Ketchup and Mustard

Not really any mustard. Mostly ketchup, because like a failure I haven't written all summer.

So, in no particular order:

My mum visited! It was lovely. We saw shows, bought clothes and books, and got tattoos. You know, all the usual stuff.

I wrote my portfolio. Not, I'm sorry to say, my best work. Between various vacations and so forth, I left it quite late, and had a lot of trouble approaching the assignment. Still, it's in, it's done, and I am basking in my weeks of nothing-to-do until it's time to move to my fall dorm.

I visited Char, Ella, and their gorgeous new baby, whom I will call Topsy. So cute, my friends! It seems bizarre that people my age are parents, but they are, and Char and Ella are quite good ones. We saw Hadrian's Wall and enjoyed ourselves immensely.

And Sharkytart came to visit! Sharkytart and I went to high school together ages and ages ago, and have been living in different countries (or at least different states) pretty much ever since. But we stay in really good touch now, and she came out for nearly a month. We did London, and Amsterdam (there is a hilarious story there about our inability to get stoned therein), and came back so I could do my Troilus Redux. And then we stayed with Poppasmart for a few days and went to a castle and wandered around all day wearing Robin Hood hats. You see why these people are my friends.

All in all, a wonderfully relaxing and supportive summer. I got to spend a lot of time with friends, something I haven't done enough since I moved to this side of the pond. I went to fun places and saw many good shows (the Globe's Troilus and As You Like It were both marvelous this year). And through it all I of course read a great many books and watched a fair bit of TV. For TV, I must recommend Castle to all those who haven't seen it; it cracks me up on a regular basis. As for books, I've been on quite the mystery kick (thanks, MOM) and made it through the Sebastian St. Cyr books, the Lady Julia Grey books, the first two Roderick Alleyn books, and today I finished the first Dame Frevisse book. Also the Earthsea quartet, and The Time Traveler's Wife, and a couple more Peter Wimseys. And some other stuff that I don't remember. Quick reviews: Sebastian St. Cyr (by C.S. Harris) gets an A for plot and a C for writing, averaging to a B; Lady Julia Gray (Deanna Raybourn), also a B; Roderick Alleyn (Ngaio Marsh) C+; Dame Frevisse (Margaret Frazer) A-; Earthsea (Ursula Le Guin) B+; Time Traveler's Wife (Audrey Niffeneger) the same; Peter Wimsey (Dorothy Sayers) A-. The movie of Time Traveler's Wife gets a C-, though; that was not nearly as good as the book.

And that is what I did this summer. On the whole, delightfully refreshing, even if England couldn't work up a good day of sun since the end of May.

Troilus and Cressida and Zombies

Troilus and Cressida being the lesser known Shakespeare I'm working on at the moment, and the zombie being me.

Honestly, I haven't been writing first because I went home, and had many more social engagements, many fewer minutes of free time, and very limited computer exposure. And since I've been back? It's mostly been stress.

(And the difficulty of beginning to write again after one hasn't for awhile.)

Part of me thought everything would be okay once I started directing again, but this is my first time working with "real" drama students, several of whom are more educated in drama than I am. And since I'm the only one getting graded on this project, I find it sort of thematically difficult to figure out how gung-ho I am allowed to be. All of which is a roundabout way of saying I'm really insecure about this whole thing, and wish I had as much confidence as I have ideas.

I do however have the benefit of a really interesting script (since it's edited by me) and a so far stellar cast. I mean, it's not performance time yet, but so far they've been lovely, both as actors and as people. Still I am insecure. Which makes me insecure about feeling insecure in the first place, and determined not to show my insecurity, which makes me more insecure.

Whee!

So when not rehearsing, (and we're really not rehearsing very often yet) I've been mostly in my room, reading and watching old episodes of Stargate. (Allette described it thusly: "It has a cast of four: one woman, and three hot men" and so I decided to check it out. The writing is pretty bad, but I have kept watching anyway.) My reading has been mostly well-written, however. I've been rereading Austen lately, and heard that for those who wish she'd written more than six novels, a good second option is Emily Eden, and so I've started her Semi-Detached Couple. At chapter ten, I can't make any sweeping generalizations about plot, but so far her dialogue is pretty excellent.

Also, I must recommend to all and sundry that you scamper off and get your hands on Peter Beagle's latest, We Never Talk About My Brother. Go on, scamper. It's worth it, I promise. His writing is rich as custard, but since it's a book of short stories, when you get overwhelmed by it you can always put it down. And it's really just shimmeringly beautiful stuff.

So that has been my life recently: books, television, abject fear.

All is not lost, however. Who just made it to round 4x on Bubble Spinner? Who just got a score of 2177? That's right, bitches. Boo-yah.

Take heart, my challengers. (I didn't realize I had challengers till I got home, and people were all asking what my top score was.) In losing this challenge you have actually won. Are you depressed and finding it difficult to do anything productive in your life for more than twenty minutes at a time? No? Because that's what makes ME play Bubble Spinner for like three hours at a stretch.

One Step Forward, Six Steps Back

I had two feminist moments today. And, you know, this isn't a feminist blog -- I should know, I read plenty of legitimate feminist blogs -- but it is my personal blog and I am a feminist, so today you get to read about my feminist moments.

I've been watching old X-Files DVDs, borrowed from The Store -- and you all can just shut up, because that show rocks, even if it is dated now, only ten years later. But although the government conspiracy stuff clearly shows its age, in some ways it is incredibly current. I was watching a season three episode, "2Shy", when the following scene jumped out at me (no youtube video, so a transcript will have to do):

[Scully enters the morgue; local detective is already there]

Local Detective: Oh, it's you.

