New book in the former native speaker's library

In lieu of telling you how my writing plan is going (badly), I'll tell you that I just received a new/old book: Maritime Taiwan: Historical Encounters with the East and the West by Shih-Shan Henry Tsai (M. E. Sharpe, 2009). 

I think I saw it cited somewhere and thought I should check it out. Unfortunately, since M. E. Sharpe's collection is now owned by Routledge, there were no copies I could find on Amazon for less than $50. As John Ross wrote in his succinct review, 

For the fun of it, I went to eBay and was happily surprised to find a copy for only around $22 from a shop called Zuber. So I ordered it, and it came today. It wasn't quite what I expected (the image they used on eBay was of the new Routledge edition), but I'm not going to be picky when the alternative is to spend up to $150 just for a fancier cover. (I do see there was a complaint a couple of years ago about Zuber's tendency to send different editions than what appears to be advertised. If that's the case, I'll have to be careful in my interactions with them.)

Anyway, I'll be sure to get into reading this book to further put off my writing!

Semester writing plan

Classes start tomorrow--I have to go in for one in-person class that I'm teaching. This time I'm taking the commuter rail instead of driving. I'll probably wear about 30 surgical masks on the train.

I'm in a writing group this semester. We meet virtually Monday mornings and tell each other what we plan to get done, then write for 2 hours and come back after that to tell each other what we did. One of the things I did during the two hours was to decide that I'm going to go back to getting up earlier in the morning, at about 5:30, for a half hour of writing as many times as I can in a week. I'll try to mention here when I've succeeded in doing that, just for the sake of accountability. Gonna try to get one of my papers done this semester, if I can get over my imposter syndrome. Wish me luck!

2022 New Year's Resolutions

This year I resolve to use fewer ellipses and to have fewer parenthetical comments in my writing. (I've decided to go for the low-hanging fruit this time around...)