She Who Reads

Sock Trauma: Averted!

2008-08-26T20:23:00.002-05:00

Well, I managed to figure out who the socks are for -- my father. Now I just have to finish them!

Sock Trauma

2008-08-26T19:43:00.003-05:00

Summer is a slow time for knitting. There just aren't many projects I want to work on when it's 90 degrees out -- especially if it's made of wool. So I've been taking to time lately to organize my stash and my unfinished projects lately.

I just found a pair of socks at the bottom of a pile of half-finished projects. I can no longer remember what yarn I was using, who the socks were for, or what size I was making.

Crap.

Whatever yarn is in this project, it's gorgeous. It's a thin sock yarn, a beautiful variegated black/dark gray, either wool or a wool blend.

One sock is completely finished. The other sock is half-finished; it looks like I just made the heel flap. I guess I'll just get random people I know to try on the finished sock and see who it fits! Then I'll know what size I was making. It'll be just like Cinderella! Only with socks.

I really need to learn to either finish a project completely or to take better notes. I am annoyed with myself.

Franken!Review: Dress You Up in My Love

2008-06-16T20:46:00.006-05:00

TITLE: Dress You Up in My Love
AUTHOR: Diane Stingley
ORIGINAL DATE OF REVIEW: August 20, 2004
GENRE: Chick Lit
SUMMARY: Her life's becoming a nightmare.

Samatha Stone could have a wonderful life if only other people would cooperate. Like Greg Irvington, for instance. He's the man Sam always knew she'd end up with...right up until the moment he told her he's in love with someone else. Then there's her family, who have this annoying habit of disapproving of the way she lives. And don't even get her started about the holidays, which Sam would really prefer to be canceled for a year or two -- at least. All that changes when Alex Graham comes into her life.

He's the man of her dreams.

Alex Graham is smart, sexy, successful, sensitive, and ready to commit. There aren't many guys like him around; in fact, there aren't any. He's a figment of Sam's imagination -- one she makes the mistake of mentioning to her friends, her family, and Greg because she's tired of going it alone. And why should she have to when there are struggling actors like Mark Simpson eager to take on the role of Alex? Everyone who meets him swoons. Pretty soon, though, Mark's taking his role so seriously that Alex is more trouble than a real boyfriend. It's quickly becoming obvious that in order to reclaim her life and her self, Sam is going to have to end the charade...and break everyone else's heart in the process.

SHE-WHO-READS'S COMMENTS: I just finished this, and I really enjoyed it -- a lot more than I thought I would, even. It's more than just your typical chick lit book, despite the silly romantic comedy premise. (By the way, the silly romantic comedy premise was an awful lot of fun, and the reason I bought the book in the first place, so don't think I'm knocking it. I'm not.) Instead, we get a genuine, interesting novel about a set of characters who felt like real people. Even when the author was playing things up a little for comic effect, none of these characters felt like caricatures or cartoons -- they always came across as real people. The plot did get slightly ridiculous in places, but hey, what can you expect from a novel in which a woman hires an actor to play her fake boyfriend at family gatherings? It never got absurd, though.

And best of all, I felt like Samantha had really grown and changed throughout the course of the novel. She had a newfound understanding of herself and her relationships with other people by the end of the book. The character development was very satisfying to watch.

I also loved the author's style -- deadpan and sarcastic without being cynical or mean. Very funny stuff; I was laughing out loud in places.

Good book! I'm going to be looking out for more by this author!

RATING: Nine out of ten.

Franken!Review: David Copperfield

2008-06-16T20:38:00.003-05:00

TITLE: David Copperfield
AUTHOR: Charles Dickens
GENRE: Classic Literature

ORIGINAL DATE OF MINI-REVIEW #1: October 20, 2004
SHE-WHO-READS'S COMMENTS: I'm a big fan of nineteenth century British novels (if something as sedate as the nineteenth century British novel can be said to have fans). I've read and enjoyed the work of Austen, the Brontes, Dickens, and Eliot, as well as less well-known authors such as George Gissing and Elizabeth Gaskell. But somehow, despite being an admirer of Dickens, I had never read his semi-autobiographical masterwork, David Copperfield. I don't know how that managed to slip by me!

Anyway, I recently bought a copy and started reading it. (And, as a small digression here, let me applaude Barnes and Noble for publishing their series of classic literature. DC is a huge honkin' book -- 730 pages long -- but I got the B&N Classics edition, a really nice trade paperback, for only $7.95. Heck, I've paid that much for incredibly cheap romance novels in mass market paperbacks printed on poor-quality paper. The B&N Classics edition even came with a helpful section in the back of excerpts of contemporary critical response to the book! Yes, the good people at Barnes and Noble sure know how to appeal to the English major/nerd I am at heart....)

