Birdie's Nest

Vintage Mysteries--The Norths Meet Murder

2012-01-23T20:52:00.000-05:00

Oh Bev, you terrible, terrible enabler you. *hugs*
I read the first of the Pam and Jerry North mysteries by Frances and Richard Lockridge this past weekend, and it was loads of fun.

The Norths Meet Murder (1940) introduces the reader to Pam and Jerry North, who are a bit like Nick and Nora Charles, but less, well, hard-boiled, I suppose. In this first book, Pam wants to host a party in a flat above her own that has been vacant for some time. After convincing her husband to at least head upstairs and look, they find a dead naked body in the bathtub (shades of Sayers?). Soon there is a whole crew of medics, police, photographers, etc. on the scene, and we meet the charming Lieutenant Weigand and his pet constable, Detective Mullins. Mullins is wonderfully comic as the hard-working, action-based cop.

As the search for the victim's identity gets under way, we more or less shift to following Weigand around, since the Norths are technically suspects. I was glad to follow the lieutenant because, although Pam North is utterly charming with her disjointed way of talking and her 'hunches,' I think being in the same room with her the entire time might get a bit frustrating. She is, however, tempered by her husband, who seems to see what she's getting at with relative ease born of daily conversation. This daily domesticity is something I really enjoyed about the novel, because most of the American mystery/crime fiction that I've read focuses on the bachelor hard-boiled, often womanizing, detective character. The Norths' sparkling but comfortable relationship is a really fun dynamic.

Once the victim is identified, there is still the difficulty of finding the murderer. The cast of suspects is tight-knit in the way one might expect from a locked room mystery, but they are all interesting and distinctive. Of particular satisfaction is the way the mystery ends with the Norths' throwing the party they planned at the beginning. It is neat without being too neat.

This novel counts for the 1940s in the Deadly Decades section of the Vintage Mysteries Challenge

Victorian Challenge--Wuthering Heights

2012-01-15T22:07:00.000-05:00

Despite the fact that it's the 15th day of the new year, I've only managed to finish one book. *sigh* I'm rather disappointed in myself for that. On the other hand, I've been planning a class I've never taught before, and trying to deal with some minor personal crises. Still, I have been "grazing" through other books and, hopefully, will be finishing a few more soon.

I am glad, however, that Wuthering Heights is my first book of the year. It's been nearly a decade since I read this fabulous story, and I really needed to re-acquaint myself with it.

As with all good fiction, when I returned to it, I noticed things I'd never thought of before. The story is the same, but it offered me different things to notice this time around. I was much more aware of Nellie Dean as a narrator this time around, and also more aware of the somewhat (ok, very) ridiculous Mr. Lockwood. I've always been interested in what I think of as Lockwood's sadism, but this time around, I decided that his ruling emotion was not a sense of power, but one of fear. He is terrified of the ghost Cathy and that terror shows itself in the cruelty of dragging her wrist across the broken glass. His fright manifests itself in cruelty at least once more in our narrative--when he describes the reason he left town. He fell head over heels for a young lady, but the moment she showed a bit of interest in him, he spurned her. This time through, I read that moment as a result of fear. He was too afraid of having his heart broken. Lockwood seems afraid of his own nature, and it leads him to imagine that he wants to live in isolation and solitude. Perhaps, now that I'm thinking along these lines, Mr. Lockwood is just an overly sensitive romantic. When he is faced with the realization of his romantic fantasies (in terms of romance or of fancy), he pushes them violently away rather than admit that they might not hold up to his imaginings. I don't know. What do you think?

Well, Nellie Dean is certainly no romantic, either in love or in outlook, but I was surprised to find how integral to the story she was. I hardly remembered her as more than a straightforward narrative voice, but her presence is more constant than that of any other character. Many of the incidents in the novel could not have happened but for Nellie, with or without her permission. Nellie is the most responsible character in the book, it would seem, but I have to continue reminding myself that the whole narrative was told through her eyes. Perhaps she has colored it a bit so that her own failings show less. I certainly wouldn't envy her position with either Catherine.

The final thing that struck me this time around is how much time the story spends on the second Cathy and Linton. I remembered Wuthering Heights as a story of consuming passion and jealousy between Heathcliff and the first Cathy, which was inflicted on their children. I did not remember how much time we get to spend with the second Cathy and Linton. It actually kind of annoyed me, not as one might expect, because Linton was such a cringing worm, but because I felt it took attention away from Heathcliff and the first Cathy. I clearly liked that story better, which is why I seem to have forgotten most of the middle bit--ha!

Still, this is a grand read and I long for a field of heather where I could take a thermos of tea and lounge all day with this book for company.

Smooth Criminals Challenge

2012-01-01T22:25:00.001-05:00

The final challenge I will undertake this year will be Dead End Follies' Smooth Criminals reading challenge.

This challenge really focuses on genre within crime fiction--hard-boiled, noir, gothic, criminal protagonist, and so on. Click on the image above to get the specific details and challenge rules. The challenge requirement is eight books, and Dead End Follies has challenged us to find books for each category. I haven't got a list yet, but this is going to be fun. I do know I'll be reading Double Indemnity or The Postman Always Rings Twice as my noir choice, but it's open after that.

Doesn't that sound like fun?

Medieval Challenge

2012-01-01T22:13:00.001-05:00

The third challenge I'll be joining this year is JNCL's Medieval Challenge. I study Renaissance/Early Modern literature, which means that the late Middle Ages abuts my study, but I haven't been able to give that period the attention it deserves.

There are three levels to this challenge. You can find out all the juicy details by clicking the picture or "JNCL" above. Because I have a TON of these books already on my guilt list, I'll be going for Paradiso level, which is 12 medieval texts or roughly one a month. The ones I know I want to read are as follows:
The Romance of the Rose (Allegory)
Confessions of St. Augustine (Biography)
Nibelungenlied (Literature)
Consolation of Philosophy (Philosophy)--I'm going to read one of the Early Modern translations of this, since EVERYONE in the Renaissance seems to have translated it.
On Christian Doctrine (Religion)--this one's been on my wall of shame list forever.
The Travels of Marco Polo (Travel)
The Book of Margery Kempe (Women)
Scivias by Hildegard of Bingen (Women)
I'll pick up the others as I go.

Victorian Challenge 2012

2012-01-01T21:52:00.000-05:00

The second challenge I'm joining this year is the Victorian Challenge run by Laura at Laura's Reviews.

For this challenge, Laura has also decided to challenge herself to focus on specific authors each month of 2012. I think this is a fabulous idea, so I am going to follow along with her list:

January: The Bronte Sisters

February: Charles Dickens

March: Robert Louis Stevenson

April: Emily Dickinson

May: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

June: George Eliot

July: Oscar Wilde

August: Anthony Trollope

September: Elizabeth Gaskell

October: Mark Twain

November: Lewis Carroll

December: Louisa May Alcott

It's way past time for me to read Wuthering Heights again. I'm really looking forward to that one in January. And, much to my shame, I've never read anything by Anne Bronte; that must be rectified. So I will have 2 books in January.
February will be either Great Expectations or Bleak House (depending on how my semester is shaping up and what kind of time I have available)
In March I'll read Kidnapped because it's one of those classics that has slipped through.
April will be whichever edition of Dickinson's poetry I can find at the library, and May will be Hound of the Baskervilles. I've already read all the Holmes stories, and this is the one I most want to revisit. I know that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote many novels other than the Holmes stories, but Holmes is a particular weakness of mine.
I'm really up in the air on what I'll read for George Eliot in June. I've read Silas Marner multiple times, but I just don't know if I can face Middlemarch yet. Perhaps Adam Bede?
Ah, Oscar Wilde's decadence in the middle of the year. Wonderful. I think I'll have ices and read Lady Windermere's Fan and re-read The Importance of Being Earnest. I also have a book on his trial in my TBR pile....don't know if I'll manage all of that though.
For Trollope in August, I'll have to have the second of the Barsetshire Chronicles--Barchester Towers, followed in October by a re-reading of North and South. It must be almost 10 years since I read it last.
In November I just can't give up the opportunity to follow Alice down the rabbit hole again.
And to wrap up the year, I'll read Under the Lilacs provided I can get my hands on a copy.

Vintage Mystery Challenge

2012-01-01T20:57:00.000-05:00

I really thought I was not going to do challenges this year....but I'm weak. So, it seems the best I can do is to keep to as low a number of challenges as possible. So don't tempt me!!!!!

The first challenge I will participate in is Bev's Vintage Mystery Challenge: Themes.

The full write up is on Bev's blog. Here is a link to the explanation and sign up page. I am not 100% sure which books I will choose, but I will be participating in Deadly Decades. That means I will be reading one mystery pre-1900, and one from each decade until 1959, plus a wild card one.

Wish me luck!

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T10:40:00.000-05:00

Welcome to 2012

Ok, so I'm not in London--but I wish I were!

My resolutions: dissertation, dissertation, dissertation!
blog posts 2x a week
demolish my credit card debt
eat in more

What are yours?

Hiatus

2011-08-02T13:09:00.000-04:00

Hey y'all--

I'm sure this comes as no surprise, but I need to take a bit of a break from my blog. I'm working 2 jobs this summer (down from the 3 I had at first), and I'm just not finding the time to post anything of quality. I don't just want to make slapdash posts, so I end up not posting at all.

Hence I'm going to take a break. I don't know how long it will last--it may include the fall term of this year. I've taken loans and won't be teaching in the fall, so I really HAVE to put all my mental energy into the dissertation, and I'm afraid I'll use my blog as a procrastination device. If I manage to stick to a good writing schedule, though, I may be back during fall term. Here's hoping.

Anyway, I wanted to say thanks to all of you wonderful people out there in blog-land. You are all extraordinary, and I'm grateful to be your friend.

Hope to be back soon!
Birdie

Innes--A to Z mystery authors

2011-07-17T11:45:00.000-04:00

One Man Show by Michael Innes

Picking up One Man Show was just happenstance for me. I was to take a friend to the airport in Indianapolis, and I wanted to go to Half-Price Books while I was over there. Turns out they were having a good sale as well, and I thought it would be the right time to pick up a book for this challenge. I'd also heard positive things about Michael Innes's mysteries.

One Man Show begins with Innes's detective, Sir John Appleby, being at the opposite end of the room when a large painting is stolen. The artist was relatively unknown and Appleby suspects something larger at work. This investigation leads him into an antiquities racket, a case of murder, and governmental secrets. One Man Show is a really fun romp that I finished in record time. Its description is amusing, its pacing is fast and enjoyable, and its characterization is believable, even for the more extreme specimens. In some ways this mystery reminded me of Ngiao Marsh's Roderick Alleyn, largely because of the artistic theme, I think. Like Alleyn's wife, Sir John's wife is an artist, though Sir John's wife takes a bit more active role in this case.

Overall, this was a fun, twisty mystery that is perhaps a shade more gritty than Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers, but that still comes within the range of the cozy mystery. If you like Marsh's Alleyn series, this book should be right up your alley.

Top Ten Tuesday--Authors I'd die to meet

2011-07-12T22:03:00.000-04:00

*comes slinking back in*
Um, I didn't mean to be out for that long.

Anyway, Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted over at the Broke and the Bookish. Each week we get a new list-making theme full of bookish possibilities. Today's theme is top ten authors I'd die to meet. Here are mine in no particular order:

John Donne--I'm writing my dissertation on him; I love his poetry. There are so very very many questions I would like to ask him.

William Shakespeare--I could not ever pass up a chance to meet the "sweet swan of Avon"

Agatha Christie has given me more hours of reading pleasure than any other author. I'd love to pick her brain.

Dorothy L. Sayers--author of the brilliant Lord Peter and advocate of women's rights.

Daphne du Maurier--Rebecca was one of my formative books. It's a nearly perfect book.

William Faulkner--I know he was a bit of a bastard, but since I grew up reading Faulkner and learning about my home through his eyes, I think we'd have some interesting conversations anyway.

Kazuo Ishiguro--The Remains of the Day is heartbreakingly beautiful and so very understated. I'd just love to talk to him about how he "makes" characters.

J.K. Rowling--um, Harry Potter. 'Nuff said

Marjorie Hillis--She had a wonderful wit, a strong sense of optimism and was able to hold her own with anyone. I would really enjoy swapping leisure time activity ideas with her.

Nancy Mitford--That whole family is fascinating, whacked but fascinating.

Out for a mo

2011-06-13T08:55:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note. I'm probably going to be scarce for about a week, trying to wrap up my summer session class, deal with various personal engagements, do some academic reading, and all kinds of other clean up.
Regular service will resume soon.
Thanks!

Here, have a fun piccie or two in the meantime.

Gormenghast week 1

2011-06-08T19:43:00.000-04:00

So it's Wednesday and time for the first installment of the Gormenghast read-along. This read-along is hosted by Farm Lane Books, and it's early in the game, so if you want to play along, check it out!

This week: Titus Groan
"The Hall of Bright Carvings" to "Near and Far"

Thusfar, we've met a number of wacky characters who could be real, though they would be more than a bit absurd or eccentric. We first meet Mr. Rottcodd, who is the curator of the Hall of Bright Carvings, which consists of dusting the said carvings (though not the floor) daily, and spending the rest of the day napping in a hammock at the end of the Hall. He is interrupted by Mr. Flay, the Earl's factotum, who tells him that a new heir to Gormenghast has been born.

Flay then delves into the kitchens where we meet the head chef, the disgusting and drunk Abiatha Swelter, and one of the kitchen boys, Steerpike who follows Flay through the corridors hoping to reach fresh air.

From their exchange we become privy to a conversation between the wonderfully named Dr. Prunesquallor and the 76th Earl of Groan. The Earl laments the ugliness of the newborn, and Dr. Prunesquallor demonstrates his ineffectual-ness and his bizarre habit of laughing in the middle of whatever he happens to be saying. They are interrupted by the 15 year-old Fuschia, the only other child of the Earl, who more or less pitches a tantrum when told that she does indeed now have a brother.

