10.7.07

The Sad and the Books

I haven't written for awhile, because I didn't feel like sharing all my apathy and depression, or describing in detail the panic attacks I was getting every day for the last week or so. The last thing the world needs is one more idiot blabbing to the internet at large about their apathy and depression. So I put off writing until today, the first day this week I haven't wanted to rip my own eyes out with a rusty spoon, which might be considered progress of a sort. (Seriously, I'm dealing with it, I'm going to be fine, no need to worry.)

Right, sorry, not talking about that. Instead I have some happier updates.

Dude! Cynthia Voigt has another Bad Girls book out! (And I got to it before my mom did, which is moderately exciting to me.) I totally forgot how exactly and completely spot on she describes middle school/high school age kids. The way they talk, the way they eat, the way they think and plan. It's eerie. For a few minutes I was back in ninth grade myself. (Hello, Mrs. Peters' geometry room lunch gang-of-three!) The character of Casey especially reminds me of me at that age... and Mikey and Margalo are as charming, intelligent, and misguidedly entertaining as usual. Anyone who has survived grades five through nine really should pick up this series at some point. It will click in scary ways.

Aside from reliving adolescent trauma, I've had like eight million books I'm starting and stopping out of. History books, a lot of them (somehow I wish I just knew more history, without having to read about it. It's so interesting, and I so don't have time), plus I've been on a total King Lear kick. Of course I read the play, and good old Asimov's notes, right at the start of camp, but it didn't stop there. I don't actually intend to do research, exactly, but I keep coming across literary analysis books -- at home, at work, at the library -- and picking them up, and skimming them, and then bringing them to rehearsal. I'm also finally reading A Thousand Acres for real, (I borrowed it from my grandma like three years ago -- heh, sorry about that) and it's quite good, although I think it goes a little slowly compared to the play. And there's no equivalent to the Fool as yet, or Kent, which I find disappointing. I like Ginny and Ty both, though, and Jess, against my will. And on my Netflix there are three or four movie versions, none of them actually set in England (is it my fault the one starring Patrick Stewart is set in Texas? Patrick Stewart playing Lear is just something my life is incomplete without).

Anyway, I've also been watching a great deal of House, M.D. -- my dislike of Cameron grows more heated every episode; GOD what an incompetent emotional waste of space -- and the occasional Joan of Arcadia, which I have so far failed to really like, meaning after this disk if it fails to improve, it is off Netflix forever. And on a whim I got the old 80s version of Anne of Green Gables. (I had a rough week. Yeah, you can all just shut up.) It was not as relaxing as I'd hoped, but Gilbert is quite fetching, or would be, except that the actor was like seventeen when he made that movie. (And, in one of the fun bits of trivia that only I care about -- he just showed up on season two of Slings & Arrows. Completely unrecognizable, as an obnoxious playwright. Cracked me up.)

While I'm letting my trivia minded geek flag fly, I should point out I found this in the Guardian -- apparently Tolkien beats out Rowling where it really counts. I can't say I disagree with this ruling, actually. Well, I disagree with number four, but what can you do.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hello to you, too.

Merlin has the nostalgia factor going for him; I at least first saw that movie when I was 5 or something, and it was already on tape then. At the very least he's more of an actual wizard than that of Oz. I wonder who got the remaining 22% of the votes. (Evidently there were at least 11 other responses, if the Wizard of Oz got 2% and was last listed.)