Literary Arts Steps It Up–Drinking and Delve!

Once again, Literary Arts has impressed me by improving one of my favorite programs that they offer. If you haven’t tried Delve, you really should. I’ve only done one of the seminars (Virginia Woolf’s The Waves a few years ago), but it was amazing and I really need to do another.

It made me nervous at first because it smacked so much of college. They bring in smarty-pants professors and pick sometimes challenging books (Hello! The Waves?!). But it’s not like that at all. First of all, everyone really wants to be there, so they’re all excited and geeking out over the book (not sullen and hungover from the rugby party the night before). Second, the professor is actually referred to as a “guide.” It becomes less of a classroom and more of a really, really good book club. There definitely are no stupid questions. And no wrong answers.

Well… There are sometimes wrong answers. But no panic about writing a paper. Bonus!

And the improvement? Now you can go out drinking at a bar while discussing the book! Brilliant! Delve Over Drinks is offering two options this season. William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and one over graphic novels. Can you imagine? A mild-mannered business man and a soccer mom have a couple of glasses of wine and get into over whether or not Becky was genuinely calling the shots or just a female struggling to make her way in a man’s world. Proactive or reactive? Red or white?

May 27 Jenny

Yet another quick, dirty and depressing book about science.

I can’t get enough of them, it seems.

The Humans Who Went Extinct is all about how Homo sapiens weren’t really super-smart, badass warriors who simply emerged from Africa one day and took Europe by storm, wiping out all the Neanderthals with a casual sort of indifference and establishing themselves as highest on the food chain.

Not that I viewed Homo sapiens like that anyway. I have read Clan of the Cave Bear, after all. (Local writer reference! Woo hoo!) But that seems to be the general sort of idea. That’s the impression I have from learning this stuff in school. The Neanderthals were an inferior form of man, and therefore did not survive. (Especially depressing was that “Shiny Happy People” by REM was playing while reading this part of it. Massive irony there, somehow.)

The book is amazing. A bit dry in places, but still fascinating. I just really want more maps. I love his description of the river that became a lake that became the Mediterranean Sea. I just want to see what it looked like and my imagination fails me sometimes. Sad but true.

It’s just another example of how we really exist simply because of sheer luck and evolutionary whimsy. I’m resigned to it now. My confidence as a higher creature of thought and intellect is completely shot. I’ve got the evolutionary ego equivalence of a sea slug. And they could probably survive through a nuclear holocaust, too. Bastards.

May 12 Jenny

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The tarot deck is coming out soon!

If you haven’t checked out the Tarot of the Silicon Dawn, you really should.

When I was doing research for my novel and searching for the perfect image of the Fool, I found Egypt Urnash (and all of her alter egos). And now that she’s finally found a publisher, her completed tarot deck will be coming out (hopefully) in September 2011.

I’d just like to point out that she’ll have three fools. And a bunch of Void cards that seem pretty amazing. I’ve only briefly read some of the LWB, but it all seems really exciting and cool and fun.