We learn about Fuschia's secret attic rooms and get a fairly good sense of her wild, willful, independent but childish character. The only person who seems to care for Fuschia at all is Nannie Slagg, a doddering old nanny who is now charged with taking care of the new child, Titus. Titus' mother, Lady Gertrude, busies herself with her wild birds and her albino cats and doesn't want to see the child again until he is six.

So far we have quite an interesting array of characters in a setting that is rendered evocatively through Peake's language. The Washington Post's blurb on the back of my edition claims that fans maintain "that this extravagant epic about a labyrinthine castle populated with conniving Dickensian grotesques is the true fantasy classic of our time." I thoroughly agree about the grotesques and the castle; in fact, the castle with its attendant ritual and rule, is practically a character in itself.

I'm having fun and looking forward to reading more.

The Alice Behind Wonderland

2011-06-06T15:08:00.000-04:00

The Alice Behind Wonderland

by Simon Winchester

This book was given me as a birthday present by a very dear friend with whom I share a love of all things "Alice." It makes me doubly sad, therefore, that the book does not quite fulfill its promise. This is a slim book (only about 100 pages) that purports to be about Alice Liddell, and more specifically about the famous image of her below:

Given a title like The Alice Behind Wonderland one would expect to learn about Alice Liddell's life, or at least that part of her life in which Lewis Carroll/Charles Lutwidge Dodgson played a role. Failing that, one might expect a visual analysis of the image above and the others Dodgson took of Alice. The book is neither of those things. The only image in the book is the one on the cover, stored in the Princeton Firestone rare books library.** What the book does give us is a history of Dodgson's fascination with photography (with a bit of a detour on the history of photographic plate development), a glimpse of his relationship with the Liddell family, and an account of the social and personal factors which paved the way for the composition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In this respect, it is a very fine book indeed.

The book is well written and a quick, fun read; I just think it should have been titled something else. I do wonder, however, whether I'm fully participatory in Winchester's style. For instance, he writes:

Writing from his Oxford rooms, he [Dodgson] promptly proposed a selection of possibilities [for pseudonyms]. The name Dares, perhaps--from the village of his birth, Daresbury. Yates said no. How about (for no apparent reason) Edgar Cuthwellis? Yates again declined, as he did to the variant Edgar U.C. Westhill.

I deeply hope I'm just not reading Winchester's own irony in the parenthetical "for no apparent reason." Because, honestly, if he did not realize that "Edgar Cuthwellis" was an anagram of "Charles Lutwidge," it would make me question any of his other conclusions.

Still, I learned a great deal from this slim volume, and once I re calibrated my expectations from the title, I really enjoyed the read.

**There is a particularly revealing bit in the "Acknowledgements" at the end of the text. It reads

"The famous picture that lies at the heart of this book has for the past decade been licked inside a basement vault at Princeton University's Firestone Library, some well-cemented feet below the Parrish Library in which it was initially shelved. Though Steve Ferguson, the Curator of Rare Books, was more than happy to show me around the Parrish collection itself, his colleague Don Skemer, an authority on medieval textual amulets and the current Curator of Manuscripts, does not wish the Alice picture itself to be seen, ever."

I don't think I'm wrong in reading Winchester's glowing frustration in these lines, and I must say I agree with him, though I don't know that I'd have had the nerve to write such a thing in my book (the "authority on medieval textual amulets" seems a particular slight as I read it "doesn't have a damn thing to do with Victoriana"). I'm sure I've mentioned on this site before that I'm a scanner monkey at a rare books library; I've also had some classes in history of the book and rare books library management. And I think that Mr. Skemer (as painted by Mr. Winchester) is the kind of librarian we were all taught to fear. I hate that because most librarians (even the rare books and manuscript ones) are incredibly glad to show visitors and scholars the collections housed at their institutions. It seems to me that in the quest for preservation, Mr. Skemer has abandoned the "reasonable use" policy that tends to guide rare materials librarianship. Apparently Mr. Skemer argued that a pixel for pixel digital representation was available and would do just as well. I understand this argument being applied to a casual visitor or one who was only interested in the Alice photo as part of Dodgson's oeuvre, but if the photograph is (nominally) the subject of a monograph, and the scholar is a respected (if popular) writer, refusal to grant access inches toward the absurd. After all, there are things one can learn from original documents that one cannot learn from a computer screen.

Vintage Mysteries--In the Fog

2011-06-06T14:28:00.001-04:00

In the Fog
by Richard Harding Davis (1901)

In the Fog is a quick read along the lines of an old spy thriller. Some of the characters introduced remind me a bit of Christie's foreign spies in her earlier works.

The frame story is that of 5 men sitting in The Grill Club the evening after the great fog of 1897. The Grill captured my attention immediately as it "dates back to the days when Shakespeare's Theatre stood on the present site of the "Times" office. It has a golden Grill which Charles the Second presented to the Club...The members, when they write letters at the Club, still use sand to blot the ink." One can't get much more ye olde respectable club than that.

One of the men, an MP wearing a black pearl in his tie, desires to keep Sir Andrew from keeping his date at the House that night, knowing that Sir Andrew's speech with carry a bill prejudicial to black pearl's interests. One of the other diners, who were all unacquainted with one another, begins to tell the company of a fantastic crime that happened just the night before in the historic fog. The story involved the African explorer, Chetney, and a Russian princess, Zichy. Sir Andrew is riveted, and we listen along as a second diner then retells his own encounter with Zichy, and a third picks up where the first had left off.

The writing is quite nice and the characters are colorful, if unbelievable. The book strains a little too hard after becoming the ideal spy thriller. It was a good read, but I wouldn't exactly go posting off to the bookstore to find Davis's other novels.

Poetry hop--The Red Wheelbarrow

2011-06-05T22:07:00.000-04:00

The Red Wheelbarrow
by William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

I've always been fond of shape poems, and I would never have thought of writing a poem about something as prosaic as a wheelbarrow.

Locus Focus--The Heart of Gold

2011-06-05T21:56:00.000-04:00

Locus Focus is an awesome weekly meme hosted by Enbrethiliel over at Shredded Cheddar. Each week we take a gander at a particular place in fiction that evokes a strong sense of place. We have monthly themes, but they are not set in stone. This month's theme is foreign shores, and I'm going just about as foreign as you can get--the middle of outer space.

taken from Alexraffi.blogspot.com

The Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy, which is actually a sextet, is a delightful fantasy/sci-fi series that deserves all the good press it gets. The Heart of Gold spaceship figures prominently in the first books, though I'll confine myself to the original. This spaceship is the only one of its kind in the universe. It was stolen on the day of its unveiling by Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox, who wants to use it to find a legendary planet.

Looks a bit like the death star, no?

The Heart of Gold is a beautiful new ship that contains the latest in technology; most importantly, it contains the Infinite Improbability Drive, a device which makes it possible to pass through all the points in the universe simultaneously. Unsurprisingly, this device has some truly bizarre side effects. Spaceship Heart of Gold is overseen by Eddie the irritatingly cheerful ship-board computer, and Marvin, the paranoid android.

Heart of Gold becomes the "home" of a small group of, well, outcasts in a sense. This eccentric band of humans and aliens roam the galaxy as sort of rebels without a plan. And the Heart of Gold gets them there safely.

Memorial Day

2011-05-30T09:08:00.000-04:00

I hope you are all enjoying your Memorial Day weekend. It's sunny and warm here, which is quite nice. I'm stuck inside grading a pile of essays, which is not quite as nice.

Just wanted to take a bit of time to remember those who have served, fought, died, survived, seen friends die, and tried to mend lives. Regardless of personal feelings about any war, human lives are lost. And they should not be lost to memory as well.

In Flanders Fields by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies grow

Between the Crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

BEA--Metablogging

2011-05-27T09:23:00.001-04:00

Blogging about blogging.

As per usual, I'm late to the party, but I've made it. BEA has asked us to consider the ways in which we blog and contributions to our success as bloggers. They've given us the following prompts with the understanding that we can work off other ideas as well.

How do you utilize social networking in relation to your blog? What may be the pros and cons of doing so?
Share some of your favorite blogging technical tips.
Create a "rule list" of things you should and shouldn't be doing on a book blog.
What are your tips for balance life and blogging?
What genre do you blog about and why?
How do you keep your blog fresh and interesting to your readers & yourself?
There are quite a few book blogging events out there. Which are your favorites and why? How do they affect your blog directly?

My blog is a very small blog and I plan to keep it that way, so this post will not help you acquire more followers or give tips on how to establish relationships with publishers and/or deal with ARCs. I probably should make it clear here that I have absolutely no issues with book bloggers who deal with publishers, take/review ARCs, or want to expand their networking base. Those are simply not my interests at the moment. I blog primarily to keep a log of what I read and what I thought of it, though my blogging does have the happy consequence of making new and wonderful friends.

My rules for blogging are fairly simple:
1. Only participate in things that interest you, no matter whether those things "go together" or not.

2. Having stated that rule, I will now modify it by saying that bloggers should seriously consider stretching their boundaries/reading different genres/ trying new things. Otherwise, one may find oneself in a niche-genre blog that becomes a second job rather than an enjoyment.

3. As a corollary to rule 2, if blogging is a task or a burden, take a break, re-evaluate, change format, or otherwise shake things up. This is supposed to be fun, right?

4. Be honest and specific. If I don't like a book, I think my followers would much rather know it than hear false praise and feel as if they can't trust my reviews. At the same time, I find that being as specific as possible about what one does and doesn't like in a text will allow readers with different tastes than my own to decide whether they think the things that bothered me will bother them or not. Being specific also has the side effect of forcing one to be constructive in criticism as well as in praise.

5. Link back. I'm working on making this a reflexive habit. I often forget to attach links to a blog I'm mentioning or a person who helped me or has made me smile. I'm trying to get better because I know I always appreciate it when other bloggers have made it easy for me to follow their links.

6. Bookstrings just reminded me of this one: Don't put music or sounds on the background of your blog. Or if you feel you really must, put the gadget for turning them off somewhere immediately accessible to the rest of us. Many of us surf while already listening to music; some of us have children and surf when they are napping; others of us surf somewhere public occasionally. You do not endear yourself to me when I go on to your blog and "Wind Beneath My Wings" blares out, startling me and everyone around me.

Balance: As far as balancing life and blogging, I'm looking for tips on that myself. I find that I'll finally carve out some time and spam 3 or 4 posts in a single day because I've got all kinds of thoughts built up. Perhaps I should learn to make friends with the delayed posting option. Otherwise, I refer to rules 1 and 3--if it's not fun for me, I shouldn't be doing it. Blogging is one of my hobbies, and I cannot allow it to take time from my work or to become a burden.

Genres: I don't really blog about a specific genre (well, at least I don't think I do). I have wide interests and I hope my blog reflects this. I clearly have a penchant for mysteries, particularly older ones, but I am interested in inter-wars fiction and classics, as well as current literature. I don't blog much about scifi/fantasy because it's not one of my big enjoyments. So this blog is kind of an olio. That said, my only advice for genre-specific blogs is that a reader should be able to tell that a blog is genre specific from the start. Many, many YA and paranormal-fic blogs are excellent at this kind of disclosure. Those of us with more scattered tastes have a bit harder time reflecting those tastes accurately. I know I always appreciate it when someone tries, though.

Events and Memes: I participate in relatively few events and memes, since I take my participation in them as an actual commitment, but my time is so limited. I belong to Locus Focus hosted by Shredded Cheddar because I believe that in good books the locations can be as interesting as the characters. I belong to Mr. Toast's Creative Tuesdays because it reflects my interests in creativity in art as well as books. I participate in What She Read's weekend poetry hop because I need more poetry in my life. In each of these memes, I try (not always successfully) to comment on everyone's contributions. I use them to build bonds and see how my fellow bloggers think. Finally, I participate in Top Ten Tuesday hosted over at The Broke and the Bookish because I love lists and the topics are virtually always fun and interesting. This is the largest meme I participate in, and it takes quite a bit of time. But I've made several new blogging friends this way, and I always get a few lovely surprises.

BEA--Favorites of 2011

2011-05-24T10:01:00.000-04:00

My favorite book that I've read so far this year (not a re-read) has been The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald.

It is one of those quietly tragic novels, but lyric in feel and quality. Florence Green, widow, wants to set up a bookshop and a sort of circulating library in her small English village. This brief novel follows her anticipation, joys, trials and tribulations while developing and running the shop. It also shows us the politics of village life and the casual cruelty of even the most ordinary people.

I'm also super excited that Chronicle Books is re-issuing Bubbly on Your Budget by Marjorie Hillis. I strongly suspect (from the quotation given) that this book was originally published as Orchids on Your Budget and it's been a favorite of mine since I stumbled on to Hillis in 2006. It is uplifting without being saccharine or new-agey. It takes a common sense approach to living on less and enjoying what you have. I'm interested to see how much, if any, of the text is updated.

Creative Tuesdays--Tree

2011-05-24T08:28:00.000-04:00

I had much fun with this Creative Tuesdays post. In April my mum bought me some lovely watercolor pencils, but I haven't had much chance to play with them yet. I decided this fortnight's Creative Tuesdays assignment would be ideal for such play.

This image is a combination of watercolor pencil and ink.

Gormenghast at last

2011-05-23T20:28:00.001-04:00

\o/ So, I've had the Gormenghast trilogy sitting on my shelves for a while now, but I kept getting interrupted by other things--pesky work and all that mess. But now I have an excuse to read the texts. Jackie at Farm Lane Books is hosting a Gormenghast read-along over the summer (btw, thanks Ellie for letting me know about it).

Here is what Jackie writes about it:

Wednesday is Gormenghast Day!

For the next few months this blog will celebrate Gormenghast every Wednesday.The schedule for the read-along is detailed below. It would be great if different people could lead the discussion each week so that you don’t just get my opinion (and I don’t get Gormenghast post burnout!). If you’d like to volunteer to write a Gormenghast post at some point during the read-along then please leave a comment below. You don’t have to have a blog – I’d love non-bloggers to take part too.