I'm not very far into it yet; I've only read the first six chapters. But I'm really enjoying it! It's been a long time since I've read Dickens, and I had forgotten how funny he could be! Not that DC is a boisterous, laugh-out-loud knee-slapper or anything. It's a gentle, decorous, nineteenth-century kind of humor. But humorous it definately is! It's also really sweet and warm. (So far. I'm rather afraid that might change. David's stepfather has all the characteristics of a classic abuser. So far, he's been very controlling of David's mother and has beaten David black and blue on one occasion. But he also just shipped David off to boarding school, so hopefully things will get better for David away from Mr. Murdstone's influence.) Despite all of that, David is such a gentle, good little boy that you can't help but love him, and you can't help but feel good reading about him. I'm looking forward to the next installment! (Yes, I am enough of a nerd that I looked up the original installments, so I could read the chapters in that grouping. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about: Dickens first published his books serially, in small installments. Volume One was the first three chapters. He would write Volume Two while Volume One was on the shelves of the bookstore. And so on. Only after all the installments came out and the novel was finished would they all be published together in book form.)

Right now, I'm struck by the similarities between Jane Eyre and David Copperfield. Both are bilgundsromans, both are written in the first person from the point of view of their title characters, both feature orphans (or, in David's case, a near-orphan) who suffered abuse and cruelty at the hands of their relatives (Jane's aunt, David's stepfather) who raised them, both were then shipped off to boarding school by said relatives. The main differences between them at this point are the gender of the protaganists and the fact that David knows his mother loves him, even if she's scared to demonstrate that love too openly for fear of Mr. Murdstone; Jane doesn't have that same assurance of love. David also received love from Peggotty, the servant; the servants in Gateshead are occasionally sympathetic to Jane, but are basically cold. I don't know what implications any of this has so far or what it all means, but I'm very interested to see how it will all play out.

I expect I'll be posting regular updates as I read. Anyone want to run to the library, check out a copy, and read along? Could be fun...

ORIGINAL DATE OF MINI-REVIEW #2: November 5, 2004
SHE-WHO-READS'S COMMENTS: I read another installment of David Copperfield last weekend. I meant to post an entry about it here, but as you can tell from my last several entries, I've been off in NaNo land -- and probably will remain there until December 1st. Busy writing! No time to read! Must -- get -- daily -- word -- quota!

Anyway.

David's mother died in this installment. It was very sad; I almost cried. Dickens writes good melodrama and angst. Of course, it wasn't anything like a surprise -- he laid the foreshadowing on so thick, I could see it coming a mile away. Dickens is a wonderful writer and does many things well, but subtle he ain't.

The chapters set at boarding school were quite good; they introduced some wacky, interesting new characters, some of whom are going to be important later on, I think. I was kind of reminded of Harry Potter in a few places, especially when Steerforth, the totally obnoxious student who I can't stand but whom David hero worships, gets in an argument with Mr. Mell, the poor but kindly teacher who is nice to David and goes out of his way to help him with his studies and pay attention to him; Steerforth ends up getting Mr. Mell fired. Intentionally so. I was reminded of nothing so much as Draco Malfoy and Remus Lupin from the third Harry Potter book here, except that Steerforth is a lot more subtle and clever (and competant in his evil scheming) than Draco ever was.

Good stuff! I'm looking forward to the next bit.

Franken!Review: On Fire's Wings

2008-06-16T20:33:00.003-05:00

TITLE: On Fire's Wings
AUTHOR: Christie Golden
ORIGINAL DATE OF REVIEW: July 21, 2004
GENRE: Fantasy
SUMMARY: She was born without caste or position in Arukan, a country that prized both. Then a chance encounter led her to a better life. But it also brought her to danger and destiny. Because Kevla Bai-sha's fevered dreams -- looming threats to their land and visions of dragons that had once watched over her people -- held the promise of truth.

Now Arukan -- shadowed by mountains and myths -- might be overcome by eternal darkness. Kevla, together with Jashemi-kha-Tahmu, rebel prince of the ruling household, would defy all law, all tradition, to embark on a daring quest for the half-forgotten elemental parts that will save the world.

And so Kevla must sacrifice everything...only to be reborn in dragon's flames...