Scully: That's not a problem, is it?

Local Detective: No, it's just that Dr. Kramer didn't tell me that you were observing the autopsy.

Scully: I'm not observing. I'm performing it myself.

Local Detective: You're a medical doctor?

Scully: You sound surprised.

Local Detective: I don't know. I guess maybe I am.

Scully: Why?

Local Detective: It's nothing personal, Agent Scully. I'm just . . . old-fashioned in certain regards.

Scully: Old-fashioned?

Local Detective: The truth is, I question the wisdom of assigning female law-enforcement officers to certain types of cases.

Scully: Like this one?

Local Detective: Whoever killed Lauren Mackalvey has a definite attitude toward women, right? So this has to be affecting your judgment.

Scully: I appreciate your concern, Detective. But it's not necessary. All I want to do is solve this case, just like you.

Local Detective: Look, I'm not being sexist, here, I'm just being honest.

Scully: Where would you like the autopsy report sent?

Local Detective: You can fax it to my office.

So my apologies for quoting at such length, but, for serious? That's awesome. I don't remember this particular scene -- although I know I watched the episode at some point when I was a teenager -- but, for real, that's just fantastic. She doesn't engage. She doesn't get angry. She doesn't let it affect her. She just reacts, politely and firmly, to everything he says, letting him hang himself. And it's really -- almost a throwaway scene. Like I said, although I remember the fat-sucking villain of this particular ep, I don't specifically remember this or any other scene that dealt so directly with sexism. It doesn't have bearing on the plot, not really. And yet I'm so happy it's there. This is why Scully was a feminist icon, before Buffy, or Veronica Mars, or Kima, or Laura Roslin. Like any other compelling character, Scully gets into dangerous situations and must be rescued, and spends a fair amount of time rescuing Mulder from similar situations. Gillian Anderson is lauded -- rightly -- for her charisma, her acting chops, and the air of complete competence and unflappability which she imbues in Scully, and of course this sort of scene wouldn't work without that background.

But watching it, I was just so pleased that they put this scene in the show at all -- that they showed young women (like me! in my impressionable years) a role model who not only had the chops, but had the self-confidence to stand up for herself against this sort of thing, directly, publicly, out loud, on screen.

I love me my Buffy, and I love Veronica Mars, too, and the women on BSG. And in all those shows, people are confronted with sexism and deal with it intelligently and forthrightly. But it surprised and pleased me to note that for all the ways the X-Files has aged badly (and in many ways, it has) there remain some aspects that still resonate really powerfully.

Compare this to my other "feminist moment" of the day -- rather the opposite context. Now, obviously, there has been a lot of press about Hillary Clinton, and her speech, and her delegates, and all that. I find that I have nothing more to add on this topic -- clearly the coverage is overtly sexist, clearly the woman cannot win even the smallest bit of respect from her peers regardless of what she says, and clearly she is doing some amazing work in the face of those odds. But while that is all current, and supports my point, I would instead like to fight pop culture with pop culture, and note how far we haven't come by a different comparison.

It's not a secret that I have a certain amount of contempt for Stephanie Meyer and her Twilight Saga -- in which I am not alone. Oh, I've read the first few chapters of book one, and definitely flipped through parts of number four, since it sits on the counter at The Store, and all. (Hey, counterwork is boring when there's no one in the store.) Anyway, I had read enough, both of the books and of the publicity to know that a) I am not the target demographic for this book -- I am not nearly misunderstood enough and b) I am in fact so far out of the target demographic that I am actively repulsed by the concept.

Today I was talking to my old friend Algy, who also now works at a bookstore, and she was telling our group (moi, Short Stuff, and The Fable) about how she'd read the whole series. From what she said, and what I'd read myself, I am appalled. These are the lessons that the pop teen "classic" Breaking Dawn puts forth. (I know it would be much more fair and balanced to include quotations, rather than summaries. But I do not have a copy of that particular title.)

1) It's okay to have steamy sex with your undead lover, who likes to drink blood, and following that, allow him to turn you undead as well, but only if you get married to him first.

2) Should you have sex with aforementioned undead lover-turned-husband, and you come away covered in bruises from how roughly he has handled you, that is okay too, as long as you are "in love."

3) It is your undead husband's decision, not yours, whether or not to abort the half-undead baby you are carrying.

4) Should someone approach you, and offer to let you have sex with his wife, with whom you are in love and respect on her own merits, without her prior knowledge (or, one assumes, consent), the correct response is, "Ummm... sure!"

5) Nothing is more romantic than having your undead husband chew through your own (now undead) flesh into your womb and give you a personal, bite-by-bite C-section.

Call me old-fashioned, but give me Scully any day of the week. I mean... really those two lists speak for themselves, and I should shut up, but I honestly can't believe this. I didn't have the highest standards for my entertainment when I was in my teens, for sure, but I'm really glad that what I ended up drawn to was something like The X-Files rather than like Twilight. I'm glad my mom steered me (gently) in that direction, and I'm glad my little Sis is following those steps too. It's easy to forget what a difference it makes, until days like today, when it just slaps you in the face.

Unpopular Opinion

Okay, I know -- I know -- that Loyal is going to kill me for saying it, and the DD will be none too pleased, and all that. And I am really sorry. But I have to get it off my chest.

I just reread The Golden Compass. And, well. It had all the problems I remembered it having.