Titus Groan – June 2011

The Hall of the Bright Carvings – Near and Far (p1 – p100) 8th June

Dust and Ivy – Preparations for Arson (p101 – p194) 15th June

The Grotto – The Bloody Cheekbone (p194 – p277) 22nd June

The Twins Again – Mr Rottcodd Again (p277 -p361) 29th June

Gormenghast - July 2011

One - Eighteen (p373 – p467) 6th July

Nineteen – Thirty-Seven (p467 – p565) 13th July

Thirty-Eight – Fitft-Eight (p565 – p659) 20th July

Fifty-Nine - Eighty (p659 – p752) 27th July

Titus Alone – August 2011

One – Fifty-Eight (p759 -p854) 10th August

Fifty-Nine – One Hundred and Twenty-Two (p855 – p953) 17th August

Titus Awakes – September 2011

This book is 288 pages long – Ill update this post with the exact page numbers for this read-along once I have a copy and can check for appropriate chapter breaks.

Note: All page numbers for the Gormenghast Trilogy come from my Vintage Classics copy (ISBN: 0099288893), but if you have a different edition the page numbers may vary slightly.

I look forward to reading Gormenghast with you!

Getting Things Done by David Allen

2011-05-23T10:43:00.000-04:00

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen

I admit it, I'm an organizational and time management junkie. I don't mean that I am very organized or very proficient at time management, merely that I enjoy reading books and picking up tips on the subject. It's very like my interest in housekeeping and cooking manuals. I really don't enjoy cleaning, but I relish knowing how to do it; I also like filing away decorating and household hints for the time when I'm back in a house of my own.

Getting Things Done is a comprehensive system that I don't quite buy into. There are many, many good aspects to the system and I picked up a few really great hints. Still, as a whole this system seems to require more organization than it gives. And that's fine, if you're already an organized person, but the behavioral changes required seem less likely for those of us whose schedules are free form and whose organization is not good on the "repetitive task" level. I did, however, get some strong ideas that I'm going to integrate into my own life.

The first is listing all "open loops" as Allen calls them--all promises of action to self or others--in order to clear one's mental space to have new creative ideas. Allen suggests writing each "open loop" on it's own piece of paper to include in your inbox. Granted this is a "getting started" suggestion (once you learn how to assess for next actions you can go straight to that point), but it seems a waste of time and paper to me. I'd just as soon set up lists titled as he suggests with "Next Action" "Someday/Maybe" "Waiting For" "Computer" and "Errands" and spill the ideas out there, or in a Word document to be divided later. I did learn in this process not to censor myself. On the "Someday/Maybe" lists I have things that I don't actually know if I ever intend to get 'round to. That's an important step, because once you have them listed, you can decide whether you want to take action on them or whether you want to let them go. According to Allen, you can't do that effectively if they are only stored in your mind because they are always creating sort of a background hum. Being a fan of the written word, I'm all for this strategy.

Another thing I learned to how to break down larger tasks into small and discrete physical actions. For instance, I might have "get oil change" on my list, but the next action is actually calling the car shop and scheduling the oil change. Setting up a list as a group of actions does two things: it forces you to think about what must actually, physically happen next in order to get something done, and it eliminates having to take that mental step every time you look through your list. Sadly my next action on "finish writing chapter one of the dissertation" is just finish the writing, damnit. :)

Overall, the book is potentially helpful, but I'd recommend checking it out at the library rather than buying a copy.

Vintage Mysteries--The Big Clock

2011-05-23T09:56:00.000-04:00

The Big Clock
by Kenneth Fearing (1946)

The Big Clock is a noir novel set in New York City. George Stroud is an editor for Crimeways magazine, one of the many magazines produced by Janoth Publications. Most of the novel is told from George Stroud's perspective, though we also here from Janoth, George's wife, the painter Louise Patterson, and a few others. Stroud gets "mixed up" with Janoth's girlfriend, Pauline Delos. When Delos is murdered, Janoth turns the Crimeways staff on the trail of a man seen with Pauline the night of the murder. Only George knows that he is the man, and he must simultaneously head the investigation and mislead it in order to keep himself from the gallows.

As I mentioned in an entry yesterday, The Big Clock was made into a film starring Ray Milland and Charles Laughton. In a reversal of the usual paradigm, the film adds more layers to the book rather than cutting corners. Had I the opportunity to do it again, I would read the book first and then see the film, because I'm afraid the film has prejudiced me in its favor. For one thing, I seem to be turning into more and more of a prude--I have a much harder time liking George Stroud when he commits adultery with his boss's girlfriend. The film preserves his honor and hers in that connection at least. Stroud is also more likeable generally in the film. Still, I would recommend this novel to anyone who is interested in noir and multiple-perspective fiction.

Also check out The Literary Stew's comments on it.

Murder on the Links

2011-05-23T09:35:00.000-04:00

Murder on the Links

Agatha Christie (1923)

Murder on the Links is the second Poirot/Hastings novel, and it actually takes place in France, though the victim is English. It is a complicated and well-paced tale with new twists around every third corner and interesting/believable characters. That said, it's not my favorite of the Christie books, probably because Hastings is still in that irritating "Poirot should be looking for clues on hands and knees on the ground" phase. I cannot remember whether I read this in Autobiography: Agatha Christie or John Curran's Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks or Charles Osborne's The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie, but I remember reading that Christie herself was none too pleased with having committed herself (a) to a foreign detective (it's received wisdom that Ariadne Oliver is a portrait of Christie and her detective, Sven Hergsson is a constant irritant to her) and (b) to Hastings as his Watson. I do find Hastings sort of obnoxious here, but the plot and pacing make up for it.

I particularly find the opening of this novel interesting. Christie writes: "I believe that a well-known anecdote exists to the effect that a young writer, determined to make the commencement of his story forcible and original enough to catch and rivet the attention of the most blase of editors, penned the following sentence. '"Hell!" said the duchess.' Strangely enough this tale of mine begins in almost the same fashion."

Compare this to the opening of Dorothy L. Sayers' first Lord Peter Wimsey novel: "'Damn!' said Lord Peter at Piccadilly Circus. 'Hi, Driver!'"

It's these sorts of sly nods and winks that make me so very fond of Christie--well, that and the fact that I only figured out one of her crimes before the last 50 or so pages.

In Murder on the Links we are introduced to Inspector Giraud, who is an insufferable ass, but just the sort of detective that Hastings admires. He scours the ground looking for clues to the death of M. Paul Renauld. M. Renauld had written to Poirot that he was in great distress, but when Poirot and Hastings arrive, the police are already at the house because M. Renauld has been stabbed to death and his widow found bound and gagged. Poirot surprises Hastings, shows up Giraud, and earns the thanks of the victim's wife and son.

Poetry hop--A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

2011-05-22T22:13:00.000-04:00

This poem is potentially my favorite poem in existence. It is the one I carried for myself on "Poem in your pocket day", and it is part of what attracted me to John Donne's writing in the first place. I simply adore the image of the lovers as a compass.

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say, The
breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we, by a love so much refined That
ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so As stiff
twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the center sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

You might also check out this blog entry on John Donne and Spinoza's eternity of the soul

State of the Blog at an odd moment

2011-05-22T21:45:00.000-04:00

The lists:
The Vintage Mystery Challenge (hosted by Bev at MyReadersBlock)
Bring 'Em To Trial level (16+ books)
completed: The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie
The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie
The Floating Admiral by The Detection Club
The Canary Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine
The Greene Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine
The Bishop Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine
Hide My Eyes by Margery Allingham
The Crime at the Black Dudley by Margery Allingham
The Beckoning Lady by Margery Allingham
Mystery Mile by Margery Allingham
Holy Disorders by Edmund Crispin
Mystery of the Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume
The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing
In the Fog by Richard Harding Davis

The 1001 Children's Books You Should Read Before You Grow Up (hosted by YS Princess)
I've pledged 50
completed: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg

A to Z Mystery Authors Challenge (hosted by Michelle at Red-Headed Book-Child)
I've pledged A-P
completed: Allingham, Margery - Mystery Mile
Bond, Michael - Monsieur Pamplemousse Investigates
Crider, Bill - Murder Among the OWLs
Doughty, Louise - An English Murder
Eyre, Elizabeth - Axe for an Abbott
Fowler, Christopher - The Victoria Vanishes
Gores, Joe - Spade and Archer
Heyer, Georgette - Why Shoot a Butler?

Steampunk Challenge hosted by Rikki
I've pledged 4
completed: Soulless by Gail Carriger
The Vesuvius Club by Mark Gatiss

The Gothic Reading Challenge hosted on it's own blog
The Darkness Within Level: 5 Gothic books
completed: As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Foodie Challenge hosted by Joyfully Retired
Nibbler level: 1-3 books
completed: Great Cooking of the British Isles

Shakespeare Challenge hosted on its own blog
Desdemona level: 6 plays

British Books Challenge (BBC) hosted by The Bookette
Royal Family level: 12 books
completed: The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
Christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford
The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Burnett
Haunted Summer by Anne Edwards
Queen Lucia by E.F. Benson

Agatha Christie Reading Challenge hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise
I've pledged all 86 Agatha Christie novels in this perpetual challenge
for this challenge it will be shorter to write those not completed
The Secret Adversary
The Man in the Brown Suit
The Mystery of the Blue Train
Hound of Death
Thirteen at Dinner/Lord Edgware Dies
The Listerdale Mystery
Three Act Tragedy/Murder in Three Acts
Murder in Mesopotamia
Death on the Nile
The Regatta Mystery
Sad Cypress
One, Two Buckle My Shoe/ An Overdose of Death/The Patriotic Murders
N or M?
Five Little Pigs/Murder in Retrospect
The Moving Finger
Taken at the Flood/There is a Tide
The Underdog and Other Stories
Mrs. McGinty's Dead/Blood Will Tell
Destination Unknown/So Many Steps to Death
Ordeal by Innocence
Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and 12 other Entrees
Pale Horse
Passenger to Frankfurt
The Golden Ball and Other Stories
Elephants Can Remember
Postern of Fate
Poirot's Early Cases
Miss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other Stories
Problem at Pollensa Bay
The Harlequin Tea Set
Black Coffee
Spider's Web
The Unexpected Guest

Locus Focus--The Big Clock

2011-05-22T20:43:00.000-04:00

Locus Focus is an awesome weekly meme hosted by Enbrethiliel over at Shredded Cheddar. Each week we choose a space or place in fiction (there are themes, but we have lots of freedom) and muse on its effect. For May the general theme is movies.

I have just finished reading The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing for Bev's Vintage Mysteries Challenge (review forthcoming), and I practically HAD to watch the film again. The film stars Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, and Maureen O'Sullivan. It is a typical, in some ways *the* typical, film noir. Much of the set is in shadow; the lights strip through diagonally, and the silences are as important as the words. All that, and the costuming is lovely.

One of the climactic scenes in the film takes place inside the works a giant clock at Janoth Publications. The set looks like an atomic-age spaceship (only MUCH darker) in that there are banks and rows of lights that cover the walls. The film begins with the protagonist George Stroud (Ray Milland) sneaking into the workings of the clock in order to escape security guards and police. George is being hunted in order to take a murder rap of which he is innocent, but undeniably implicated by bad luck.

The clock in the novel is a metaphor for the insensible and interminable grinding of time. One thing I like about the film is that John Farrow (the director) made the clock literal as well as keeping the intensity of the original metaphor. In the film Earl Janoth, the CEO of the magazine industry, is obsessed with time--everything is done precisely. He walks in to his meeting while the clock is striking eleven; he rattles off statistics about the number of seconds in a man's life; he even tells his girlfriend that he will meet her at 10.55. The big clock at the heart of Janoth publications is the "largest and most sophisticated private clock in the world." George is caught in Mr. Janoth's web of time, so he hides in the most appropriate place--the clock itself, the core of the corporation.

The image immediately above is George looking at the main lobby of the Janoth Corporation from the vantage point of the clock. Though only a couple of scenes take place in the clock, the whole film revolves around the time.

Also look for Elsa Lancaster as the artist Louise Patterson. It is the time where her extraordinary laugh seems most natural to the character.

Top Ten Tuesday--Fave Minor Characters

2011-05-17T08:43:00.000-04:00

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted over at The Broke and the Bookish to satisfy our list-making impulse. Each week we get a new literary topic on which to devise our own lists. It's quite fun; check it out!

This week's list is the top ten favorite minor characters in literature. Here are mine in no particular order.

1. Mervyn Bunter from Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey novels. Unflappable and correct, Bunter is like a less smug Jeeves.

2. Ariadne Oliver from a few Agatha Christie novels. Supposedly, Oliver is Christie's send up of herself--a large (tall) female writer with a penchant for crunching apples and a lovely ability to laugh at her own foibles.

3. Vardaman Bundren from William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. This poor kid is just confused and no one ever takes the time to explain the basics to him, hence his most famous musing: "My mother is a fish."

4. John Watson from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. I know Watson is theoretically a major character, but he plays the amazed sidekick so well.

5. Aloysius from Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Yup, the teddy bear, if nothing else for the magnificent quotation: "If only it could be like this always, always alone, always summer...the fruit always ripe, and Aloysius always in a good temper."

6. Jacob Marley from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol Yeah, he was a snake in life, but by the time we meet him, he's regretful and he's trying to save his business partner from the same fate.

7. Pipkin from Richard Adams' Watership Down. I had a debate with one of my profs about little Pipkin. He annoys her because he's of no use to the colony. I disagree. He serves the function of those people who will always be with us and must always be taken care of; those we should not forget. He also serves as a galvanizing point for the members of the warren who might otherwise fall into dissent.

8. Dr. Prunesquallor from Melvin Peake's Gormenghast trilogy. I admit that this probably has more to do with John Sessions' portrayal of him in the film version, but he cracks me up.

