Big Honking Magic Ring

So, as you can see, I went ahead and did it; I ordered a class ring. After comparison shopping on tons of sites, I ordered it from Dunham Manufacturing out in Texas. I’d recommend them. They had, by far, the best prices and variety of designs. The price difference difference between their sterling silver rings and their siladium rings was minor compared to companies like Jostens. While I still think that over two hundred dollars is a bit ridiculous for a sterling silver ring, there’s no way that I was going to pay anywhere near that for a ring that was made of, essentially, scrap metal. I also wasn’t going to pay over eight hundred dollars for the official UF equivalent, white gold or not.

So, sterling silver it was. I got a gator (Go Gators!) on one side and a unicorn with a banner bearing the initials “MFA” on the other. Because, you know, writers are cheesy, like unicorns, but also because writing is magical. Like unicorns. No, really–I think poetry is the closest thing we have to magic spells, deliberate word choice made to elicit a certain emotional, physiological responses in the reader. This necessitates a certain familiarity with the world around you as well as a certain skill with naming things, like magicians in books. Okay, maybe I just picked the unicorn because writers are cheesy, like unicorns.

The ring took awhile to get here, but it was exactly as long as promised–six weeks. And honestly, I love it. The quality is better than what I hoped for. It’s huge, sparkling, heavy, and wonderful–just what I wanted. I keep staring at it. Jordan’s right–waiting does make things better, and I’ve wanted one of these rings for a very long time.

But honestly, I feel guilty, like I always do, when making any sort of big, indulgent purchase. I don’t make these purchases often at all, and I never regret them. But I am wracked with a sort of guilt. Maybe this has something to do with growing up poor–you never believe you deserve things, even if they’re financially feasible.

But enough guilt. I’m proud of my work here in the MFA program, proud of my growth as a person and a writer. It was not easy; it was sometimes downright painful, and for that reason, if not for the positives (and there are many, particularly the friends that I’ve made here, the writing I’ve done), it can’t hurt to have a talisman, a token, tangible, to keep me tethered to these strange (but magical) two years in a land of gators.

And unicorns. Terribly, terribly cheesy unicorns.

Goodreads Review: The House of the Scorpion

The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

In The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer slowly weaves the tale of Matt, a clone of the drug lord Matteo Alacron. Alternately pampered and tortured throughout his childhood (he slightly unbelievably goes from being kept in a pen of chicken litter to being given private piano lessons and tutoring in a few years’ time), Matt grows up with a strong moral compass thanks only to his caretakers. Farmer does a good job of developing this bildungsroman–by the novel’s end, Matt is a fairly complex character. Likewise, she builds her futuristic universe slowly: in the first several chapters, it largely resembles our own, but by the novel’s conclusion we come to realize that this is a very different world, both in terms of technology and politics.

But something intangible was lacking here. There’s something perfunctory about Farmer’s prose, and the characters who surround Matt feel flat. And, while the actual plot of the book is fairly interesting, Matt’s movement from episode to episode feels disjointed, as if Farmer was keeping her characters at arms’ length. Nevertheless, she raises some interesting questions here, not only about cloning but also about power and our genetic destinies.

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