To get a few things out of the way -- it's a good book. I've got no qualms with it theologically. I'd still recommend it to people, I certainly don't have anything against people who like it. I just bought the whole trilogy from the Store, because my sister STOLE my copies. (She has stolen so many of my books. Eeeeevil.)

But with all that said, it just doesn't hang together quite as well as Pullman seems to think it does. For one thing, Lyra is just not that sympathetic to me. She's like Hamlet -- she reads like a symbolic figure, not a realistic character. And I know she all ends up being Eve, and prophecy this, and chosen one that, but Harry Potter managed to be all prophesied about and chosen and Christlike and all and still managed to make me care about his family life, which is something I just can't muster up for Lyra. She gets better in the later books, and I like Will okay, but they both necessarily have a mixture of mature world-weariness and childlike cluelessness which I don't find remotely convincing.

And really, I think the whole story kind of has that problem. The daemons, for example, are a really interesting idea, and fun to speculate about and give a lot to the story, and all that. And yet, I still feel like they're there for the express purpose of giving the reader a clear symbol of childhood and adulthood. I feel like the whole idea is there because of that one Bible passage at the end of book one. And certain things about it just aren't adequately explained.

Fundamentally, too, I just disagree with the notion that the only way to become an adult is through some form of sexual initiation. Lyra suffers the horrible guilt of causing a friend's death, she is forced to choose between separating herself from her own soul and betraying her friend yet again, she is betrayed and held captive by her father, her mother, and several others, if memory serves, and yet she doesn't reach spiritual adulthood until she discovers the joys of making out with a twelve-year-old? It seems to me that the device of the daemons and their permanent form is so that the reader has a way of knowing when Pullman thinks Lyra has grown up, because otherwise it really would be completely unclear. To me being an adult has a lot to do with learning to take responsibility for your actions, and the consequences they have on other people, not anything necessarily physical. I realize that some people don't seem to ever hit this milestone -- or give no evidence of having hit it, anyway -- but some people are never sexually initiated, either, or not until they're in their twenties or thirties or forties. The idea just seems shoddy to me in certain ways.

But that's really my problem with the whole thing, the whole book, the whole series. It's so detailed and vivid and well-thought-out, and everything is there, and yet in certain ways it seems written not to tell a story, but to prove a point, to make a statement, and that just annoys me, every time. I don't mind books that say true things about life, obviously -- hi, degree in philosophy. But a book like Pride and Prejudice, a poem like Tintern Abbey, a play like Arcadia -- they tell me different things every time I read them, based on where I am, and what I'm thinking about, and what parts I choose to focus on. With His Dark Materials, there is some of that, but there's also some of the feeling that the only two possible responses are to disagree with Pullman or to agree with him, and in the end, that's not very interesting. Because in some ways I agree, and in some ways I disagree, but I can't do much give and take if the author doesn't allow me any leeway.

Please don't hate me, Loyal. If it makes you feel any better, I have really similar problems with Hamlet, and to some degree even The Chronicles of Narnia. And Squeak forgave me Hamlet, and Jay (from college) forgave me Narnia. And hey, you can always dismiss me as a moron who sometimes has been known to pay good money to watch The O.C. (Soooo shallow. My only excuse is that I had a Christmas present to finish making.)

You'd Think I'd Be Sick of Books

What with having to organize and shelve them all day and then reading them all night.

Okay, I am a little out of patience with certain books, and am becoming pickier by the day. The newest restraint is that I have sworn off all books with a picture of the author on the front cover. I don't want to see anyone's ugly mug, smiling or not, on the cover of a book, ever again. If you want the world to admire your face, be a movie star.

But I'm still reading, doggedly paring down my list. (It's at an honest-to-God manageable five now. Still overloaded with non-fiction, though. Nonfiction is good but often takes longer to finish than fiction does. But my weekend is here, and enough of it shall be spent on public transportation that I should be able to knock some stuff off there.)

Soon I Will Be Invincible had its good and bad bits, but the end was so good that it made up for the rest. I didn't like the whole first-person present tense point of view thing. Was not a fan. And, you know, Grossman could have given us more answers, that would have been okay. But there was so much cleverness in the world he created, particularly in Doctor Impossible. Doctor Impossible was pretty much perfect. I love Doctor Impossible. Anyway. So parts of it were disappointing, but it was clever enough that I forgave them.

In other news, I'm in theater withdrawal, and if I didn't have The Winter Thing to look forward to, I might be in danger of killing my sister, who is overloaded on theater at the moment. Or at least tying her up and taking her place in certain situations. But I do have The Winter Thing, and it starts this week. Unofficially starts this week. Theoretically. It's all I can do not to cross my fingers every time I think about The Winter Thing. Theater withdrawal means I am much more dramatic in my everyday life, and begin to hyperventilate when I think about theater stuff I will soon be doing.

Ah, Escapism

Which doesn't really work if you're not escaping. That can actually be read two ways.

1. It is time to overhaul my reading list a little bit. The three books I decided to focus on a week or two ago are doing nothing for me. Which is sad, because it's not like I don't like them or anything; they somehow just don't complement each other very well, and I'm losing all my momentum. So. I am switching my nonfiction book (I'm sorry, Victoria Finlay, I fully intend to finish your lovely book, but I can't right now) and my trashy fiction and regular fiction are getting switched into a different trashy fiction. (I'm sorry, Mark Haddon, but so far your second book is just not as interesting as your first. And no one loved Curious Incident more than I did, but... this one is just not hitting right, at least not yet. And I've given you a hundred pages already, so pick it up, dude! It's hitting too close to home to be entertaining, and not close enough to be touching. Sorry, man.) (I am not sorry to you, Laurie King, because I am either switching a Kate Martinelli book for a Mary Russell book -- both of which are written by you, and you have publicly admitted to agreeing with me that the Russells are more interesting -- or I am taking a break from you altogether to read some Dorothy Sayers, which I think you would also wholeheartedly approve of, given how much you love Sayers yourself.) Anyway. So, book switching time.