9. Dobby from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. I wanted to throttle him at first when his "helpful" behavior got Harry into so much trouble, but I was sobbing by the end.

10. Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming and in her re-creation by Kate Westbrook. You know Miss Moneypenny could kick some tail if she wanted to, and I suspect she was the woman James *really* loved.

Locus Focus--Late again, but on a film!

2011-05-16T09:14:00.001-04:00

Locus Focus is a wonderful weekly meme (on which I have been sadly deficient of late) hosted by the lovely Enbrethiliel over at Shredded Cheddar. Each week we focus on a particular location in literature (and sometimes film) in order to examine its significance and emotive power. Check it out!

May's theme is places in film, and I've chosen George and Martha's house in the wonderful 1966 film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The film stars Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Sandy Dennis and George Segal. The great majority of the story takes place in George and Martha's house or on their lawn; there is only one other stage set in the film and that is the bar which provides the backdrop for a game of "get the guests."

The house is a two-story rather shabby little place with well worn furniture and piles of junk over every conceivable surface. Indeed, in some ways it serves as a metaphor for George and Martha's relationship. One is too busy noticing all the crazy details to examine the larger structure of the home.

The first line of dialogue in the film is Martha's discontented grumble "What a dump." when referring to their house. In fact, the house could be nice, but the couple's utter disregard for the things around them (including people) is mirrored in their surroundings.

In one of the opening scenes, when we see into George and Martha's bedroom, we watch Martha "tidying up" by stashing dirty plates in the nightstand drawer and putting dirty clothes under the bedspread.

And we see her in the kitchen putting a half-eaten chicken wing back onto a plate in the refrigerator. The debacle continues apace as the new couple at the University, Nick and Honey, come over for late-night drinks. Martha blatantly sets out to seduce Nick and belittle George, while George quietly parries the barbs and retaliates by discussing Martha's drinking. And there is a lot of drinking. A lot. At one point, Martha goads George so much that he breaks a bottle on the mantlepiece:

To which she responds: "That better have been an empty bottle! You can't AFFORD to waste good liquor! Not on YOUR salary! Not on an ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR'S salary!" and that's one of the saner moments in the film.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is not an easy film to watch. Martha and George rip into one another with gleeful cruelty, not even slowing down when Nick and Honey get in the way. They build through the night through the second act, "Walpurgisnacht" to the third, "The Exorcism." In the end, we are left, like George and Martha, shattered and surrounded by once-familiar things that now seem to have new context.

This film is not exactly a "fun time" flick, and NEVER attempt to play drinking games with it, but it can teach us about the necessary coping measures we adopt in our lives, and what happens when the supports are removed. And George and Martha's house at all points reflects their personalities. In fact, the house might be said to be a fifth player in the tragicomedy.

Sunday 'Poem in your Post'

2011-05-15T10:49:00.000-04:00

"Poem in your post" is hosted by the wonderful Laurie over at What She Read. Come check it out.

A Work of Artifice by Marge Piercy

The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature
to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers,
the hands you
love to touch.

My housemate introduced me to this poem last night, and I'm quite smitten with it. I love the irony of the crippling care.

Creative Tuesdays--Purple

2011-05-10T10:59:00.000-04:00

Creative Tuesdays is a fortnightly meme hosted by Mr. Toast over at Hot Toast and Jam. Every 2 weeks we get a theme and do something creative inspired by that theme. This week's theme is "Purple." I was really upset that I got sick over the weekend, because I had another idea that I really wanted to work on for "purple" but I spent the whole weekend in a state of semi-consciousness. Fortunately, I had also been working on this scarf for a friend of mine whose favorite color is purple.

The image makes it look a bit blue, but I promise it's a lovely royal purple.

Top Ten Tuesday--Jerks in literature

2011-05-10T09:50:00.000-04:00

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the Broke and the Bookish. Each week we get a different literary topic on which to make our top ten lists. It's loads of fun--stop by! This week's topic is asshats in literature--those real jerks you just want to throttle. The original intention was male characters, but there are plenty of female jerks as well.

1. Stevens from The Remains of the Day. I love him; I really do, but he's a jerk who breaks Miss Kenton's heart without even realizing it.

2. Anse Bundren from William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Any guy who makes his children do all his work, then steals ten dollars from his daughter to get his new teeth deserves a punch of the bracket.

3. The Miller from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

4. Victor Frankenstein from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Despite the fact that he's morally culpable for multiple murders, all he can think about is his own melancholy. I really want to shake him.

5. The husband, John, in The Yellow Wallpaper. Each time I read "Bless her little hear, she shall be as sick as she wants," it makes me want to retch. Patronising do-gooder extraordinaire.

6. and 7. These two are a pair. Mrs. Danvers and Jack Favell from Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. Both of them seem to be cruel just for the sake of cruelty. The world would be a nicer place without them.

8. and 9. are also a pair of stinkers from the same set of works--Rita Skeeter and Peter Pettigrew from the Harry Potter books. Yes, Voldemort is a true asshat, but Peter Pettigrew betrays the deep trust reposed in him, and Rita Skeeter cares for no one but herself, going so far as to twist people's words. Being the type who deals in words for my living, I can't excuse her cavalier attitude.

10. Zaphod Beeblebrox from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I think that, like Trillian, we are supposed to find Zaphod both infuriating and somehow charming. He's just infuriating for me.

updatery

2011-05-10T08:39:00.000-04:00

Oooof. Thusfar, 2011 does not seem a good health year for the Birdie.
Friday night I got violently ill--I think it was food poisoning--and did not get out of bed until yesterday. Consequently, I've missed a lot of stuff around here--sorry about that! But I haven't forgotten anyone (I don't think) *snort*

First off, I want to share this little gem:

technology lituraracy? God help us all!

A day or so before I got ill, Bev from My Reader's Blog tagged me to participate in a meme. Once I answer these questions (below), I get to tag three other bloggers. Watch out. You may be "It" next....

Questions, questions...
1) If you could go back in time and relive one moment, what would it be? Probably one of the afternoons my mom and my granny and I spent in granny's big kitchen. These were always the most simple times, but the best, too.

2) If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be? This is morbid, but I'm committing to being truthful, so here goes: I've almost died twice. I would go back and take one of those opportunities.

3) What movie/TV character do you most resemble in personality? Um, I dunno. Maybe the nerdy kid in The Breakfast Club--you know, the one who gets stuck writing the essay at the end.

4) If you could push one person off a cliff and get away with it, who would it be? If I suspend my pacifist tendencies, um, well, maybe anyone who has committed murder. Though I still wouldn't do it. That would bind me to them. *shiver*

5) Name one habit you would like to change in yourself. I'd like more confidence. I may appear confident, but I deeply believe I can never do anything right.

6) Describe yourself in one word. Loud.

7) Describe the person who named you in this meme in one word. Giving.

8) Why do you blog? Answer in one sentence. To keep a record of what I read and because I've now made friends in the blogosphere.

Now that I've answered the questions I have to pick three bloggers to tag in return. Who will they be?
I tag anyone who is willing to participate...I'm a low-stress type :)

Top Ten Tuesday--The Power of Recommendations

2011-05-03T13:40:00.001-04:00

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted over at the Broke and the Bookish. This week we are asked about the top ten books that came to us as "highly recommended" by friends, family, or contemporaries.

1. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. This book now has a place in my top ten favorite novels, so I guess I think all the lists are right. I chose this book in particular when I was participating in Rose City Reader's Battle of the Prizes--British Edition. Thanks!

2. French Women Don't Get Fat. This one was given to me by my friend Diana. I was resistant to it at first, but I really appreciate the simpler eating and joyful living philosophy of the text. In fact, it's time to read it again.

3. Woman by Natalie Angier was given me for my birthday one year by a friend in Washington, DC. The book was fascinating, and I read it straight through like a novel. I've since had to buy 2 more copies because mine keep disappearing into friends' libraries.

4. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark was recommended by a friend on LiveJournal. She's pretty well obsessed with the book, and with Maggie Smith. And, hey, who can argue? This book suited me perfectly because of my love for boarding school fiction.

5. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (well all Garcia Marquez actually) was recommended to me by one of my favorite high school instructors, Mr. Kelly. This was my first encounter with magical realism and Garcia Marquez became one of my most-loved authors.

6. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner was another book recommended by Mr. Kelly. Other than "The Bear" (which I wasn't too fond of), this was my first Faulkner book. I enjoyed it immensely, though I didn't fully understand it's brilliance. It started me off reading several other Faulkner novels, and now I teach it to my students. Thanks, Mr. Kelly--you've made a difference!

7. While I Was Gone by Sue Miller. This one was pointed out to me by the manager of a bookstore I worked for several years ago. She said I *had* to read it for the twist. And she was right. I finished it one lazy afternoon on my sofa, and when I got to the twist, I called the store manager right then and there.

8. Agatha Christie. My mum read Agatha Christie when I was younger, and I picked them up as the most readily available books in junior high. I've been committed to Christie ever since.

9. John Donne's Poetry. This one is really thanks to my undergrad mentor and thesis director. She took me to my first real academic conference, and she helped me every step along the way. She gave me Donne, helped me understand his poetry and encouraged me to pursue it.

10. The various wonderful scholarly books recommended to my by my undergraduate director, my dissertation director and all my professors along the way.

****Edit**** I've just been reminded of 84 Charing Cross Road which recommendation I picked up from another book--maybe Jane Brockett? and which was supplied to me by my secret bookblogger Santa last year!

In which I act like a prude

2011-05-02T13:37:00.000-04:00

Ok, so most people who know me would not label me as prudish...strange, certainly; loud, a lot of the time; careless, yeah, sometimes; but prudish? Maybe I'm getting old.

The announcement this morning that an elite military team had killed Osama bin Laden is bringing out the negative sides of so many people. It makes me sad.

Don't get me wrong; I think he was completely terrible and morally culpable for the taking of many, many innocent lives--Muslim, Christian, atheist and in between. I am relieved he can no longer harm others. Still, I can't help but feel that it's wrong to celebrate anyone's death like the many pictures I have seen. Celebrate his deposition, yes. But this is still a life, a life that was taken violently. His violence *might* justify retaliatory violence (I'm still not sure on that one), but a violent death of whatever kind is not to be celebrated.

I hope this doesn't alienate many of my friends, but that's my 2 cents.

Locus Focus--Prayer in Movies

2011-05-02T08:36:00.000-04:00

Here I am, late again. But hey, at least I managed to post this week!

Locus Focus is a weekly meme hosted by Enbrethiliel over at Shredded Cheddar. Each week, we focus on a place in literature (and occasionally film) that has given us pause or inspired us. Check it out.

April was "places of prayer" and May is "film month". Since this weekend was both April and May I decided to do places of prayer in movies.

The movie I focused on is a 1994 film called Priest (not to be confused with the film of the same title coming out later this month). First of all, I should warn you that this is an incredibly painful film. It hits a lot of squick buttons, so read the IMDB write up first if you think you are interested in seeing it. It's going to be hard to write about this without spoilers, but once I thought of the film, it wouldn't leave me alone.

Father Greg Pilkington is a new priest sent to a small Irish parish as primary priest. Father Matthew Thomas is his subordinate who knows the ways of the community and shocks Father Greg with some of his laxness. This is not, however, a tale of conflict between the two men. Soon after establishing himself in the community, Father Greg learns a terrible secret in the confessional, and he is torn by his ethical responsibility to help the person being injured and his moral responsibility to the seal of the confessional. This secret drives him to the edge of despair where he makes some personal choices that deeply affect his standing with the congregation.

The last scene has the ability to reduce me to tears just thinking about it. The two priests are saying Mass in the glorious old stone church. It is a moment when Father Greg will be entirely accepted or rejected in the community after the facts are known.

When the priests distribute communion, there is a moment of suspense that leads to the above-pictured scene between the young woman whose secret Father Greg received and the priest.

Oh, it's frustrating not being able to say more, but this film reminds me what it is to be in an intensely difficult situation when moral imperatives conflict with one another. It also reminds me that places of prayer are where we make them.

Poetry hop--J. Alfred Prufrock

2011-05-01T19:44:00.001-04:00

I'm happily participating in the poetry blog hop. I still have some input from my students on Poem in Your Pocket Day, but I just haven't had time to type them up and post them.

For this poetry blog hop, I'm afraid I've chosen rather a long poem, but it's one of my very favorites and it's the poem I kept in my pocket

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

by T.S. Eliot


LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats	5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …	10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,	15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,	20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;	25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;	30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go	35
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—	40
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare	45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,	50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—	55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?	60
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress	65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin? . . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets	70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. . . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!	75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?	80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,	85
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,	90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—	95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,	100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:	105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.” . . . . .	110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,	115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …	120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.	125

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown	130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

runs through

2011-04-27T09:57:00.000-04:00

*pant, pant, pant*

Hi, y'all. Sorry I've been MIA lately. It's that point in the semester where all obligations except those to my students and my boss cease to exist. Next Tuesday is my final exam for my class and their final essay is due. Hopefully after that, things will settle again. I'm hardly even getting any non-student reading done. Something must change. :) Miss you all.

I might be getting addicted

2011-04-20T20:27:00.000-04:00

I might be getting addicted to the writings of the Mitford sisters. I've begun Love in a Cold Climate, but I'm not all that far in. I do really like the voice, though. I've also just finished Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire's Home to Roost and Counting My Chickens. Deborah is the youngest of the Mitford sisters, and her writing voice is witty and self-possessed.

The Duchess knows absolutely everyone, and not in an "oh look how important I am" kind of way. The only time I got that feeling at all was when she was reminiscing about the Kennedy inauguration, and I think that was because she felt vaguely out of place in the American ceremonies.