SHE-WHO-READS'S COMMENTS: This was an excellent novel! I devoured it in the span of one day, and I already can't wait for the sequel to come out! It's got a real winner of a concept -- the Dancers and the Lorekeepers are just fascinating to me -- and some really great worldbuilding. Too many fantasy novels use recycled, generic, vaguely European settings -- not Christie Golden! Arukan is a complex society with an original, fresh, vaguely Middle Eastern feel to it. This was not a world I've read about before; Arukan is someplace new.

Kevla is a wonderful character, a vivid, likeable human being. We watch her grow from a child to a woman, and we get completely involved in her life. We identify with her and want to see her succeed. All of this is perhaps why some of the psychological places that Golden takes this character (please excuse the vagueness, but I don't want to give anything away to people who haven't read the book for themselves yet) make us, the readers, so uneasy. Golden takes some real risks and isn't afraid of pushing the envelope. And, while it may have been uncomfortable to go there, it makes the book feel so much more real. Nothing is in here just for the shock value; it is all absolutely necessary to further the plot. The way Arkuan society was structured made the particular event I'm referring to (and once you've read the book, you'll know exactly what I mean) inevitable, but nonetheless shocking, horrible, strangely beautiful, and tragic -- but always, always, emotionally honest and real. All of the actions that Kevla and the other main characters take ring true. There's not one false note.

The bottom line: this book is fabulous, original, engrossing, and real. Buy it now!

Franken!Review: Beaches

2008-06-16T20:19:00.003-05:00

TITLE: Beaches
AUTHOR: Iris Ranier Dart
ORIGINAL DATE OF REVIEW: July 14, 2004
GENRE: Fiction and Literature
SUMMARY: Loudmouthed, redheaded Cee Cee Bloom has her sights set on Hollywood. Bertie White, quiet and conservative, dreams of getting married and having children. In 1951, their childhood worlds collide in Atlantic City. Keeping in touch as pen pals, they reunite over the years ... always near the ocean.

Powerful and moving, this novel follows Cee Cee and Bertie's extraordinary friendship over the course of thirty years as they transform from adolescents into adults. A bestselling novel that became a hugely successful film, Beaches is funny, heartbreaking, and a tale that should be a part of every woman's library.

SHE-WHO-READS'S COMMENTS: recently finished reading Beaches by Iris Rainer Dart. I'd seen the movie before -- multiple times, in fact -- but I had never read the book. It was really good! I was immediately drawn in to the world of the novel; despite the fact that I already knew the basic outline of the story (if not all the details -- they changed quite a bit from what I remember from the movie), I found this book to be a compulsive page-turner. Cee Cee Bloom is a wonderful character to read about, loud-mouthed, brash, insanely talented, insecure, and just really good-hearted underneath it all. I found Bertie to be less compelling -- the most interesting thing about her was her death (okay...that was harsh. True, but harsh) -- but still a good, strong, EveryWoman-type character, who kept the story moving forward. A great depiction of a true friendship.

When I first started to get to the sad parts at the end, I was in a restaraunt, reading and eating lunch. I had to keep telling myself sternly, "Don't cry. You're in a public place. Don't cry." But I cried anyway.

Well, it was sad. That's one thing the book and the movie both have in common -- they're both tearjerkers!

Franken!Review: Summer by the Sea

2008-06-16T20:11:00.005-05:00

TITLE: Summer by the Sea
AUTHOR: Susan Wiggs
ORIGINAL DATE OF REVIEW: July 5, 2004
GENRE: Romance
SUMMARY: It's the beginning of another season in the seaside resort town of Winslow, Rhode Island, and Rosa Capoletti is given the chance to rediscover the pleasures of love and laughter, food and wine, friendship and romance . . .

With a little determination and a lot of charm, Rosa Capoletti took a run-down pizza joint and turned it into an award-winning restaurant that has been voted "best place to propose" three years in a row. For Rosa, though, there has been no real romance since her love affair with Alexander Montgomery ended suddenly and without explanation a decade ago.

But Rosa's life takes an unexpected turn when Alexander arrives back in town and asks for her help sorting through his late mother's affairs. Reunited at the beach house where they first met and fell in love, Rosa and Alexander discover that the secrets of the past are not what they seem. Now, with all that she wants right in front of her, Rosa searches for happiness with the man who once broke her heart -- and learns that in love, as in life, there are second chances.

SHE-WHO-READS'S COMMENTS: Awww, this was sweet! It left me with a happy glow when I finished reading it. A lovely story of a innocent childhood friendship between Alex Montgomery, son of a wealthy couple who had a summer home at the beach, and Rosa Capoletti, daughter of the Montgomery's gardener -- a friendship that develops into something more as they grow older. They're seperated by circumstances, and then meet up again as adults, and carefully try to reconnect with each other.