2. Seeing King Lear was much more fun than I expected, but not really the escapism I was expecting. A shout-out to my RKs, I am continually impressed with you guys. When I was in high school, I can't remember ever complaining that the people I was doing theater with weren't dedicated enough. Hot shit, you guys. At the same time, the show made me realize all over again how much I am itching and aching to direct something. I know I can't shut up about it, either in person or online, but its ferocity keeps taking me by surprise. God I am praying that this winter thing works out.

Not Really Worth the Delay

I finally finished Smiley's A Thousand Acres last night, and like the Pagels book I finished two nights ago, it... wasn't really worth it. King Lear just does not work as a novel. It... writhes against the novel form. It doesn't mesh, it loses all its power and none of its depression. So that was disappointing.

I am, however, cutting down on my list of "books I'm in the middle of," which is nice. If I can get it down to five (only four more to go) I will be GOLDEN. I don't think I'll ever get it down to fewer than three (one always should have a fiction, a non-fiction, and a trash) but between three and five seems a laudable goal.

Speaking of books, I was talking to my boss last night about various and sundry book crushes I've had over the course of my life, starting with Odysseus when I was about eight, all the way up through Lord Peter Wimsey, last month. I'm going to do a short piece of writing on the subject sometime in the next week or two, once I get my thoughts more organized. I'll post it here when I finish. It should help distract me from my three-month performance review, which will be on Friday. Gulp.

I am So a Detective

Whee! For possibly the first time ever, I predicted who the murderer was a good hundred pages before the end of the book. Even better was that it followed this conversation with my mom:

Me: I have Dorothy Sayers all figured out.

My Mom: Oh really?

Me: Yeah. It's always the person that you've eliminated but didn't want to eliminate.

My Mom: So who did it in Busman's Honeymoon?

Me: Not sure yet; not enough clues. But I won't be surprised by the ending.

My Mom: You don't know a thing. You always have to meet the criminal during the course of the story, otherwise it's not fair. You don't know who did it.

Me: Fine.

That was about nine. I retired to my room, picked up the book, and within fifty pages was like, by my own rule, it has to be this guy. And I stuck to it for the last hundred or whatever pages of the book, and lo and behold, one-thirty in the morning and I am TOTALLY proven right, it WAS him. I didn't realize how he'd done it, but I absolutely knew who it was.

I confronted my mom with this knowledge as she left for work at eight and then retired back to bed until noon. Heh. It was pretty awesome. Staying up until all hours finishing books makes me feel like a little kid again. I haven't been able to do it much since around high school, when the crazy homework load took over. But it is wicked fun.

I would be a totally brilliant detective as soon as I figured out who my author was.

I'm Sure There's a Pun Here, But I Can't Think of It

A pun about how badly I want to direct Busman's Honeymoon, that is.

I'm loving the book -- it may make it onto my list of my favorite books ever; there is so much to have fun with, and Peter and Harriet are completely adorable -- but, with that said, it is also one of the most frustrating books ever. Because you can TELL it was based on a play, it's really obvious, and it's making me think play thoughts. Like how much I want to try to set up Peter's and Harriet's relationship as a counterpoint to the murder investigation (a parallel would be too obvious, but a counterpoint would be interesting) and their movements and floor patterns, and how you would set up the stage, and how you could dangle red herrings, and where you would have entrances and exits, and what parts are funny versus what parts are morbid, and, and...

I miss directing and I miss ADing. It's like an itch I can't scratch, and it's driving me so nuts. Sometimes I wonder about it; like it almost seems presumptuous of me to miss it, since I'm not a real director. But I can't help it, and I can't stop myself. I may ask the Divine Dictator if she knows of any teens around who want to work a scene for fun, just to keep me in practice. Maybe it will help once I start regularly going to Iphigenia rehearsals, but so far dramaturging is not really enough.

Aww. [Thunk] Owww.

In other words, Dorothy Sayers.

I was up until two am last night, reading, and believe me, you know you've got it bad when you finish the book you're on, you know who the criminal is, the romantic tensions have all been resolved.... and instead of going to sleep, you immediately hop out of bed and start on the sequel.

In my defense, Gaudy Night and Busman's Honeymoon are totally awesome and you should scurry off and read them yourself. It sometimes pains me to admit publicly that I agree with my mother, but there is no help for it. I lurrrve them. And Peter and Harriet are totally adorable.

Intellectual Equality is Sexy

My mom is right. AGAIN. Unfair, but true.

In related news, you know what book totally rocks? Laurie King's The Beekeeper's Apprentice. I don't even LIKE mystery novels. Okay, I liked Kate Ross's mystery novels, but that was a fluke. One-off. Not a normal, mystery-liking fact. I like good sci-fi (although that's become as scarce as good mysteries, recently); I like nonfiction; I like lit; and.... I like Laurie King. It is only a very short hop to Dorothy Sayers. A hop my mother has fostered by giving me Strong Poison last night.