Anyway, these books were great fun. I am so glad my Uni library had them. They are perfect for dipping into and out of, and it definitely gave me a taste of a world I don't experience. The Duchess talks about her sisters, working on the land, living at the "show house" Chatsworth, books she's reviewed and various encounters with people she respects and with people she believes are just wrong-headed. I think it is a mark of how charming this book is that despite the fact that her opinions are often diametrically opposed to my own, I still feel as if I have been painlessly educated and that I would really like to meet the author. The snippets and essays can be a bit disorienting from time to time since a book review will appear cheek by jowl with a reminiscence of a dead friend, but once you get over the topic swings, the prose is quite fun.

My Uni also has a copy of her autobiography Wait for Me! so I'm really looking forward to reading that as well. If I continue to find Love in a Cold Climate charming, and enjoy Wait for Me!, I'm going to check out The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters.

Top Ten Tuesday: Rewind

2011-04-19T08:56:00.000-04:00

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted over at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week we get a new idea for our "top ten" literary lists. This week, the assignment is to choose a top ten list that we missed. Fun, no?

I've chosen "Top Ten Books I Can't Believe I've Never Read"

1. The Bible--*ducks flying fruit and veg* I know, I know! But I was raised Catholic; we didn't read the Bible, we had it read to us. And I've read bits and bobs in connection with various research assignments. I'm also able to outdo most of my students on parables, etc. Still, I've never made it past the "begats" in Genesis.

2. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner--for a woman who grew up 3 hours from the town where Faulkner lived for much of his life, it's a shameful gap in my literary knowledge. I really must get going on this one, especially since I loved As I Lay Dying and Absalom, Absalom!.

3. The Odyssey by Homer--Yup, another one of those where I basically know the story since it's referenced *everywhere* but I've never read the text. I can't help feeling that's a handicap despite the fact that I don't study Greek and Roman stuff. In my defence, I have read the Iliad twice.

4. Ulysses by James Joyce--This one is linked to the Odyssey, obviously. It's one that I've been meaning to read since undergrad. At first I was too intimidated, and then I was too busy trying to cram in a lot of Renaissance poetry and Victorian novels. Then I decided I would never understand this one until the Odyssey was firmly fixed in my mind. So, one summer I'm just going to have to tackle them together.

5. Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare--There really is no excuse for me not having read this one. I've read the 'big' Shakespeare plays and several of the less well-known ones (Henry VIII anyone?), but this one has just escaped. I'm committed to the Shakespeare challenge this year, but I'm focusing on refreshing my knowledge of the histories. Maybe Merchant of Venice can be a bonus read.

6. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad--This one I more or less have an excuse for; it sounds like a book I would simply loathe. When I was a freshman in college, I discovered I was one of only about 5 people in my Colloquium class who had not read this book in high school. To be quite frank, I'm dreading it, but I know I need to read it, just for cultural literacy's sake.

7. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro--This one is on my shelf, patiently waiting for me. I've been meaning to read it for over a year now. Yeah, I really have no excuses for this one, especially since I adored The Remains of the Day.

8. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens--I actually like Dickens, though I must say he's quite a commitment. My "hall of shame" choice was between Great Expectations and Bleak House as I've never read either. In the end, I went with Great Expectations because it seems to be the one that everyone on the planet except me has read.

9. Ivanhoe or any of the Waverly novels by Walter Scott--another one I haven't an excuse for. I mean, he's basically the guy who constructed a retroactive identity for Scotland. Plus they sound like rather fun historical fiction.

10. Double Indemnity by James M. Cain--I'm a big fan of noir film, and the Barbara Stanwyck/Fred Macmurray Double Indemnity is in some ways the most noir film ever made. I love that film, and I can't believe I've never read the book behind it.

So, there you have my "hall of shame"

H--Georgette Heyer (A to Z Mystery Authors)

2011-04-16T17:47:00.000-04:00

Because Bev from My Reader's Block is a ~~wicked enabler~~ really cool friend, she loaned me a copy of a Georgette Heyer mystery. This is my first Heyer mystery, in keeping with the goal of exploring new authors that I set myself for the A to Z mystery authors challenge.

Why Shoot a Butler?
by Georgette Heyer

The lawyer and sometime detective Frank Amberley is off to visit his aunt, uncle, and cousin (the Matthews) in the country. Due to his cousin's inaccurate directions, Amberley finds himself late for dinner and on a deserted road. Well, it was deserted until he came upon a young woman standing by a car. Despite her unfriendliness (and his own pique) Amberley stops and discovers that there is a dead man in the car, who has been shot through the chest. The young woman begs him not to say anything about her presences but also refuses to let him drive her home.

It turns out that the man in the car was the butler to the Matthews' neighbors, the Fountains. (On a totally unrelated note, the younger half sister of Mr. Fountain is Joan Fountain and I had a devil of a time not reading "Joan Fontaine" each time). Amberley somewhat reluctantly agrees to get involved, though he is convinced that the murder of the butler is only one (fairly uninteresting) link in a (much more interesting) melodrama. He's right of course, but he's still utterly obnoxious to the police, and terribly stingy with clues. As the investigation progresses two more characters die and the Matthews' house is burgled twice.

Overall, I had a really good time reading this book. Occasionally, I got annoyed with Amberley because he was unnecessarily rude; he positively seemed to enjoy hurting people's feelings. I was much more in sympathy with his aunt, Lady Matthews. She was definitely a high point of the book for me. Possessed with sangfroid and intelligence, her rather incomplete way of structuring sentences reminds me of Miss Marple. I did resent that we were not really given all the clues, but the chase was great fun.

Making of a Marchioness

2011-04-16T13:37:00.000-04:00

Hey y'all. I've given up apologizing that I'm so behind on posting. I'm just posting about the books I finished during read-a-thon. Ah, well.

The Making of a Marchioness
by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Until I met a certain group of book bloggers, I had absolutely NO idea that Frances Hodgson Burnett (she of The Secret Garden and A Little Princess] had written books other than children's stories. Several of my book blogger friends had recently read either Making of a Marchioness or The Shuttle and had very nice things to say about both of them. Consequently, I thought I'd request one of the titles from my Uni's auxiliary library facilities (ALF), and I ended up with The Making of a Marchioness.

The story is a simple but heartening one. The main character, Miss Emily Fox-Seton, is what I have seen referred to elsewhere (rather unkindly) as 'a superfluous woman.' That is to say, Miss Fox-Seton, at 34 years of age, has neither husband nor father to take care of her and is thus compelled to make her own way in the world. Fortunately, she has an intelligent and cheerful disposition combined with the constitution of a work-horse. Emily is always amazed at how kind people are to her, despite the fact that she handles all the detritus of their lives that they do not want to deal with. In fact, the most amazing thing to me about this book is that Emily Fox-Seeton is always cheerful and friendly, but she is not irritating like Pollyanna. I think that is because Emily acknowledges the difficulties, commiserates with others, understands hardship, but looks for the small kindnesses and enjoyments that make life worthwhile. Pollyanna annoys me because she just whitewashes everything.

The plot of the novel is 1/3 domestic tale and 2/3 marriage comedy, but 100% fun. I sped through the book, rooting for Emily and her favorites all the way. I'm not a huge romance novel fan, but the amount of romance in this book, mitigated as it is by financial and social concerns is just perfect. In fact, I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on more of Frances Hodgson Burnett's works for adults.

Poem in Your Pocket Day

2011-04-14T13:34:00.000-04:00

Today is the first annual Poem in Your Pocket Day. I gave my students a chance to get a few bonus points by participating. I typed up 25 of my favorite poems and distributed then to each of my students based on what I thought their interests would be. If they want points, the students must carry the poem around today and share it with at least one other person, then type up their experience. I feel justified in 'forcing' poetry on them because it is an optional assignment.

Many of the poems were taken from the above-pictured book, Leslie Pockell's The 100 Best Poems of All Time, which is one of my favorite poetry collections. The poems I chose are listed below:

"Song: To Celia" [Drink to me only] by Ben Jonson
"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne
"Very Like a Whale" by Ogden Nash
"Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"Barter" by Sara Teasdale
"Back Yard" by Carl Sandburg
"This is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams
"The Crimson Petal and the White" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll
"The Gashlycrumb Tinies" by Edward Gorey
"The Owl and the Pussy Cat" by Edward Lear
Sonnet 130 [My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun] by William Shakespeare
Sonnet 18 [Shall I compare thee to a summer's day] by William Shakespeare
"Morning at the Window" by T.S. Eliot
"Where the Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstein
"Dear Friends" by Edward Arlington Robinson
"A Man's A Man for A' That" by Robert Burns
"The Bait" by John Donne
"The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" by Sir Walter Raleigh
"Heaven" by George Herbert
"anyone lived in a pretty how town" by e.e. cummings
"The Thought Fox" by Ted Hughes
Sonnets for the Portuguese VIII by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"Adieu, Adieu My Native Land" by George Gordon, Lord Byron
"Ozymandius" by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I can't wait to hear what they have to say.

Incidentally, I'm carrying around "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot. It's one that's been on my 'favorites' list since I first encountered it in 11th grade English class. I passed it on to a friend in the library.

Top Ten Tuesday--I'd like to see these movies

2011-04-12T13:46:00.001-04:00

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Broke and Bookish. Each week we get another list topic. This week's list is books you'd like to see made into movies. I've only got 9, and they are in no order:

1. The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Burnett
2. The Moneypenny Diaries by Kate Westbrook
3. This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart
4. What Maisie Knew by Henry James
5. Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan Howard
6. Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struther
7. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
8. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
9. A Charmed Life: Growing Up in Macbeth's Castle by Liza Campbell

Carmilla--Gothic Women

2011-04-10T21:55:00.000-04:00

Last week I read J. Sheridan LeFanu's Carmilla.I'd heard about this book for a while, since I have a close friend who worked with a Victorian monsters class. And really--lesbian Victorian vampires? Definite win.

Carmilla is a novella that is quickly consumed, and there are no really graphic scenes, but I wouldn't read it with anyone under the age of 16. The form is of a letter or diary directly to the reader recalling incidents of the protagonist's pass. When Laura, the protagonist of the book was 17 or 18, she and her father lived in a schloss remote from other villagers. Laura is, of course, fair and beautiful. Laura is looking forward to a visit from a friend of her father's who has a niece about Laura's age. The visit is called off because the niece suddenly takes ill and dies.

In the meantime, Laura and her father witness a carriage overturning on the road and are left taking care of one of it's young inhabitants, Carmilla, who refuses to say anything about her past or her family. Laura and Carmilla quickly become devoted to one another, but at times Laura is repulsed by Carmilla's frankly erotic treatment. Then the nightmares start and Laura begins to get weak.

You can see where this is going....

Carmilla is quite an interesting novella, not least because it is written by a male but focused almost solely on the female characters. To be sure, there are important males in the story--Laura's father and the General--but this is definitely a woman's story. It's also amazing to me that this novel made it past censors in Victorian Britain. There is no talk of consummation between Laura and Carmilla, but passages like the following are very hard to misinterpret:

Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardour of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet overpowering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips travelled along my cheek in kisses.

Yup, fair warning, that. Overall, I enjoyed this short novel and would recommend it to anyone who likes vampire tales and doesn't mind a bit of homoeroticism.

Read a Thon wrap up

2011-04-10T09:31:00.001-04:00

Now that was fun! I didn't manage to complete the entire read-a-thon as I fell asleep about 1 am, but I don't think that's too shabby. Um, particularly because I have a lot of "make up" work to do today LOL. I got to read lots, totally suspended my diet, lazed around on the couch all day, took a lovely soak in the bathtub, and generally felt quite decadent. Also, I think I won a book--unless there's another Birdie wandering about...which is always possible.

So, I read (and will be writing about soon):
Haunted Summer by Anne Edwards--the story of the Shelley's summer spent with Byron at Diodati
The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Burnett--a very sweet story of a Cinderella type
Queen Lucia by E.F. Benson--a satirical look at small English village life
and the opening chapters of Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell--a police procedural murder novel.

I also participated in some very fun mini-challenges, was cheered by some kind and patient souls, and totally ignored both telephone and work email. It was glorious.

A sincere and hearty thanks to all our organizers, co-hosts, readers, cheerleaders, and prize providers. This was an amazing read-a-thon, and you all did fantastic jobs!

Here's an "end" survey mini-challenge as well:

Mini-Challenges

The mini-challenge for this hour is to fill out the end of event survey and link it back here. We’ll choose a winner later on! Here are the questions you need to answer:

1. Which hour was most daunting for you? I'd say the 18th since that's when I fell asleep.

2. Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year? It's a "gentle" read, but I was utterly captivated by Burnett's The Making of a Marchioness

3. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? This was fabulous...I was just too busy enjoying everything to think about improving.

4. What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon? I really liked the co-hosts' hourly updates and links to the mini-challenges. It was great to have all that info in one spot.

5. How many books did you read? Read 3 and started a 4th

6. What were the names of the books you read? Haunted Summer by Anne Edwards, The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Burnett, Queen Lucia by E.F. Benson, and Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell.

7. Which book did you enjoy most? Oof, that's tough. Either Haunted Summer or The Making of a Marchioness.

8. Which did you enjoy least? Surprisingly, Queen Lucia--I suspect it's because I grew up in a hothouse village like that (though it was American), and it tackles a lot of things I prefer to forget from my younger days.

9. If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders? n/a, though I'd like to be a cheerleader next time.

10. How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time? I'd be very likely to participate again...though I find that October read-a-thons usually hit at exactly the wrong point in the semester, so it's likely to be next April for me. Next time I think I'd really enjoy being a cheerleader.

Mini-Challenge: Mid-Event Survey

2011-04-09T19:13:00.000-04:00

Mid-Event Survey:
1. What are you reading right now? E.F. Benson's Queen Lucia
2. How many books have you read so far? This is the third
3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon? Birds of a Feather (a Maisie Dobbs mystery)
4. Did you have to make any special arrangements to free up your whole day? I told my students I would be "out of pocket" and therefore would not be answering emails.
5. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those? I did have a bit of a snooze from 3 to 3.30; I have studiously ignored my phone :)
6. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far? How hungry I am LOL
7. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? I quite like all the check-ins
8. What would you do differently, as a Reader or a Cheerleader, if you were to do this again next year? I wish I'd realized the timing earlier, because I would have signed up as a cheerleader, at least for one shift.
9. Are you getting tired yet? Thanks to my nap, not really
10. Do you have any tips for other Readers or Cheerleaders, something you think is working well for you that others may not have discovered? I find it's always much easier to keep with it if you read something you "shouldn't" be reading--that is, read something that doesn't necessarily "improve" you or fit with any of your challenge. It's sort of delicious.