This book is full of warm-hearted characters who I loved getting to know, as well as some scrumptious-sounding Italian recepies that I can't wait to try. All in all, it's the perfect summer read, sweet and satisfying.

RATING: 9 out of 10

Resurrecting Dead Book Reviews: Bet Me

2008-06-16T20:04:00.007-05:00

I was reminded of the existence of this blog by an email I got today, and I decided to look it over. I realized that several of the older book reviews I have linked on the sidebar have disappeared, so I'm reposting them here. (Thank goodness for the Wayback Machine!)

TITLE: Bet Me
AUTHOR: Jennifer Crusie
GENRE: Chick Lit
ORIGINAL DATE OF REVIEW: June 30, 2004
SUMMARY: Minerva Dobbs knows that happily-ever-after is a fairy tale, especially with a man who asked her to dinner to win a bet. Even if he is gorgeous and successful Calvin Morrisey. Cal knows commitment is impossible, especially with a woman as cranky as Min Dobbs. Even if she does wear great shoes, and keep him on his toes. When they say good-bye at the end of their evening, they cut their losses and agree never to see each other again.

But Fate has other plans, and it's not long before Min and Cal meet again. Soon, they're dealing with a jealous ex-boyfriend, Krispy Kreme donuts, a determined psychologist, chaos theory, a freakishly intelligent cat, Chicken Marsala, and more risky propositions than either of them ever dreamed of. Including the biggest gamble of all-true love.

SHE-WHO-READS'S COMMENTS:

Okay -- wow, this was good! I think this is the most perfect chick lit book I have ever read. It was hilarious, for one -- the one-liners just kept coming the whole novel through. And they were good one-liners, funny, smart, sexy, and witty. The characters were fabulous -- well-drawn, quirky, likeable (the good guys), deliciously unlikeable (the bad guys), intelligent, and fully fleshed-out. These were people I wanted to get to know and hang out with, the kind of people I could see myself being friends with. And the plot was utterly absorbing. Once I started, I couldn't put the book down. Literally. I stayed up until 9:00 in the morning finishing this thing; by the end, I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open, but I kept on reading instead of doing the sensable thing and, y'know, sleeping, because I had to know what happened next. It's been a while since I've been that caught up in a book. I'm going to have to check out Jennifer Crusie's other novels, because that was really a lot of fun!

Oh! I forgot to mention the best part! The overweight heroine doesn't lose weight to win the heart of the hero! Not only is she as fat for the happily-ever-after ending as she was for the beginning, but the hero kept feeding her all the way through the novel because he liked the look on her face when she ate something yummy. I was starving when I finished Bet Me -- people kept eating pasta, chicken marsala, and Krispy Kreme donuts! I've been waiting a long time for a book that said you don't have to be thin to be happy, and actually meant it. Thanks, Ms. Crusie!

RATING: 10 out of 10

Book Review: Disgrace

2007-07-24T17:26:00.000-05:00

First off -- I haven't forgotten about posting my Poisonwood Bible reading journal. I've finished both the book and the journal, but I haven't gotten around to posting the last few entries here yet. I'll be doing that soon.

TITLE: Disgrace

AUTHOR: J. M. Coetzee

GENRE: Fiction and Literature

BACK COVER SUMMARY: After years teaching Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town, David Lurie, middle-aged and twice divorced, has an impulsive affair with a student. The affair sours; he is denounced and summoned before a committee of inquiry. Willing to admit his guilt, but refusing to yield to pressure to repent publicly, he resigns and retreats to his daughter Lucy's isolated farm. For a time, his daughter's influence and the natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonize his discordant life. But the balance of power in the country is shifting. He and Lucy become victims of a savage and disturbing attack which brings into relief all the faults in their relationship. Chilling, uncompromising and unforgettable, Disgrace is a masterpiece.

SHE-WHO-READS'S COMMENTS: I posted this review over at Good Reads first, but I'm reproducing it over here too.

I literally just finished this book a few minutes ago, so I have not by any means worked though all of my reactions to it yet. It is written in a very spare, emotionally distanced style, even though it deals with very emotional topics. It is a page-turner, an absorbing, fast read that keeps you anxious to find out what happens next -- but that seems almost incidental, besides the point. I thoroughly disliked the main character, David Lurie -- he is unbelievably arrogant and chauvinistic -- but that seemed less and less important as the novel went on, and totally irrelevant by the end. In fact, I don't think there is a single likable character anywhere in this book, not even Bev Shaw (she is admirable, I think, but not likable). But these characters and their lives have so much to say to the reader that their likability just doesn't even enter into it.