Okay, I don't know how it happened, but these books are actually really good. I finished Beekeeper in about three days; I'm already halfway through the sequel. I can't help it. Mary Russell is really engaging, and her romance with Sherlock Holmes is... so help me God... cute. I'm almost as disturbed as I would be finding the romance in Lolita cute, but there it is. Russell is at least post-pubescent, so stop giving me those looks. But yes, there is a forty-year age difference. And I still... find it kind of cute. They all verbally spar and are rude and sarcastic to each other and they match their intellects and solve mysteries and then he strokes her hair. Intellectual equality is sexy, it's not my fault. I've always had a weakness for that kind of thing. And a weakness for well-written, intelligent characters, even if they are detectives.

And it's all exciting and engaging (seriously, the last time I was this caught up in a book was Harry Potter seven) and even though I know it's the same part of my brain that takes delight in cosmogirl quizzes (you know what? You can just shut up) and I kind of don't care.

If it makes you (and by you I mean me) feel any better, my hobbies at the moment include linear algebra, studying the history of Greek theater, and reading scientific history books.

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.

Nick Hornby -- A Long Way Down

Hornby isn't hard to overdose on, but I've more-or-less loved all his books that I've read (High Fidelity and How to Be Good, specifically). He takes tough, bizarre sorts of feelings and states, and normalizes them really well.

A Long Way Down is the story of four people who meet on New Year's Eve on the roof of a common suicide-jumpers building. (What would be the correct term for that?) Martin was a television presenter with a wife and family, who went out partying one too many times, got drunk, slept with a fifteen-year-old girl, and got sent to prison. Two years later, he's divorced, jobless, and suicidal. Maureen has a profoundly disabled son who needs constant, immediate care -- she hasn't had a social engagement beyond church in nearly twenty years. Eighteen-year-old Jess has family troubles, has just been dumped, and her grip on life -- and her sanity -- is none too firm. And JJ, an American living in London, has been delivering pizzas since his band broke up and his girlfriend left him.

Each of the four is an archetype, sure, but each grows and deepens throughout the book. The narration switches back and forth among them every few pages, and Hornby deftly gives up more and more personal information about his characters while resisting the urge to simplify their lives or make any grand statements.

I really enjoyed the book, being kind of depressed myself while I was reading it. Hornby's trademark, and well earned, is his ability to convey depression in funny, charming, thought-provoking phrases. All the reviews on the back of the book say this same thing, but you can't talk about Hornby's books without mentioning it; it's his thing and he does it really well. I can think of maybe two cheap shots he takes, and both fit into the story, give you insight about the characters, and don't derail the setting. Really, you see him avoid so many different cheap shots that the one or two he takes hardly matter.

I still think High Fidelity is kind of his best, but I keep being impressed by his other books, in part how different he manages to make them from one another. Different in setting and characters, I mean; his style is pretty constant.

Give it a try. If you like Hornby's other stuff, if you're depressed, if you like books about people rather than events, or if the idea of suicide doesn't bother you and depress you horribly, give it two tries. I thought it was pretty nifty.

Egypt

The economic system in Cairo is completely beyond my grasp. But the pyramids sure are impressive. Seriously, damn. Also, I rode on a camel. (Paid too much for the priviledge, but I wanted so much to see the Sphinx and go inside the pyramid... So I did. I shall spend the summer paying off this vacation. But! Camel! And pyramids. It was excellent.) Plus, lots of tombs, complete with hieroglyphs on the walls and... well, everything you've ever heard about Egypt, I've been seeing today. Seeing part of, anyway; the artifacts are in the museum that I'll go to tomorrow.

Also finished Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I liked it so much better than I was expecting to, despite the sort of underlying misogyny and depressing undertones. Or overtones, actually, they were pretty explicit. But it was good; the scenes were powerful (if a little cinematic) the mood was really well done, and the ending was just perfect. I was really impressed.

Reading Habits

So, my reading habits have basically done a 180 when compared with what they were before college. I've sort of flip flopped in a number of ways, like my policy about finishing books (I used to think it didn't count unless I had, and if I didn't finish a book the first time I would need to restart it as often as necessary until I had. Now I realize I don't have that kind of time, especially if the book is stupid. This is why I ditched Maia when I left Ella's place a few days ago... I had planned to finish it and then leave it on a train for some unsuspecting Puritan to find and get the vapors from, but I checked with Ella -- "Does it get any better?" "No." "Does it get any less misogynist?" "No." "Sex scenes get any less distasteful?" "No." "Is there any reason to read the last 400 pages?" "Not a one." -- and decided that my time is better spent reading other things. Admittedly this switch came less from college and more from last summer, when I read -- and finished, because I had nothing else to read -- a book so vile that I have the urge to deface it with graffiti every time I see it in a bookstore. You know, open it up, surreptitiously write "This book sucks. The author is an idiot. Read it at your own peril." and only a fear of being caught and having to buy the book stops me), and my policy of fiction versus nonfiction. Only my policy of rereading has remained more or less the same.

Right, believe it or not, all that was actually a sidebar. What I noticed today was a sort of ... odd turn my reading has taken. It's been building up for awhile that I'm simply enjoying nonfiction more than fiction recently -- the stuff that was amusingly labeled "faction" in the bookstore I was in today -- and although it disturbs me a little that I seem to be drawn to the really popular bestseller type nonfiction (except biographies; I generally hate biographies) it doesn't disturb me nearly so much as the trend the subject matter is taking. Basically, I think I'm reading books that give me context and justification for my education.