Mini-Challenge: Book Puzzle

2011-04-09T11:25:00.000-04:00

Part of the read-a-thon is our mini challenges. This one, hosted at One Librarian's book Reviews is a rebus of sorts. The following images reflect the name of a book. Have a guess at which book it is.

Or take a stab at this one:

Read a Thon opening

2011-04-09T08:06:00.002-04:00

Woot! It's time to start Dewey's 24-hour read-a-thon!
Now the only problem is where do I begin??? I have so many lovely books clamoring for my attention.

Perhaps I'll pick up Haunted Summer by Anne Edwards. I started it just before a big project and had to put it down. It's about the summer that Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Clare Clairmont, and Lord Byron spent together at Villa Diodati.

Shesten from I Heart Monster is our host for the first 4 hours and posted this intro meme:

1)Where are you reading from today?
2)Three random facts about me…
3)How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours?
4)Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon (i.e. number of books, number of pages, number of hours, or number of comments on blogs)?
5)If you’re a veteran read-a-thoner, any advice for people doing this for the first time?

1. Indiana, my lovely house
2. I took a double major in philosophy and English Lit as an undergrad; I'm participating in the inaugural Poem in Your Pocket Day on 14 April; I'm addicted to British panel shows
3. At least 10, but I know I won't get anywhere NEAR that many read
4. Just to enjoy myself and get lost in the literature
5. I did this read-a-thon last year in April. I'd say if the weather is decent where you are, do some of your reading outside. It's all nasty and rainy here today...good "in bed" reading weather, but not so good for staying awake :)

Read a thon (9 April)

2011-04-06T13:16:00.001-04:00

I just have to do it. I've been working solid for the last month or so with very little time for leisure reading. And I'm TAKING time this weekend. I'm participating in Dewey's 24-hour Read-a-Thon on April 9.

Click on the picture to go to the link

It will start Saturday at 8 am for me (that's 12pm GMT, and I'm in the Eastern US so GMT-4). I'm very excited, and I feel a bit like a naughty child taking a day off school for no reason. Luckily I have no grading this weekend, so I should be able to make up for Saturday time much more easily.

I'm not sure what I'm going to read, but I have LOTS of possibilities.
I haven't managed to start any of my Shakespeare reading for the challenge, so I'll try to read at least one of the histories.
I'll also pick from the books I have checked out from the Uni library at the moment:
Pigeon Pie by Nancy Mitford
Jeeves Omnibus by PG Wodehouse
Make Way for Lucia by EF Benson
South Riding by Winifred Holtby
In a Summer Season by Elizabeth Taylor
A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor
Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie
The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Burnett
The Crimson Rooms by Katherine McMahon
Haunted Summer by Anne Edwards
Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu
Prep School an Anthology by Michael Gilbert
To the North by Elizabeth Bowen
The Way Things Are by E.M. Delafield

And if I'm lucky, I might even finish one or two of them!

Top Ten Tuesday--Book Covers

2011-04-05T13:27:00.001-04:00

I'm afraid I've had to change this Top Ten Tuesday edition. See, I read a lot of books in old hardback copies or from the library, so I try not to get too worried about their aesthetics. There are, however, some books that have just drawn me in because of the covers. So my version of this Top Ten Tuesday is book covers I covet.

Perfume by Patrick Suskind.

The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket. Not even gonna lie, I so bought this one on basis of the artwork alone. But I really enjoyed the series, so no harm, no foul.

I really do love Brett Helquist's style. I have been sorely tempted by Chasing Vermeer that he illustrated as well.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

The Victoria Vanishes by Christopher Fowler...does anything else scream 'British' quite this loudly?

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan Howard

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Definitely this cover, NOT the one that looks like a bodice ripper.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. What can I say, I'm a sucker for the Tudor Rose. It's going to be my next tattoo.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.

A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books by Nicholas Basbanes

Locus Focus--Claudius tries to pray

2011-04-03T21:57:00.000-04:00

Locus Focus is a weekly meme hosted by the lovely Enbrethiliel over at Shredded Cheddar. Each weekend we focus on a particular place in literature that has captured our imaginations. We have themes, but we also run riot. Check it out!

This week's theme is "places of prayer." Initially, I thought "ooooh, that's going to be hard," but when I put my mind to it, I came up with a couple of potential loci pretty quickly. This particular locus would not leave my brain, so I gave in to it.

Hamlet, Act III, Scene III, the acme of the play in some senses. This is the moment where Hamlet has his adulterous usurping uncle served to him on the proverbial silver platter, and yet he does not kill Claudius. Hamlet refuses because Claudius is at prayer and he wants Claudius to die in sin, so his soul will not ascend to Heaven.

Hamlet: Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven;And so am I revenged. That would be scann'd:A villain kills my father; and for that,I, his sole son, do this same villain send To heaven.O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.

I've always struggled with this scene, because it is one of those frustrating moments that seem a crescendo in the action and then disappear. Having entered into the 'murder as revenge' spirit of things along with Hamlet, one imagines that he'll never get so good a chance again. In that sense, this refusal to 'consummate' the deed demonstrates his basic reluctance to (a) believe the spirit of his father or (b) actually "screw [his] courage to the sticking place" (Macbeth).

David Tennant as Hamlet and Patrick Stewart as Claudius

Adding to the frustration, we find out a moment later that Claudius feels his prayers have failed because he refuses to relinquish the gains of his sinful act(s).

Claudius: [Rising] My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

So, it turns out that Hamlet could have had his revenge and could not have chosen a better moment. But is that true? Perhaps Claudius' impulse to prayer was effective. After all, his attempt to turn his heart toward God does save him from retribution at this moment. I think his prayers actually were effective, because his will was with them, even though his heart had not yet been purified. This is Claudius' best chance for salvation. Instead, once he rises from prayer, he embraces again, not only the fruits of his sin, but the chance to send Hamlet to his death. Thus he learns nothing from his prayer and once again paves the way for his soul to be taken

Hamlet: about some act
That has no relish of salvation in't;
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn'd and black
As hell, whereto it goes.

The Bookshop

2011-03-30T08:55:00.000-04:00

Well, it looks as though I'm finally starting on the British books that are not mysteries. And I just got a whole list of possible "to reads" from Darlene over at Roses Over a Cottage Door. I like her taste! This selection is actually one I found on her past reading lists.

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

This was a fabulous but heartbreaking book. It's one of those books of quiet tragedy and injustice that I seem to be drawn to.

The book is short, only 117 pages in the edition I was reading, but it is nevertheless a complete unit. The story follows Mrs. Florence Green, a 40-ish widow who lives in a small town in East Anglia. As a young woman, she worked at a bookshop, and she wants to open one in her new home. She scrapes together her savings and gets a loan from the bank to by the Old House. We follow Florence through almost two years of changing alliances and friendships. We see her spirit and her generosity. We also see the casual heartlessness of village life and the sort of butterfly effect that is so prevalent in small towns.

The opening sentence of the Amazon.com review says it better than I could:

Since 1977, Penelope Fitzgerald has been quietly coming out with small, perfect devastations of human hope and inhuman (i.e., all-too-human) behavior.

I will be adding more Fitzgerald to my reading list in the near future. Thanks Darlene!

Creative Tuesdays--Spring

2011-03-29T17:47:00.000-04:00

Hello all!
Creative Tuesdays is a fortnightly meme hosted by Mr. Toast over at Hot Toast and Jam. Every 2 weeks we get a theme and do something creative inspired by that theme. This fortnight's theme was "spring", and my efforts are papercuts. Let me make it painfully clear that I can take no credit for the design of these pieces. I found some wonderful templates designed and kindly donated to the internet universe by Cindy at Scherenschnitte. Thanks Cindy!

The hen and chicks are worked on construction paper, while the chick with daffodils is worked on a cardstock with a woven design. The design made it more difficult to cut, though the stiffness of the cardstock was pleasant (less chance of tearing the fiddly bits)

Top Ten Tuesday--Authors Who Deserve More Credit

2011-03-29T14:11:00.000-04:00

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because they are particularly fond of lists at The Broke and the Bookish, as am I. Let's share our lists with other bookish folks!

1. Gabriel Garcia Marquez--He wrote more than One Hundred Years of Solitude. How about a little love for his other books?

2. Bret Easton Ellis--His pre-American Psycho stuff is really great in a gritty way. It reflects some interesting and important cultural difficulties in America. However, American Psycho just goes too far, so I'd skip it if I were you. Glamorama is good, though.

3. Muriel Spark--She writes books with sharp, sly humour, but they also engage important issues and have excellent characterization.

4. Marjorie Hillis--She's got a wonderful chatty style and command of the language and her information. She wrote several non-fiction books on keeping your spirits up in adversity. She's not nearly as didactic or high handed as that sounds. Some of her titles are Live Alone and Like It, Orchids on Your Budget, and Corned Beef and Caviar. She writes primarily for the single woman.

5. Mary Stewart--She didn't just write the Merlin series; actually, I much prefer her thriller/romances. There's a sense of real danger, but they are still "cozy" mysteries.

6. Margery Allingham--the Campion mysteries are really quite good; interesting and fun, but the stakes are believable.

7. Lorna Landvik--Sheerly on the strength of Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons every woman should read some of her works.

8. Koren Zailckas--a young writer and author of Smasked: The Story of a Drunken Girlhood and Fury: A Memoir. Incredibly beautiful and engaging writing.

9. Kazuo Ishiguro--I know he's been "Recognized" through several awards, but he needs more popular recognition. Perhaps the film for Never Let Me Go will help some of that.

10. Clifford Chase--Winkie was brilliant and deserves more credit...how can you not love a sentient teddy bear who is accused (falsely) of terrorism?

Spring Statistics

2011-03-28T14:04:00.002-04:00

Since Spring is technically here (although it's freezing outside--*dramatic sigh*), I thought I'd take a look at how I'm progressing with my challenge this year. Not doing great, but not too bad either.

Shakespeare Challenge (Desdemona level 6 plays) 0/6

Gothic Novel Challenge (The Darkness Within level 5 books) (2/5)

Steampunk Challenge (runs until October) (2/4)

The Foodie Reading Challenge (Nibbler level 1-3) (1/3)

A to Z Mystery Authors Challenge (A-I; J-P) (7/16)

Vintage Mystery Challenge (Take 'Em to Trial level 16+) (11/16)

Agatha Christie Mystery Challenge (48/86)

Read Along in Narnia (3/7)

Harry Potter Read Along (2/7)

British Books Challenge (Royal Family Level - 12 books) (2/12)

Children's Book Challenge (1/50)

31/126 (not counting the Christie Challenge)
79/172 (with Christie Challenge)

Philo Vance Weekend--Vintage Mysteries

2011-03-26T20:59:00.000-04:00

When I signed up for the Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge, I thought it would be a good opportunity, both to clear out a couple of mysteries I've had sitting on my shelves, and to see what the Uni Library had in stock. I found the Philo Vance Weekend omnibus while I was trolling around on the catalog. The strange thing about this omnibus is that it contains the second, third, and fourth Philo Vance mysteries, but not the first. Argh...why do they DO things like that? It messes with my desire for orderly reading (which I fully recognize is a Utopian fantasy, but it's MY fantasy darn it). Still, the cases are fun, and I'm very glad I picked up this set.

The Canary Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine
The Canary is a famous singer and heartless coquette. She strings along various men, then when she tires of them, she blackmails them with their love letters. There are at least four men who might easily have been concerned in the murder, but it looks as though none of them could have gotten in to her locked flat.

Enter District Attorney F.X. Markham and Sergeant Heath of the NYPD. Markham has been good friends with Philo Vance for 15 years, and calls him in on the case to help sort things out. Vance is a British-educated aesthete who is 70% Lord Peter Wimsey (including speech patterns), 15% Hercule Poirot (with his stress on tracing the criminal's mindset) and 15% Sherlock Holmes (with his seeming coldness and random knowledge about some pretty unlikely topics). Van Dine is Vance's personal lawyer and friend who serves to give us an expository lens as to the relationships between Vance and other characters. Of the three, this is the weakest, in my opinion, but still quite a fun caper.

The Greene Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine
Can a house itself be malignant? This is the same question asked by Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. In Van Dine, however, there is no supernatural answer, though the building does seem to keep its creeping despair and deadliness. It is certainly a house with very little love. The elder Mr. Greene died 13 years before the book opens and his will stipulated that each of his 4 children and his adopted daughter should live in the house for 25 years after his death on pain of losing their part of the inheritance. To round out the not-at-all jolly group, there is a partially paralyzed mother and a creepy old manservant.

Not a happy place, but that's just the beginning. The Greene family members begin dying off in a way that is certainly not natural. As more of the family members are shot or poisoned, tempers rise and fears are pushed to the forefront. Markham, Heath, Van, and Philo Vance try to stop the devastation and catch the killer.

This novel had a very satisfying ending, and I was a bit surprised at the murderer. I was slightly irritated by the narration, though. Still, I suspect that is a product of having read the novels so close together. I got annoyed with the number of times the narrator mentions that Vance's brain is most active when he looks like he's paying the least attention.

The Bishop Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine

The Bishop Murder Case was my favorite of the three in the omnibus; I find it the most satisfying. The petty quarrels between Sergeant Heath and Vance have receded almost to a whisper, since they both have proven themselves on their own ground. There is less insistence that Vance's indolence conceals deep thought. All in all, I think Van Dine is much more comfortable with his main characters by this point.