This is an extremely complex book, with a lot going on -- I haven't even begun to unpack it all. At its core, it's about race, specifically about race relations in modern-day South Africa. But it also has a lot to do with gender politics and with animal rights (or, if not animal rights exactly, the treatment animals receive at the hands of human beings). Lucy, David's daughter, becomes the focal point for most of these issues, yet she, as a character, would eschew the whole notion of "issues". She doesn't deal in abstractions, only in the concrete necessities of daily life. She is -- all of these characters are -- hard to wrap your head around, hard to understand their motivations. Honestly, Lucy disturbed me even more than David disturbed me. David is an arrogant jackass who constantly romanticizes everything around him. Lucy, however, is a victim, a voluntary martyr. It is the role she has adopted for herself, the price she has decided she has to pay for being a white woman living in the South African countryside. She is powerless and oppressed -- not by other people, not by the society she lives in, but by herself. She may be trying to live a good life and be a good person, but I cannot imagine that anything good could possibly come out of the stance she chooses to take. She takes self-loathing to new and extreme levels, in my opinion.

So what is the disgrace that the title references? David's disgrace at the beginning of the book, being caught in an affair with a student? The disgrace Lucy feels from the rape? South Africa's disgraceful history of apartheid? The disgraceful behavior of the rapists and of Petrus, who is protecting them and may possibly have instigated the whole incident in the first place? Lucy's lack of self-respect? Her father's lack of empathy and connection with other human beings? Some other meaning I haven't considered yet? All of the above?

I don't know. But I know I will be thinking about this little novel for a long time to come. Haunting is, I think, the right word for it.

Reading Journal Entry #5

2007-07-16T21:10:00.000-05:00

Title: The Poisonwood Bible
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Pages Read: 187-311 (Book Three)

Initial Reaction: Nathan's story explained! So that's where his refusal to leave a man behind comes from, a deadly combination of guilt and doubts about his own bravery. That wouldn't be so bad if it were coupled with discernment and intellectual openness, but it's not. His refusal to run away -- ie, back down from a chosen course of action -- has turned him into a coward who is constantly running away -- from his familial responsibilities, from any facts that contradict his world view, and from any argument that he's in danger of losing. Ironic.

Ruth May has malaria! Poor thing! Of course, it's self-inflicted, the result of her refusal to take her quinine pills. Her chapters had an unreal and hallucinatory quality to them. Trippy. Also very cool.

Leah's crush on Anatole continues to grow.

Speaking of crushes -- Rachel's on Axelroot is both pathetic and horrifying. She wants to be a normal teenager with a boyfriend, and he's the only option. But he's so skeezy! Ick! Run, Rachel, run!

Orleanna is changed. She's a different person now. She says what she thinks and to hell with her husband. If he's going to ignore her so thoroughly, she'll ignore him right back.

Leah's starting to question her father. Slowly but surely. Good for her.

The ending, with the ants! Blargh! So horrible. I am going to have ant-related nightmares tonight, I just know it. And Orleanna just left Adah there! How could she? God.

Quotes:

"My father thinks the Congo is just lagging behind and he can help bring it up to snuff. Which is crazy. It's like he's trying to put rubber tires on a horse." (284)
"I know what it is: it's a green mamba snake away up in the tree. You don't have to be afraid of them anymore because you are one. They lie so still on the tree branch; they are the same everything as the tree. You could be right next to one and not even know. It's so quiet there. That's just exactly what I want to go and be, when I have to disappear. Your eyes will be little and round but you are so far up there you can look down and see the whole world, Mama and everybody. The tribes of Ham, Shem, and Japheth all together. Finally you are the highest one of all." (304)
"I reached out and clung for life with my good left hand like a claw, grasping at moving legs to raise myself from the dirt. Desperate to save myself in a river of people saving themselves. And if they chanced to look down and see me struggling underneath them, they saw that even the crooked girl believed her own life was precious. That is what it means to be a beast in the kingdom." (306)

Reading Journal Entry #4

2007-07-16T20:59:00.000-05:00

Title: The Poisonwood Bible
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Pages Read: 83-186 (Book Two)

Initial Reactions: Anatole seems an interesting character -- I'll be looking to see how he develops. I love the idea of Nathan serving an important social function, only not the one he thought he was -- he's removing the misfits and troublemakers from the spiritual life of the village! Ha!

Adah and the lion -- creepy! She is so jealous of and has so much resentment of Leah, and it comes out a little here -- left behind, again. Abandoned to her fate.