The two non-fiction books I've bought most recently and have been reading most commonly are Civilization: A New History of the Western World, by Roger Osborne, and A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson. Both of them are that sort of popular, fairly easily readable type of nonfiction -- Osborne's book is just what it says, a history of culture and cultural influences from Ancient Greece up till now, and Bill Bryson's is a sort of history/summary of scientific discoveries in all kinds of areas and anecdotes about the people who made them. But they're both essentially summaries, justifications, and contexts for all the shit I just spent four years studying. The first being a justification of seminar, obviously, and the second, most of my lab and math curriculum. Also, the book I spent something like three hours devouring in a Killarney bookstore this afternoon is called Misogyny and is billed as a short history of humanity's oldest prejudice, again covering ancient Greek and Judaic texts up through twentieth century history. A couple things, in the Greek section at least, were a little overblown, a couple things from the philosophers in all the sections were kind of generalized, but in general it was really good and had me kind of writhing on the floor and almost crying in places. But it, too, highlights something I've been trying to come to terms with, namely being a woman and having the educational background that I have.

(Okay, I'm also reading more recent histories -- my own copy of Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and in bookstores, Gaddes's The Cold War. But I'm spending much, much more time on the others.)

Is this normal? I find it kind of disturbing on two sort of contradictory levels. For one, I'm sort of annoyed that I need the context; I thought that's what college was supposed to have given me. And after having spent four years on this stuff, sometimes almost killing my mental health over it, why do I almost immediately go back to the pop-cult version of it, less than I year after I graduate? Can't I find a new interest, or at least some sort of more advanced version of this interest? Do I have the academic's version of Stockholm Syndrome?

Are other graduates doing this? Can anyone give me a good reason for it? I really want it to be okay, because I'm really enjoying the books and I feel like I'm learning stuff, but looking at it empirically it just looks really odd. Or maybe I'm just feeling very self-doubting after that history of misogyny book.

Out Out And Away

Made it safe to Brighton yesterday evening. I spent the day on various trains -- Normandie to Paris, Paris to London, London to Brighton -- hauling my luggage around, sweating, and reading Hammett's The Thin Man.

My theory of travel remains as firm as ever, and in fact is getting more detailed. You'll remember of course that 80% of people, me included, are just trying to get to their destination in as hassle-free a manner as they can, 12% become total assholes and 8% hit a kind of travel nirvana and ascend to the ranks of angels. I'm very firmly in the 80%; when I am in train stations I just want to find my train, with as few interruptions as possible; I therefore hate all other people in the station, including but not limited to people who are walking slower than I, people who are walking faster than I, people who are standing still, people who have more baggage than I, people who have less baggage than I, and people who are breathing. I'm very impressed with people who DON'T get like that when they travel; there seems to be a loose correlation between not being a stoic bitch and not having four large bags that you are responsible for all alone; this may deserve further research. On the plus side, guys in England can be just as sweet as guys in France when it comes to helping the pack rat carry her suitcase up the steps in the train station, which is nice.

I spent most of my time on the train reading The Thin Man, which I really liked. I especially loved Nora. Nick was pretty cool, kind of a cross between an older Gregory Peck and a younger Humphrey Bogart (and there ain't nothing wrong witht that) but I admired Nora more for being smart and not a pansy and able to put up with Nick being so hard-boiled all the time. I wish she had been the one to solve the mystery, but you can't have everything.

In Which I Ramble

I have like five things on my mind, none of them really long enough for a post by themselves, but my time on the computer is coming in short bursts today, so there shall be several posts for the price of one. Sort of. If you think like that. Hey, you don't like it, go read a real book.

Which I actually just did, and it was awesome, so you guys should all read it too. Geraldine Brooks, Nine Parts of Desire. Brooks is an Australian reporter who spent something like ten years in various Middle Eastern countries, reporting about the lives of women in Islamic nations. They have varying levels of misogyny and control, and womens' lives vary hugely between one and another, and even within the same country in different areas and at different times. The book is completely fascinating and absorbing; I picked it up in a German bookstore and read a chapter and immediately decided to say hell with it and shell out the twelve euros required. And I'm not sorry I did, although I would have preferred being able to find it at a local library. That's definitely not meant as a slam on the author, though. Brooks is concise and relevant, and the book reads like a series of very interesting newspaper articles. She has a journalist's unbiased style and good transitions. As a reader, you have to be careful, in fact, because although Brooks presents many facets of a complex issue, she clearly has very strong opinions about it, and it's easy to fall in to agreeing with her without thinking about it. Not that her ideas are wrong, just me being a paranoid philosophy major. Anyway. The book covers various facets of life, such as wedding customs, genital mutilation, guerilla warfare, and belly dancing, but it never feels rushed or jumpy. Definitely a feminist read (I've been on kind of a feminist kick lately) but interesting, I think, for people of all backgrounds.

Now I'm reading a 500 page history of Western civilization. Which is tons better than it sounds, but so far I'm only on chapter two.

Books My Sister Lent Me

So my sister was in town this last week, and was extremely sweet and brought me some teen books I'd been wanting to read. Meaning today is Adolescent Book Review Day.

Beka Cooper: Terrier, by Tamora Pierce. I think Pierce is trying to branch out with Beka, with mixed results. The story takes place 200-odd years before Pierce's other Tortall books (Song of the Lioness, Immortals, Protector of the Small, Trickster) and features the ancestress of George Cooper, a young woman named Beka. Beka is in training to be a "Dog," the city's equivalent of a police officer, and is working the slums alongside two veterans. Of course, she's the heroine, so she gets a couple of leg ups on her trainers; specifically the ability to hear the voices of dead souls carried by pigeons, and the ability to understand voices picked up by the wind. These get her started on two interlinked cases: somewhere in the Lower City, a man is hiring people to mine gems for him and then killing them so they can't reveal the location of the mines. But someone has found out he has them, and is threatening his family members to give them up. The kidnapper, calling himself after a children's bogeyman, has been doing similar things on a smaller scale for years.