He's getting better at really describing the other characters as well. I felt that the Professor, Belle, Arnesson, Drukker, Pardee, and Lady Mae were given sufficient and distinct personalities (as opposed to distinct physical characteristics). I was even sorry to lose some of the characters to the malice of the murderer.

This mystery also plays on my fondness for nursery rhyme mysteries. Many of my favorite Agatha Christie books are ones that involve nursery rhymes or literary references. I'm still puzzling over in my own mind why nursery jingles and murder go so well together; perhaps it's the sheer absurdity of both.

The biggest downside to this novel was the background hum of "look, I know about mathematical physics" discussions going on all over the place. The discussions are kept in sufficiently general terms for anyone to understand them, but it gets old. Still, don't let that keep you from reading this mystery--it's a good one, and the knowledge of theoretical mathematics is not necessary to the understanding or solution of the case.

Locus Focus--Middle Earth Day

2011-03-26T19:54:00.001-04:00

Locus Focus is a weekly meme hosted by the ever-charming Enbrethiliel over at Shredded Cheddar. For this meme, we examine our favorite spots in literature. Sometimes we have prompts; sometimes we let our imaginations run wild. Today is Middle Earth Day. Check it out!

Middle earth day makes me wish i was more of a Tolkien nerd :) Still, even with all the breath-taking landscapes--both the beautiful and the sinister--my favorite is the homey coziness of Bilbo's hobbit house.

In The Hobbit, the dwelling is described thusly:

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats--the hobbit was fond of visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill--The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it--and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The best rooms were all on the lefthand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.

I've always had an unusual fondness for small, enclosed spaces, especially when they are homey small, enclosed spaces. The first time I ever read about a hobbit house, I was fascinated. Who could resist a snug little place that, though it was made in the ground, was clean and well-ordered? I had not then really realized my affinity for these small, safe homes and spaces, but since I've been participating in Locus Focus, I seem to have written about quite a few of these enclosed and/or underground spaces--the Beavers' house in Narnia, Xanadu, the Watership Down warren. Yes, for some reason, underground automatically translates to cozy and welcoming in my brain.

And Bilbo's hobbit house is nothing if not cozy and welcoming. Hobbits love food, so the many larders are well stocked, and I always imagine a warming, but not aggressive, fire crackling on the hearth. Makes me want to go get a cup of tea right now... I've decided that of all the cozy spaces I've looked at on Locus Focus, the hobbit house might just be my favorite because, as Tolkien is careful to point out, all of the rooms on the left are supplied with windows. This arrangement marries the best of being sub rosa with enjoying the outside world.

If I lived in a house like Bilbo's I would have had an even more difficult time starting on a journey than he did.

clicky to go to image source

Top Ten Tuesday--Book Annoyances

2011-03-22T13:19:00.000-04:00

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted over at the Broke and the Bookish. Each week we get a different topic on which to make a bookish list. There are lots of participants and it's lots of fun. Check it out.

This week's theme is bookish pet peeves. I have chosen to interpret this as irritations over the physical objects of books rather than plot or character irritations. My list is in reverse order, and for the first time, I didn't make it to a full ten items.

8. Turned down corners--it just weakens the paper and if you've ever had a second hand book with high-acid paper, you know that the corners which have been turned down simply fall off

7. Foxed paper--I readily admit that this is just a purely aesthetic concern, but browned pages are icky.

6. Paperbacks that are not properly bound--This includes books that are not strongly glued to the spine or books whose first 15 pages are more or less stuck to the front cover.

5. High acid content paper--You just can't do anything with it after a few years. It spots and crumbles.

4. Teeny tiny print--I enjoy reading, but not if I get an eyestrain headache from it.

3. Text that is not straight on the page--pretty self explanatory.

2. No margins--I'm one of those people who write all over my books. I hold conversations with them; more so the scholarly books, but I can't stand it when there is not place to write notes.

1. When unscrupulous merchants and book dealers unbind valuable old manuscripts and early print books so that they can sell the pages separately. In my world, this is nearly a capital offense.

ummmmm

2011-03-21T13:17:00.001-04:00

I am seriously behind on my reviews and posting schedule, so I might be spamming your inbox in the next day or two...apologies in advance.
Birdie

Christmas Pudding--British Books Challenge

2011-03-15T15:16:00.000-04:00

Christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford

This is my first post for the British Books Challenge. I sort of can't believe it--that this is the first, I mean. I've read a lot of British books this year, but I also have a "thing" about not double-dipping or counting books twice for challenges--even when the challenge hosts allow it. So none of the Agatha Christies I've read this year "count" for me, nor does Frankenstein or the British Vintage Mysteries I've read. Meh, so anyway, this is my first official post for the BBC.

Christmas Pudding is also my first experience of the works of Nancy Mitford. She reminds me of a less absurd P.G. Wodehouse, and that's in a very good way. The main characters in Christmas Pudding are likeable but on the whole indolent group. We meet the charming ex-prostitute Amabelle, who has managed to garner a place for herself in polite society; her friends the lovebirds Sally and Walter; their writerly acquaintance Paul, the outdoorsy Lady Bobbin and her son Bobby and daughter Philadelphia. All but Lady Bobbn and her daughter are Londoners transplanted to the country for the Christmas hols.

Paul is there under false pretenses--he wants to write a biography of Lady Bobbin's ancestor, Maria, but has been refused, so he poses as tutor to Bobby on his hols from Eton. Naturally, there are love mismatches, absurd cover-ups, and dramatic but silly subterfuge. It's a fun piece of brain candy, with some lovely dialogue.

G--Joe Gores (A to Z Mystery Authors)

2011-03-15T14:56:00.000-04:00

Spade and Archer by Joe Gores

I really like Samuel Spade, despite the fact that like his colleague Philip Marlowe, he's a street tough with a mean streak and a misogynist outlook. I think the whole atmosphere of California in the 1920s and '30s resonates with me. I still can't wrap my mind around going into business for yourself at 24 years of age...at least not a business like crime investigation.

Spade and Archer provides the back story for Dashiell Hammett's laconic sleuth--how he set up in business, how he met his loyal secretary Effie Perrine, and how Miles Archer came to be his partner. Gores' voice is not quite as taught as Chandler's, nor is the plot as subtle, but I enjoyed the book thoroughly and would recommend it to anyone who likes hard-boiled detective fiction.

The book is arranged in three sections over a seven year time span. There are three cases on which Sam Spade is involved during this stretch which concern many of the same characters and form an overarching epoch in Sam's life. The first case involves both a runaway heir and a gold heist worth about a million dollars; the second involves a banker's murder and a dear friend of Effie's; the third revolves around a young Chinese woman who claims to be the illegitimate daughter of Sun Yet-Sen. Each story is interesting in itself, though occasionally, it feels as though the connection between them is a bit strained (like Agatha Christie's The Big Four). Still, the characters are well drawn, the narrative voice is never irritating, and the scene wraps up just when The Maltese Falcon begins.

Overall, it's a fun ride, and I'd recommend it.

As I Lay Dying

2011-03-15T14:34:00.000-04:00

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (1930)

I sort of hesitate to classify this Faulkner novel as Gothic because it flouts so many of the conventions I normally associate with the genre. But then Southern Gothic is its own beast anyway. Wikipedia (which we all know is the last word in everything LOL) relates the subgenre to Gothic in the following way :

It resembles its parent genre in that it relies on supernatural, ironic, or unusual events to guide the plot. It is unlike its parent genre in that it uses these tools not solely for the sake of suspense, but to explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South.

As I Lay Dying certainly contains unusual events. The plot, such as it is, revolves around a poor Mississippi family whose matriarch dies in the first 40 or so pages. The father has promised her long ago that when she died, the family would take her to Jefferson, 40 miles away, to be buried with her people. The novel is largely a tale of that journey. The family gets a late start because her coffin is not finished and because two of the boys are away making a delivery. They are forced to turn back and take a longer way around to Jefferson because the bridges to the surrounding towns are washed out. Most of the survivors have ulterior motives for wanting to go to Jefferson as well. Anse, the husband, wants a set of false teeth; the daughter is pregnant and wants an abortion; the youngest son wants to see the electric train in the window of one of the department stores; and the eldest son wants to purchase a gramophone. That's about it as far as plot is concerned.

But what makes this novel wonderful, and important to literature is not the plot itself. The novel is structured with something like 15 narrators each taking sections to tell the story. So we see not only the family's perspective, but also those who help along the way. The dead woman even gets a chapter in the middle of the book in which she recalls meeting her husband and the birth of her children. Essentially, this novel does for literary text what cubism did for painting--it tries to show multiple sides of the same situation simultaneously. This is a novel you need to read twice.

I don't want to spoil the end, but one of my professors as an undergrad was Noel Polk, who arranged the definitive text, and he had a fantastic idea of the "I" in the title that really turns the novel on its ear. If you want to hear that, let me know and I'll email you. I taught this novel to my students this term, and they were viscerally engaged. They HATED each of the characters at the beginning, then they moved to sympathy with some, shock at the outcome, and when I told them Dr. Polk's theory, I had 5 students stay after class to discuss it with me. I love those class days.

Food and Domesticity

2011-03-13T16:29:00.001-04:00

I mentioned in a recent post how I turn to domestic manuals and cooking/cleaning guides when I'm ill. Well, the upshot of my having been ill lately is a number of domestic tomes and cookery books. I've grouped them all into this post because it's not the sort of thing I usually review on this site, and because they all make sense together.

Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks by Constance Hieatt, Brenda Hosington, and Sharon Butler

I first learned about this cookbook when I was an undergraduate. Two professor-friends of mine were hosting a dinner for most of the philosophy department and some other assorted friends at Uni; they decided to go with a medieval theme. I was a serving wench--really. Several of the recipes came from this book, including "Sausage hedgehogs" and "Grete Pyes".

This is a fun book to read because the authors give you the original recipe in Medieval English and then "translate" it with proper proportions and standardized spelling. I knew this was a book that I didn't want to purchase because, in general, I prefer my food with a bit more flavoring and a bit less MEAT, but there are some fun and fantastic recipes in here. There are also fun and informative blurbs and hints after most of the recipes. If you like "traditional British cooking" (for there doesn't seem to be an overly large amount of Continental influence) and you like meat, this is an incredibly fun book to add to your collection.

The Cooking of the British Isles by Adrian Bailey

This book is quite fun in the way of food stories and histories. There are also many, many good traditional British/Scottish/Welsh/Irish recipes included. But what makes the book so charming is the "slice of life" texts that introduce each section. These chatty bits are based on interviews and field research, and they are often amusing as well as educational. Also, I've been looking for recipes for mint sauce and toad in the hole for a while.

The Afternoon Tea Book by Michael Smith

This is a book with some history and a lot of fancy and time-consuming recipes (which is not to say they aren't worth it). Smith grew up in Yorkshire and created this book for hapless Americans who are interested in this tradition (particularly as conceived in the Victorian Era). The first part of the text is an explanation of the types of tea and a selective history of tea drinking and rituals in England and Japan.

The recipes section is stocked from Smith's own experience as a Briton and a tea house owner. These are the kinds of recipes you'd make for the twice-yearly tea party rather than the everyday bread and butter teas. Many of them include potentially pricey ingredients and take a goodly amount of time. I'm sure they are all quite delicious, but they are definitely not daily fare.

The Tea Lover's Handbook by Moira Weinreich

This tea book focuses more on the world history of tea as well as its growth and distribution. That sounds kind of dry, but it's not at all! Weinreich gives short easily-digested "snapshots" of many aspects of tea production, trade, and history. It is more global than most tea books I have come across as well. Usually, tea manuals focus either on England or on Japan; Weinreich has "snapshots" of tea use in the Caribbean, France, Mexico, Greece, and Korea among others. She also explains how to make the perfect cup of tea.

There are quite a few recipes in this handbook, but they are interspersed throughout the text so that one would not use this book in the same way as a standard cookbook. The recipes range in formality and ethnicity. Overall, this is a fun, informative, and useful book.

Eating, Drinking, & Thinking: A Gourmet Perspective by Phylis Magida

I really had fun reading the little informal essays in this book. It's one of those books you can read in two-page snippets when you aren't feeling well, or you only have a moment, or you are waiting on something else. Each essay began as an entry for a column in the Chicago Sun Times. We learn about pepper, Camembert, Brillat-Savarin's physiology of taste, Japanese tea, and a host of other gourmet topics. Each "mini-essay" as Magida designates them, is accompanied by a recipe. I must admit, though, that the recipes themselves held little interest for me. The essays themselves were much more charming and fun.

Home Sweet Home: The Best of Good Housekeeping 1922 - 1939.

Home Sweet Home is a cherry-picked compilation of articles, house plans, adverts, and fiction from Good Housekeeping magazine. There are some very telling and interesting articles on how "ordinary people" budget their expenses. There are some fun house plans from the last days when it was thought necessary to have live-in servants. There are also a couple of short stories by writers like E.F. Benson (Mapp and Lucia).

This is another one of those 10 minute reads that you can put down and pick up without having to re-read what you've just been through. The articles are discrete and are usually re-published with the original adverts. It's a fun peek for those of us interested in wartime and between the wars domesticity

John Shawcross--A Gentleman and a Scholar

2011-03-09T22:07:00.000-05:00

Today I got the very sad news that a brilliant gentleman and dear friend, John Shawcross, died. The world just lost a bit of its shine.

Today many of John's far-flung friends share our memories of him in cyberspace. I'm carving out this little corner for my own grief.

John was a truly wonderful person, the kind you feel privileged to know. Over and over again, those of us who knew him through the John Donne Society or the Milton Variorum Project have been saying how unfailingly generous and kind John was. He always welcomed and aided new scholars, and he wasn't the least bit stingy with his knowledge. He was also a damn fine man to have at a party--for dancing, for singing and for laughter.

I will miss you.

Top Ten Tuesday--Dynamic Duos

2011-03-08T13:19:00.000-05:00

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted over at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week, we get a theme to construct a top ten list around. It's great for us list-lovers in the world, and it's especially fun to see what everyone else is thinking. Check it out!

