revise or remix

so for 5371 (Foundations of Tech Comm) and 5387 (Publications Management), I get to write book reviews.

for some reason, the art of the review seems to be an extremely crucial thing to learn as a graduate student. we had to present a review for 5340 (Bibliography) also, though that was a group project, and not written. Dr. Hawkins gave us 7 minutes to talk about an online edition of our choice. my group did the Rossetti Archive.

that was fun. and our presentation went quite well. 7 minutes, 21 seconds. and I even got to talk a bit about the geeky web-design stuff I love so much. cross-browser compatibility, XHTML, javascript. mm. the cool moment was showing this screenshot to a bunch of literature grad students.

yes, I am trying hard to reinforce the idea they've all got about the crazy tech comm people. it's fun.

my other two classes are not lit. classes. they are full of the technical. and I've got six weeks or so--amongst all my other projects and research and essaying--to read and review the following two books.

for Kelli, the 5th edition of Technical Editing, by Carolyn Rude and Angela Eaton. we've read a few articles by Carolyn Rude already, and so much that she says impresses me. Dr. Eaton works here at Texas Tech, which is just a neat connection.

also, I love editing. I think this book will be great. many thanks go to the editors of Communicator, an ISTC journal who sent me this, my very own copy.

for Dr. Still, I've got this. it's called Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age, by Kenneth Goldsmith. he teaches a class all about this at the University of Pennsylvania, apparently. sounds quite fascinating.

this one, I had to request from the far away land of Arizona. U of A was kind enough to lend me this copy all the way til the end of the semester. so nice of them. I've just read the introduction so far. the rest of it, I can already tell, is going to be extremely interesting. (note to self: take a few notes on this stuff for the alien-girl story.)

other news from my little planet of grad school:
-got an A on my 5371 midterm. go me.
-met with Dr. Snead today to talk about the mystery of Hannah Woolley. need to start drafting...
-spent an hour in the Letterpress Lab cleaning out old rusted trays and weighing drawers full of type. so awesome.
-finished editing that index about wine thismorning. learned a lot about grapes. fun fun.

and now, for a semi-irrelevant postscript:
this article and this comic were both published today, the 2nd of November. that is called timeliness. or something. (is tongue-awareness even a thing? really?)