you Debi for the amazing teaswap package!!! I am not worthy of all the yumminess! (And how did you know I would break a mug this morning and have need of a new one?!) I haven’t been able to enjoy kit-kats in years, so you found gluten-free ones which are cholov yisrael to boot?! You are the best!

Second, I’m feeling much much better. Thank you for all the kind words.

I had a varied reading this past week. Remember, I’ll at least try to plow my way through about anything (thinking of my Anais Nin diary collection). Anyway, I read approximately 1154 pages this past week.

First up? The Social Life of Information by John Seely Brown (formerly of Chief Scientist at Xerox PARC, now Chief of Confusion) and Paul Duguid.
Well, I’ve just written some 1200+ words on this for class so I won’t go into further detail here. This book was on my to-read list for several years and I am happy I was pushed to read it now. It’s quite enjoyable and an easy fun time.

The Renaissance Soul : Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One by Margaret Lobenstine.
I forget where I heard of this book, Dave, was it on your forums? Anyway, I first learned of a Renaissance Soul my senior year of high school by an awesome government/econ teacher. I’m happy he waited until after I went through to retire (sorry geeknoob (happy birthday btw)). I try to steer clear of those self-help career guides (says she who reads What Color is your Parachute every two years, and has more how-to organize books under her belt than she’d care to admit) this was different. For one, it describes me perfectly. In high school I was track-music-academic girl. In college I was computer-scientist–pathetic-musician–psycholinguist-wannabe. Now? Let’s see, I knit, I write, I crochet, I read, I wish I ran, I study languages without luck, I travel, I do a lot of different things. I want to learn to spin. I want to … Putting me in a library is more a distraction than a help, though I have discovered where in Butler [one of Columbia’s libraries] I can hang out with surprisingly minimum distraction (and there is a seat in the stacks which has perfect wifi). We will see if any lessons from this book help me to solidify anything, unfortunately it reminded me that I have two books on Benjamin Franklin still unread and countless other things I want to do. I try to limit, especially now that I’m back in school…

Sisters at Sinai : New Tales of Biblical Women by Jill Hammer. This slender volume is packed with midrash of women. I have a very soft spot (as view to my enjoying The Red Tent and Card’s Rachel and Leah) for midrash of various levels and authority. This was fun. There is so much more for me to learn.

It seems each yontif (holiday) I take out a book of techines, yiddish women’s prayer. This time around it was Norman Tarnor’s collection (in English), A Book of Jewish Women’s Prayers. I think I do this to feel connected to the countless women before me. I am not sure really why I am so drawn to techines, but I am. This is a nice volume of translation, but I yearn for a nice volume of yiddish and other languages in which they were originally prayed, with an english translation side by side.

• Category: books