This week's theme is literature's dynamic duos. Mine, in no particular order, are as follows:
1. Nick and Nora Charles from The Thin Man
2. Lord Peter Wimsey and Bunter from the Lord Peter Mysteries
3. Hercule Poirot and Captain Arthur Hastings from the Agatha Christie mysteries
4. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson from the Sherlock Holmes stories
5. Will and Charles Halloway from Something Wicked This Way Comes
6. Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
7. Stevens and Miss Kenton from The Remains of the Day
8. Frankenstein and his Creature from Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus
9. Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing
10. Jeeves and Bertie from P.G. Wodehouse's novels and short stories.

Locus Focus--Bring it on!

2011-03-06T16:47:00.000-05:00

Locus Focus is a wonderful weekly meme created and shepherded by the amazing Enbrethiliel over at Shredded Cheddar. Each week we take the opportunity to focus in on one of the places we have been reading about. This week's theme is battlegrounds/war.

I've discovered I don't really read a lot of books with battles and war. I tend to read domestic drama, and even those that involve war (Brideshead Revisited for example) are much less about the conflict and fighting than about the times before and war and the relationships among characters. I think it's possible that I almost never read "war novels" because I grew up in a town that played a big part in the American Civil War, so I've had war history around me all my life.

My choice this week is a bit, well, odd. Odd because no one else I know has ever even *heard* of this book, and odd because it's a cartoon Civil War book for children that really has very little to do with the actual history of the American Civil War.

The book is Ulysses S. Ant and Robert E. Flea, and yes, I read it many, many times when I was a child. I still have the original copy that my grandmother gave me in 1981.

Ulysses S. Ant and his fellow ants live in an anthill just outside Houndhaus, the home of a dog named Humphrey. Every single morning, Humphrey gets up, yawns, and puts his paw down right in the middle of the anthill. Naturally, this upsets Ulysses and all the other ants. They decide to tunnel under Humphrey's house so that the dog won't be able to get out and step on them.

They begin patiently, quietly tunneling and after a while, it gets more and more difficult for Humphrey to get out. He begins to hit his head in the mornings. This upsets a group of fleas living behind Humphrey's ear. Their leader, Robert E. Flea refused to leave, though other fleas moved to make their homes elsewhere. Ulysses S. Ant's plan finally works. Humphrey is trapped in the house and the house has to be moved.

What I find interesting about this book is that the two leaders never actually come in contact with one another. They don't even share the same grievance. It especially doesn't make sense if one reads Humphrey as both the land and the African American population. It makes slightly more sense if one reads Humphrey as the States' Rights Campaign--one side of which could have been said to be "stepping on" the North while the other side could have been said to be "hitting the South over the head."

I think I find this book charming and interesting precisely because it does not read as straight allegory. Nor is there an obvious move to get the child reader to sympathize with one set of insects over the other. Both sets are played fairly sympathetically. That's something it would have been impossible to do in a straight allegory that represented the real issues of the War. I really respect that the book (as much as possible) refrains from judgment.

Creative Tuesdays--Bedtime

2011-03-01T13:32:00.001-05:00

My favorite time

This little sketch is an enhanced version of my own bedside table. It's my contribution to Mr. Toast's Creative Tuesdays!

Top Ten Tuesday--Unread books I HAD to buy.

2011-03-01T11:21:00.000-05:00

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted over at The Broke and The Bookish. Each week we get a new theme to test our reading and list-making skills. This week the theme is "Top Ten books you HAD to buy, but still haven't read." Ouch. Yeah, I have plenty of those. So here we go, in no particular order.

1. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke--I bought it the week it debuted, and have read about 150 pages of it. Essentially I think it's just so darn uncomfortable to read, being such a huge tome and not having one of those "all action all the time" plots. But I still plan on finishing it--THIS year!

2. The Nature of Monsters by Clare Clark--I waited patiently until this one came out in paperback, snapped it up.....and haven't even read the opening paragraph.

3. Tales of a Scottish Grandfather by Walter Scott--I've read bits and bobs, but I really need to just sit down and really get enmeshed.

4. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel--by everyone's description, this should be right up my alley. And I WANT to read it. I just stalled out at page 78.

5. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman--Quinn, I'm looking at you. This one is your fault.

6. His Dark Materials Series by Philip Pullman--I read the Golden Compass and then got distracted applying to grad school, but I want to finish.

7. Howard's End by E.M. Forster--I had said I was not going to read this one, but I've changed my mind, and now I want to, so I've bought a copy, but haven't had the fortitude yet.

8. The Book of Light and Shadows by Michael Gruber--This is bad. It's been so long since I bought the book that I don't really remember what "spoke" to me about it.

9. The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox--One of the best opening sentences ever. I was hooked, but then I had about a million essays to grade and a few of my own to write.

10. A Well Wrought Urn by Cleanth Brooks--A classic of lit crit from one of the critics who re-popularized John Donne. At some point during the dissertation, I'll HAVE to read this one.

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

2011-03-01T09:06:00.000-05:00

From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg

This book is my first official entry to the 1001 Children's Book Challenge hosted by YS Princess. My personal challenge is 50 books from the list this year, and I'm really glad I started with this one.

From the Mixed-Up Files is a 1968 Newberry Award winner and is a charming tale of a brother and sister who run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Claudia Kincaid is 11, and she is a planner. She has planned virtually every detail of her running away. She's also invited her brother Jamie, who has money because he's a card-sharp and a skinflint. They disappear without fanfare and take up residence in the Met in a light-hearted way.

The narrative frame is the manuscript that Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (a wealthy Connecticut widow) sends to her lawyer Saxonberg to amend her will. Within this narrative, we narrow in to Claudia's perspective as she enlists her younger brother in her plan to run away. Most of the book is told in Claudia's narrative voice with occasional interjections from the unseen Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler character.

The tale itself is charming. The young characters do not effect a miraculous change in themselves by the end of the story, but they change enough to make it believable as a narrative that could have happened.

If you've missed this one, you should definitely pick it up.

crawling back

2011-03-01T08:47:00.000-05:00

I'm more or less better now...I think.

I thought I was better yesterday and I was all ready to go into my afternoon job at the rare books library. I'd gotten up and showered and forced myself to eat something with protein in it and everything. On the way in, I thought I'd stop at the Uni's main library since I had a book delivered from the auxiliary library facility. I thought, oh, I'll just pick this up and nip in to work. I parked in the main library lot and by the time I got to the front desk, I was shaking and feverish. Ugh.

So, I used one of the computers there to email in an excuse (I felt awful about it, but I could hardly stand up for the rushing in my ears), and then sat right down in the middle of the stacks. *snort* Unsurprisingly, I left with 7 books not counting the one I went in to pick up. That tells me I'm well on the road to recovery. And after I got home, I had only one more episode of sweats/chills/dizziness and things seem to sort themselves out. So, I'm at work today *knock on wood*.

I've realized that when I'm sick I crave certain books. I don't know why, but when I'm ill I want to read home manuals and domestic treatises. I've only recently realized this pattern and I was trying to understand why. Yesterday's library loot consisted of Haunted Summer by Anne Edwards (the book I had dragged in from aux facilities), a "best of" Good Housekeeping from the 1920s and '30s, A Tea Lover's Handbook, a book on rural British cooking, a BBC tie in book on Victorian kitchens, Table Topics, Plein Delyt (a medieval cookery book), and a book on the construction and history of Big Ben. Additionally, at home I pulled out my well-worn copies of Marjorie Hillis' Corned Beef and Caviar, and Rita Konig's Domestic Bliss. Incidentally, if you've never heard of Marjorie Hillis, you might take a gander. She's absolutely charming in a sophisticated "between the Wars" way.

These sorts of books (along with old decorating manuals and household cleaning/organization tips) comfort me to no small extent. I suspect that their two major virtues are (1) they can be read in piecemeal segments of a few pages with no damage to narrative continuity and (2) they offer visions of control when my body is rebelling against every form of control I try to impose upon it. Whatever other reasons, these books are a joy and a comfort to me. Perhaps once the dissertation is done, I'll host a "domestic reading" challenge!

Sick, sick, sick

2011-02-27T20:02:00.000-05:00

So finally, after a MONTH of avoiding whatever it was that my housemate had that settled in and turned to bronchitis in her, I caught it. I guess it was a pretty good run if my immune system was able to hold out for a month.

*sigh* Anyway, here I am sick, sick, sick. So sick I can't even read for more than a few minutes at a time. Ugh. That's the worst.

Mostly I just wanted to let you know this because it means I haven't been keeping up with my friends' blogs in the way I like to. Know I'm thinking of you all the same :)

F--Fowler (A to Z Mystery Authors)

2011-02-25T10:19:00.000-05:00

The A to Z Mystery Author Challenge is hosted by Michelle over at Red-Headed Book-Child. You should check it out!

Christopher Fowler

The Victoria Vanishes (2008)

I have been drawn to this book ever since I saw it shiny and new on the bookseller's "New Releases" table. Alas I hadn't had the money to invest in an author I didn't know and who hadn't been personally recommended to me by someone I trust. Joining the A-Z Mystery author challenge and privately pledging not to purchase any books to complete the challenge gave me the impetus to check this mystery out at the local library. And I'm glad I did.

I do wish I'd realized that this was the sixth installment of the Peculiar Crimes Unit series; I might have begun at the beginning. On the other hand, I'm not sure any of the other books would have captured my imagination in the same way.

The blurb from Publisher's Weekly describes the book in this way:

Officialdom casts a skeptical eye on the unorthodox crime solving of London's Peculiar Crimes Unit in Fowler's excellent sixth novel to feature senior detectives Arthur Bryant and John May (after 2007's White Corridor). While the unit's members scheme to insure their professional survival, a serial killer is targeting middle-aged women who drop dead in pubs, apparently of natural causes. Bryant puts the investigation on his team's docket after realizing that he observed one of the victims, shortly before her demise, enter the Victoria Cross, a pub that hasn't existed for almost a century. Characters who could easily have been caricatures in lesser hands assume enough depth to make them both plausible and engaging. If this is indeed the last in the series as the conclusion suggests, then the versatile author has ended on a high note. Those who appreciate Fowler's special blend of the macabre, dark humor and impossible crime puzzles will wish they haven't seen the last of Bryant and May.

I particularly enjoyed the "blend of the macabre, dark humor and impossible crime puzzles" in this particular text. I'm not sure I particularly enjoyed the last chapter or two, which seemed only tangentially related in a rather obvious "let's throw in something that Da Vinci Code fans will like" way. Still, the characters of Bryant and May kept me engaged. Bryant I had pictured (physically) as Mr. Granger from Are You Being Served?. Not perhaps fair of me, but quite humorous anyway.

I would be extremely careful in recommending this novel, though. See, I'm an Anglophile--obsessively, and things like the history of London pubs absolutely fascinate me. So, this book was right up my alley. I enjoyed every digression into London's bibulous past. For those not interested in such history, there will be some recurrent sections of the book that are boring at best and downright irritating at worst. It depends on how much history you like in your literature. I quite enjoy learning about these pubs and the Victorian face of London. Someone who already knows this information or who is not interested in such history might find the text condescending in that way.

For myself, I know I'll pick up at least one more contribution to the Peculiar Crimes Unit with relish.

Elizabeth Eyre--Axe for an Abbot

2011-02-25T10:01:00.000-05:00

The A to Z Mystery author challenge is hosted by Michelle at Red-Headed Book-Child. It's tons of fun; check it out!

Elizabeth Eyre
Axe for an Abbot

I never asked whether pseudonyms count, but I'm assuming so. Elizabeth Eyre is the pseudonym of Jill Staynes and Margaret Storey. They have written several Italian Renaissance mysteries under this name. This particular one follows the character Sigismondo, introduced in an earlier book, his servant Benno, and Benno's dog, the adorable one-eared Biondello. Actually, Biondello is one of the highlights of the book. I suppose I'm a sucker for puppies anyway, but who wouldn't love a sweet and smart one-eared pooch?

The blurb from Publishers' Weekly describes the book as follows:

Appearing for the fifth time in this long and uneven tale, Italian Renaissance adventurer Sigismondo, accompanied by the dwarf Benno, kills a thief at the villa of the wealthy Pantera family. Shortly thereafter, at the Duke of Rocca's palace, Sigismondo's ax is used to slay the gross, venal Abbot Bonifaccio. These are the first of many murders, as a large cast of clergy and laity, nobles and peasants, pilgrims and prostitutes wanders around Italy, intent on skulduggery, wealth, power, piety and fertility. Central to the mayhem is La Feconda, a priceless jeweled cross said to bestow riches and sons upon its owners. The Panteras insist the treasure is theirs, but Sigismondo has vowed to convey it to its rightful home on Scheggia, a rugged island where the faithful struggle up a steep path to pray at the shrine of the Virgin. Although Eyre (Bravo for the Bride) keeps the characters and locales straight, and tosses in sex, excitement and sly plotting (including a conclave of cardinals electing a new pope), the story is overcrowded and marred by loose ends.

I think that may be a bit harsh. The tale is hardly long, being only 350 or so pages. We aren't talking Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell length here, and I'll agree that there are some aspects of the story I like much better than others, though whether that translates to "uneven-ness" I'm not sure. Having said that, Axe for an Abbot is certainly not one of my favorite mysteries, nor is it one of the most memorable I've read. Sigismondo himself is memorable, though his motives and actions are often unclear. The "mad" friar Jerome is a fun character and the journey to Rome is like the Canterbury Tales procession crossed with Vlad the Impaler's Romania.

I appreciated the balance of historical accuracy with common sense. Storey and Staynes pay their readers the great compliment of NOT explaining every single detail in the tale as "the way it was done in ye olde times". It's rare to find writers of consciously popular literature who treat their audience as sharing a particular knowledge base.

Overall, this is a book I would not rush out to buy, nor would I throw away a copy if it were given to me.