Beka comes as a moderate departure for Pierce -- she's working in an earlier time period in her own universe and for almost the first time, she's dealing primarily with commoners rather than the nobility (only one of Pierce's previous heroines was a commoner, and she within a book or two she was in close with the King and the court, so a commoner merely raised in the house of a noble -- as Beka is, after her mother dies, prior to the story's start -- is rather a novelty). The storyline is far more whodunnit than Pierce's previous work; most of her other characters either already knew or didn't care who was causing them all their problems. Mystery writing isn't Pierce's strong suit -- the twist at the end is neither unexpected nor especially shocking -- but she's writing for teenagers so I'll cut her some slack on that. Not a lot of slack -- if you can't surprise me with the ending, please don't bother trying -- but I was less discriminating in my formative years. So I prefer the glory days of Alanna knowing exactly who the bad guy was and only needing to worry about how to take him down without dying, but I didn't hate Beka's storyline or anything.

Telling the story in diary entries was an interesting choice. I liked hearing the story in Beka's words -- her perspective is pretty good. But the style felt contrived in a lot of places; Pierce doesn't really seem comfortable with it, and the way she uses it for exposition is sketchy.

Some nitpicks -- I know it's a fantasy country and all that, but I do have to ask -- there seem to be very few changes in culture or technology or anything in over 150 years. There's some lip service -- a female knight character, slave trading, different slang -- but the feel is just the same. Yes, the Middle Ages lasted a long time in real life, but doesn't Tortall have a Peter Abelard?

The book does, though, have all Pierce's usual strengths: a powerful, vulnerable heroine, good dialogue, decent humor, strong plotting, and feminist flavor. Overall, fairly average, but definitely worth a look, especially if you're a fan of Pierce's other books.

The Looking Glass Wars, by Frank Beddor. Whew. What to say about this one. Well, the premise is that Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, which was inspired by his friendship with Alice Liddell, was a nonsense version of a true story. In Beddor's universe, Alice (or rather, Alyss; Wonderland spells things whimsically, it seems) is a refugee princess from a real fantasyland called Wonderland, who, on her seventh birthday, is driven out by her murderous aunt, Redd. Deemed an unsuitable Queen, Redd was deposed by her younger sister, Genevieve, Alyss's mother. Now she's back for revenge, and Alyss is forced to flee to London, circa the Victorian era, where she is captured for pickpocketing and sent to an orphanage, to be eventually adopted by the Liddells and given the chance to tell her extraordinary story to Reverend Dodgson.

Beddor's premise is interesting and his imagination is good; there are just enough familiar elements and characters to make Alice-lovers happy. (Example: Hatter Madigan, the head of royal security.) Wonderland is interestingly mapped and described, and Alyss herself is fairly compelling and sympathetic.

But the book isn't actually a book. Beddor describes everything in cinematic terms, and as a result, the book feels so like a written-out film it's almost impossible to enjoy. The descriptions are strongly visual, which helps to make them stand out, but the scenes, dialogue, and characters are so dependent on movie archetypes and norms that it's intensely distracting and makes it almost impossible to enjoy the book on its own terms. Scenes that would play off without comment in a movie felt forced and contrived, and dialogue that talented actors would be able to handle without a problem looked odd written out in black and white.

Beddor had a fairly original idea, his plot moves along nicely, and he isn't a bad writer, but he has no appreciation for his medium at all, and it shows. The Looking Glass Wars reads like a novelization of Men in Black: awkward and ultimately unsatisfying.

L. M. Montgomery -- The Blue Castle

This was a Montgomery I hadn't read before -- although it doesn't make much difference. Her books tend to blend together after awhile. Of course I can still distinguish Anne from Emily -- one has red hair and the other black, uh duh -- but they all, novels, short stories, series -- follow the same mold, and are about roughly the same thing, the only difference being that sometimes she writes about small children finding fraternal and parental love in small towns in Canada (usually from tough, aunt-like old maids who find their lives mysteriously turned around by the young orphan or half orphan or whatever that they have graciously agreed to care for from a sense of duty) and sometimes she writes about young women who have paricular, dreamy notions about what love ought to be and what is waiting for them, and gently or ungently are led to the realization that the boy they have known from childhood fits the very ideal they didn't know they had in small towns in Canada. (The revelations take place at night, either from the fear that the loved one is going to die, or the conviction that he will soon marry someone else, or a significant look passed between them while other people chatter on, oblivious. Occasionally a combination of two or more of the above.) Often the heroine has literary ambitions of one sort or another, and we can thrill and sympathize with her acceptances and rejections by popular magazines. And of course, there are always poetical descriptions of the Canadian wilderness -- or small rural towniness -- in the various seasons, somehow always managing to be beautiful, when really you're willing to bet that beautiful or not, the characters are freezing their collective asses off. (Our Heroine isn't beautiful, though -- it's always her best friend, or occasionally her cousin, who's really the stunner. But Our Heroine is beautiful in an unconvential way -- in certain lights and moods and whatevers she manages to outshine her companions. So she finds True Love anyway.)

Sometimes you get the feeling that you know rather more about Ms. Montgomery's psyche than she is aware of having told you. But anyway.