Hope chests: oooo-kay. How inappropriate and out of place can you get?

Nathan's absolute refusal to leave was infuriating. The lives of his wife and children are clearly unimportant to him -- he's so obsessed with his "mission" there's no room for anything else in his head. Not even for basic comprehension! Orleanna is the only one who really gets it, and Nathan ignores her as usual.

The death of Methuselah does not bode well. Methuselah = The Congo. Both had been caged for a long time, were recently set free but don't really know how to live an independent life. Now Methuselah is dead, killed by predators. Yeah. Not a good sign. Bad things are going to happen soon.

Quotes:

"I wonder that religion can live or die on the strength of a faint, stirring breeze. The scent trail shifts, causing the predator to miss the pounce. One god draws in the breath of life and rises; another god expires." (141)
"Set upon by the civit cat, the spy, the eye, the hunger of a superior need, Methuselah is free of his captivity at last. This is what he leaves to the world: gray and scarlet feathers strewn over the damp grass. Only this and nothing more, the tell-tale heart, tale of the carnivore. None of what he was taught in the house of the master. Only feathers, without the ball of Hope inside. Feathers at last at last and no words at all." (186)

Reading Journal Entry #3

2007-07-16T20:45:00.000-05:00

Title: Poisonwood Bible
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Pages Read: 50-82

Initial Reactions: Africa is changing them. They're finally beginning to realize that the American way of life is not universal -- and is, in fact, totally inappropriate here. Orleanna crying about the cake mix: "We brought all the wrong things." Rev. Price is much less observant -- too sure of himself to pay attention to anything outside of his own head. The flat rows vs mounds garden incident wasn't enough to pierce that thick skull -- there was the fish/dynamite incident too, and finally Mama Tataba yelling at him about baptisms. No one allows children in the river because of the danger of crocodiles. Why did it take six months for anyone to tell me, he asks. Why should they have had to, I ask. Why didn't you ask them why they weren't interested in baptism? Tataba took him down a peg -- about time someone did! He won't stay down, of course. But the realization about the lack of pollinators did something to him, I think. Opened up the possibility of a new kind of understanding. I hope he keeps that possibility alive.

I wonder about his release of Methuselah at the end of the book. Getting rid of his frustration? Symbolically ridding himself of old habits of thought? Eliminating the witness to his profanity (Leah doesn't count, she's just his daughter)? Just being mean? What? Leah read it as an act of freedom. In any other book, it would have been. Not here, though. But of course Leah saw it that way; she sees her dad through rose-colored glasses.

Meanwhile, my love for Adah grows apace. Despite her kind of dark and creepy vibe, she totally rocks.

Quotes:

"'Leah,' he said. 'You can't bring the bees. You might as well bring the whole world over here with you, and there's not room for it.'" (80)
"In a burst of light Methuselah opened his wings and fluttered like freedom itself, lifting himself to the top of our Kentucky Wonder Vines and the highest boughs of the jungle that will surely take back everything once we are gone." (82)

Reading Journal Entry #2

2007-07-11T13:38:00.001-05:00

Title: The Poisonwood Bible
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Pages Read: 11-49

Initial Reaction: This book is just fascinating. I'm enthralled by this family and their journey -- and this setting. Africa is so foreign to me, so unfamiliar and strange, I'm just enthralled reading about it. I don't know the first thing about Africa, but this book is making me feel like I've been there for a visit. It was hard to limit myself to 40 pages -- I wanted to read on, to learn more, to find out what happens next.

I don't think I've ever read a story told in this exact way before, with each chapter being from a different character's point of view -- oh, well, no, I take that back. The Gumshoe, The Witch, and the Virtual Corpse by Keith Hartman was also told from multiple perspectives...in fact, from many, many, many different characters' perspectives. Anyway. It works surprisingly well. It's a great way to get to know these characters really well -- the contrast between the concerns of each chapter lets you know exactly what's important to each character. It also gives you multiple perspectives on the events and, more importantly, on the setting, the African culture they've immersed themselves in -- vital for a novel where the main theme is cultural conflict.

