Cover via AmazonIt's week 4 of the semester, and the prompt for this week says to discuss the books we've found so far (since the school library is pretty small, we'll probably have to do interlibrary loans, so we have to start looking right away). As I mentioned before, Dr. Toffee gave me some titles and authors to look for, so I'll start with them.
Davis, Lennard, ed. The Disability Studies Reader. NY: Routledge, 1997. There's a newer edition of this, but this is the one our library has, so I checked it out. It's a collection of articles, and a bunch of them look good for my project. Toffee says that the basics for analysis are in most of the articles.
Linton, Simi. Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity. NY: NYUP, 1998. I read the first chapter in this one (it's a short book), and it looks like I'm going to be using it a lot -- it's just what I need. She talks about how disabled people have been treated through history and now, too.
Thomson, Rosemarie Garland. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. NY: Columbia UP, 1996. I had to do an interlibrary loan on this, so I haven't seen it yet, but the title sounds like it is relevant. After all, there isn't a much more extraordinary body than the Thing, right? She also has a book on freak shows, which looks pretty interesting.
There's more, but I'll save that for next time.
Image by afagen via FlickrI read an excerpt from a Dave Barry book where he reflects on guys, as opposed to men. What got me about this was that I started reflecting from the very first sentence, because what Barry was focusing on was how guys are often irrational and illogical. This is what often makes them incomprehensible to women (like me). One thing I've noticed from my parents is that in a couple, some guys may lose their common sense entirely and suddenly when a whim strikes them (I say "some" and "may" so that you won't accuse me of making sweeping sexist generalizations). My dad once changed the oil in the lawnmower -- in the living room! The beige carpet was ruined (of course. Duh.), and my mother remained speechless for three days. I mean, she didn't say a word to anyone. At the time I wondered what she could say that wasn't completely obvious. I still don't know. 
