Mondaytopia

Yesterday, I heard that author Margaret Atwood might be speaking locally, at Adelphi University, and, after I’d confirmed it at their website this morning, I decided to attend. It was an interesting free lecture, held this evening on campus, about utopias and dystopias — or, more properly, Atwood’s own coined term ustopias, the intersection where the two collide and combine, where the dark underbelly of our imagined utopias are exposed and where the hope of a better future lurks in our worst imagined fears. She discussed both The Handmaid’s Tale and her two more recent novels, Oryx and Crake and After the Flood; and even though I’ve only read the first of those three books — she touched briefly on The Blind Assassin, which I’ve also read — overall it was an interesting and entertaining evening.

The rest of the day was pretty much just your regular Monday.