Little Ruth May's chapter was simultaneously very cute -- she must be an adorable little girl -- and horrifyingly racist. A completely unconscious racism, though, without any malice or ill will behind it, or even any understanding of it -- she is a very young child. And this is a racism that's all wound up with religion, a particularly nasty perversion that made me really dislike her father even more than I already did. That awful "prayer"/sermon at the welcoming feast that Rachel describes! How contemptuous and rude! I wanted to slap him -- and cheer Orleanna for making the girls eat the goat! He's such a self-righteous, self-centered, narrow-minded, controlling little man! Blargh! Leah's hero-worship of him made me want to gag. I understand where it's coming from -- I also had (probably still have) a pretty strong case of hero-worship for my own father -- a very uncomfortable comparison. But Leah's just parroting his own opinion of himself back to him -- open your eyes, Leah! You're never going to be "good enough" to get his wholehearted love, and that's got absolutely nothing to do with you and everything to do with him and the kind of person he is. She's in for a rude awakening. Adah's chapter fascinated me -- so complex and mature and, like the opening, poetic. She's an enigma to me still, though. Rachel cracks me up, with her teenage drama and her vanity and her malapropisms. Heh.

Reading Journal Entry #1

2007-07-09T22:35:00.001-05:00

Title: The Poisonwood Bible
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Pages Read: 1-10

Initial Reaction: Wow, what an opening! I'm struck by how poetic and lyrical the prose is. I found myself reading and rereading lines and passages as I went, the way I have to read poetry twice: once for the first rush of of the imagery and the undiluted emotional impact of the words, and once for comprehension and content meaning.

The opening passage was practically cinematic -- such a rich, sensual, evocative description of the jungle. I could see it; I could hear it; I was there. The first paragraph in particular was just gorgeous. This whole section had a floating, weightless feel to it, like memory or dream. An effect helped along, no doubt, by the use of the present tense and the use of the first and second person. The narrator is speaking to us directly, breaking the fourth wall. Except not. She's not speaking to us, even though she addresses us as "you" -- she's speaking to another character in this drama as yet unnamed. Africa herself, perhaps? How strange to be directly addressed by a book like this, to be pulled into its pages as a character as if we belong there, to not be the audience, observing, separate -- and, at the same time, to be invited to be the audience, to observe, to be told this story that is about to unfold. To be placed in judgement over the narrator. What an odd -- but wonderful -- position to be in!

Metaphors:

The okapi. "For hundreds of years people in the Congo Valley spoke of the beautiful, strange beast. When European explorers got wind of it, they declared it legendary: a unicorn. ...A family of them now reside in the New York Museum of Natural History, dead and stuffed, with standoffish glass eyes. And so the okapi is now by scientific account a real animal. Merely real, not legend. Some manner of beast, a horseish gazelle, relative of the giraffe. ...All I can think of is the other okapi, the one they used to believe in. A unicorn that could look you in the eye." (p. 7-8)
Africa as woman. "Why, Dr. Livingstone, I presume, wasn't he the rascal! He and all the profiteers who've since walked out on Africa as a husband quits a wife, leaving her with her naked body curled around the emptied-out mine of her womb." (p. 9)

Themes:

Innocence/Guilt. Having a "snow-white conscience".
A life of one's own.
What if? An "unconquered Africa."
Self-centeredness. ("But what else could we have thought? Only that it began and ended with us. What do we know, even now?...We can only speak of the things we carried with us, and the things we took away." -- pg. 10)

Quotes:

"Imagine a ruin so strange it must never have happened." (5)
"This forest eats itself and lives forever." (5)
"She tucks her dress under her legs and inspects her poor, featherless feet in their grass nest at the water's edge -- twin birds helpless to fly out of there...." (6)
"The memories rise out of me like a buzz of flies from a carcass." (8)
"Maybe I'll even confess the truth, that I rode in with the horsemen and beheld the apocalypse, but still I'll insist I was only a captive witness. What is a conqueror's wife, if not a conquest herself?" (9)
"I know how people are with their habits of mind....Most have no earthly notion of the price of a snow-white conscience." (9)
"But Africa shifts under my hands, refusing...to be any place at all, or any thing but itself: the animal kingdom making hay in the kingdom of glory." (10)

Hello, Stranger

2007-07-09T21:35:00.000-05:00

Okay, wow, it's been almost exactly a year since I posted in this blog last. I'm...not sure how that happened. I mean, I kept reading during that year. I kept knitting. And yet somehow I did not keep blogging. What's up with that?

Anyway. Sorry about that.

So, here's what's new with me: I've finally started graduate school. I'm working on my English Education degree and my certification at the same time, so in a couple of years, I'll actually be able to get a real job! With benefits and everything! And I can maybe stop being such a desperate loser and actually feel like a grown-up! Radical concept.