All this is very satisfying to read about, as long as you don't expect anything different. You can read a new book and have it feel like an old one. Whatever Josephine Tey's bedridden detective says about it, there are times when a new-old book is the most comforting and fun kind to read. You have all the fun of a new book, new characters and twists and turns you haven't exactly taken before -- but at the same time it's very un-taxing on the brain and you know exactly how it will turn out, and you can enjoy the ride free of any sort of stress or anxiety, just getting pleasantly emotionally involved with the heroine's various love trials while knowing it will end perfectly wonderfully for everyone involved.

The Blue Castle is a case in point, obviously, or I would have been describing it for the last three paragraphs. It is almost the Platonic form of Montgomery. Valancy Stirling, an old maid at twenty-nine and completely under her mother's thumb, whose only joy comes from reading nature books by an anonymous author and her own daydreams of a Blue Castle, complete with white knights, has been suffering heart palpitations. She goes to the doctor and discovers she is seriously ill and has anywhere from a month to a year to live. After a "white night" -- Montgomery's words -- she decides (as one does) that she's sick of living for other people. She begins saying exactly what she thinks to her family members -- causing a predictable amount of rumpus -- , and eventually leaves to nurse a dying classmate who is scorned by the other townsfolk for having a child out of wedlock. Under her death sentence, Valancy becomes more and more emotionally free, and eventually marries Barney Snaith, a local recluse with a bad reputation. If you've ever read a Montgomery book -- or really, any book -- before now, you know what's coming. But it's fun nonetheless.

Valancy isn't quite as charming as Anne or Emily -- which is pretty much why it's a standalone -- but she's fun to read about; equal parts submissive and sarcastic, and interesting either way. Her Barney can be annoying at times, (but so can Emily's Teddy; not even this is new) and very occasionally I wanted to bop him on the head with something moderately heavy. A puppy, say, or a large paperback book. But I could see why Valancy fell for him (I keep wanting to type Valency, as if she were an electron), and nothing he did offended me too much. Not my type, but they can't all be Gilbert. Who, now that I think of it, occasionally showed traces of the same sexism as all the others, so what can you do.

I finished the whole thing in one day -- most of it in one evening, because I was putting off application work. And I got exactly as emotionally involved as I wanted to be. I like Valancy; she doesn't have Anne's charm, but she's got conviction, and she's fun in a modern kind of way. She's sarcastic, and she does things for good reasons. Plus, the men around her are allowed to swear and get drunk off their asses without her minding at all. She is not allowed to do these things -- nor does she have any desire to do them -- but it's refreshing that the other characters not held back by her ladylike charms. And her love story is relatively believable, if you're in the Montgomery mindset when you start the book.

It has all the usual Montgomery weaknesses, of course. If you're not in the mood for it, there's no point reading it; you'll only get annoyed. Even in the mood for it, there are three or four scenes that just go on too long. Montgomery's dialogue is generally very strong, but she can get carried away in her descriptions. Yes, we get the point. A paragraph by paragraph description of each of Valancy's many aunts and uncles, and the individual ways in which they have been horrible to her isn't necessary. Nor is a three page description of her various childhood tragedies, nor is the detailed description of the Canadian wilderness in month of the year. Thank you, Lucy, we get it. I'll be sure to vacation there the very next chance I get. Move the damn story along, why don't you?

But the general impression of the book is sweet, and predictible, and nice. You're happy for the lovers, and it's comforting to see Valancy turn her life around. No reminders of the actual annoyances of living in her circumstances, or anything like that. Only exactly as much salt as Montgomery puts in to make her books readable. Very relaxing after a long day, but don't read it when you have things you'd rather be doing. If that makes sense.

Reread Reviews -- Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden

So I have actually been reading new books too, but I am currently in the middle of a few long ones (deliberately; I love it when I know it will be awhile before I finish) so I have very little to write about in the way of books I've just read for the first time. (Although I'm looking forward to finishing Maia, just so I can harsh on Richard Adams' sexist nonsense in public.)

But I did just reread a couple, and I can have thoughts about them, can't I?

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

You know, I liked A Little Princess better when I was a kid, and I thought maybe now I'm older the gap would have closed. But, no, I was right the first time: Little Princess is a better book. For one thing, Sara is a more compelling character than Mary. But much more than that -- a hell of a lot more happens in A Little Princess. I don't just mean the whole being rich, being poor, being rich again thing, I mean that Sara's days are just more full and involve more things than Mary's do. The whole point of The Secret Garden is that there is absolutely nothing for Mary to do all day except to dig around in the dirt looking for keys and bulbs and whatnot, and as a kid it was reasonably compelling, but I'm sitting here as an adult, and the whole thing just sounds intensely dull. When I have nothing to do except dig around in the dirt I either find a book or kill myself. I realize that the point of the book is that Mary's mind and body and spirit and all are healed from her communion with nature, and it's touching, but it's not nearly as interesting as I thought it was when I was a child.

And you know I'm not a kid anymore because instead of charming and mysterious I found Dickon a little smug. And Colin! God, don't get me started. I'd totally forgotten how much Burnett likes to talk about Magic without actually crossing the line and writing, you know, a fantasy book, and in Little Princess it more or less works, because it's a person doing things that appear magical to other people, and it's kind of fun, you can see it from both sides. But the whole Magic of Nature thing doesn't have the human interest element, and I'm very sorry, but Colin's smug little speeches are the height of annoyance. I ended up skimming through all that stuff. There's no humor in the story, and Mary doesn't have Sara's drive and therefore it's much harder to identify with her. The best scenes are when Mary and Colin are both screaming their fool heads off at each other.

As a whole, really disappointing. I have clearer memories of the movie than of the book, and that is really sad.