Armchair BEA: Hello, Hola, Konnichiwa, Aloha

I am so excited to be participating in Armchair BEA this year (while still being remarkably jealous of those who get to attend the physical convention). :)

Today, we have introductory questions:

Please tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? How long have you been blogging? Why did you get into blogging? Where in the world are you blogging from?  I am Trisha, a mother and college professor. I started blogging way back in January of 2007, and my primary motivation then (and now) was to keep track of the the books I've read and how I felt about them.

What was your favorite book read last year? What’s your favorite book so far this year? Picking a favorite is definitely not my specialty, but this year's top contenders so far are Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and Maggie Stiefvater's The Dream Thieves. Last year, I really enjoyed Seraphina by Rachel Hartman and The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.

Describe your blog in just one sentence. Then, list your social details -- Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. -- so we can connect more online. A lacking-for-time mother and professor randomly shares her thoughts on books and her kid. Twitter: Trish422  GoodReads: EclecticEccentric  LibraryThing: EclecticEccentric  Pinterest: Trish422

If you were stranded on a deserted island, what 3 books would you bring? Why? What 3 non-book items would you bring? Why? The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Dante's Inferno, and War and Peace. The reasons are simple: 1. These are long, complicated works, and you definitely want something that will take some time if you are stranded. 2. I really, really love Dante's Inferno. 3. This may be the only way I'll read War and Peace despite the fact it's been sitting on my shelves for well over a decade.

What do you think of when you think of literature? Classics, contemporary, genre, or something else entirely? 

I start every semester in my Introduction to Literature course with this very idea: What is literature? How do we define it? What assumptions do we make about works that are/are not classified as literature? For me - and my students - the word literature automatically invokes the canon, older works that consistently make their way into school curricula. After that, it's just "old stuff", any work written before roughly 1920. Once I think about the definition of literature though, I realize that I'm not defining the term, I'm just assigning books based on remarkably simple criteria - date of publication/popularity of the work.

Terry Eagleton's text Literary Theory begins with an introduction titled "What is Literature" and I always defer to that in my own thinking. There is no true definition; it is a socially constructed category that is defined by the books included. It is fluid. And often "literature" is something you know it when you read it but you can't fully explain why. Anymore I've fallen into the idea that it is all literature - anything written with a semblance of plot. It's just some of it is good literature and some of it isn't.

I can't wait to read all - well, maybe not all, I mean there's A LOT of participants - of your introductory posts and see what you think about literature!