One of the classes I'm taking this summer is about book clubs and the use of book clubs and/or literature circles in the classroom. So, as a practical demonstration, the professor divided our class up into book groups of our own! My group is reading Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, which is a book I've always wanted to read but had never gotten around to for one reason or another. As part of the class, we're supposed to keep reading journals on our book club reading. That thought reminded me of this blog. Well, I thought, why not post my reading journal online in my blog? It's been ages since I last updated. If I have any readers left, they might be interested! So that's what I'm going to do: I'll be posting my first impressions and initial thoughts of each chapter of The Poisonwood Bible as I read it. You can play along at home, if you'd like! We could have an online readalong! Hey, it could be fun.

So you can expect -- brace yourself for the shock -- actual regular updates of this blog for the next few weeks. (All bets are off after that, though -- after my spectacular year-long nonblogging streak, I refuse to make any promises.) Go on and check the Poisonwood Bible out from the library and read with me, if you'd like. Summer's the perfect season for reading! Let's do it!

Transamerica

2006-07-18T23:07:00.000-05:00

I just finished watching the movie Transamerica, and I enjoyed it. It's interesting, with some quirky characters. I'm assuming that everyone knows the basic plot already: Bree, a male-to-female transsexual, gets a phone call from a son she never knew she had, and she goes on a road trip to get him and bring him home. All of this happens a very short time before her final gender reassignment surgery; she has to make it back to L.A. from NYC in time to have her operation.

But I have to say, right now, I'm kind of befuddled by the artwork on the box. If you look at it from one angle, it's a picture of Bree, the main character from the film. If you look at it from another angle, it's a glamor shot of Felicity Huffman, the actress who plays Bree. Why, exactly?

I mean, I kind of get it. Transamerica is a movie about transformations; Bree is a preoperative transsexual. The advertisers (or whoever designed the cover for the video, I'm not really sure who that is) want to show that transformation to us, the audience. The problem is that Bree's transformation from man to woman isn't really the important one in this film. That's a journey that Bree took a long time ago, way before this movie started. She already is a woman. The surgery is just the period on the end of a sentance that Bree has already written. That's not what this movie is about.

It's really about Bree's relationship with her son, Toby. Their road trip, the journey that they take -- it's a transitional time, a sort of unsettled limbo where they tentatively reach out to each other and get to know one another, a time they use to define their relationship -- all of this in spite of the fact that Toby doesn't know that Bree is his father. That's the important transformation Bree makes in this film; the transformation from a nonparent to a parent. The trip Bree and Toby take together in the womb-like space of the beat-up old car -- in a way, that road trip is the birth of Bree's child.

So, again, why the cover art? Why not show the scene from the movie poster instead -- Bree and Toby standing in front of a car? I mean, I get you want to show the transformation. And I get that the transformation from nonparent to parent is strictly internal, invisible, and therefore impossible to photograph. But we never see the male version of Bree (except for a brief shot of a photograph that Toby has), the movie just doesn't show the transformation of Stanley into Bree. Therefore, you can't put that on the cover, either. Instead, we're left with the transformation of Felicity Huffman into Bree. Yes, she looks different, but is that really cover-worthy material? All actors transform themselves into their characters; that's what acting is.

I look at this cover and I see the transformation, not of a woman into a man, not of a man into a woman, but of a woman into a woman. It leaves me scratching my head and going, "Yeah...and?" It's just redundant.

movies, gender

Knitting Bombshell

2006-07-18T22:55:00.000-05:00

I'm currently in the middle of knitting the Bombshell pattern from Big Girl Knits (a book I reviewed a couple of entries ago; there's a picture of Bombshell in that entry too). I'm loving it so far! I'm using a scrumptious yarn, RYC's Natural Silk Aran. It's mostly rayon, with about 15% silk and 12% linen; I'm using a gorgeous dark gray that's subtly variegated. I'm so excited; I can't wait until it's done, so I can wear it!

I just finished the yolk today and tried it on for the first time. The neckline fooled me -- it's so big! I almost had a heart attack, thinking I had done something incredibly wrong, until I realized that I'll be going back and adding a border around the neck later on, and it's not really that low cut! I mean, I don't mind showing a little cleavage, but that was ridiculous! Half my bra was showing!

Aside from that one little snafu, the fit is really pretty good. It's just a little too large under the arms. I'll have to go back and rip out a few rows to get rid of some of those increases, but it won't be a big deal. I love the concept of top-down knitting! It makes getting a properly customized fit so much easier!

I hope to have a picture to show you guys soon!

knitting

Free Six Flags Passes

2006-07-11T14:23:00.000-05:00

If I get four people to sign up on this website, I'll get four free Six Flags Passes! So will you, if you get four people to sign up after you sign up.

Yeah, it sounds kind of pyramid-scheme-y, but what the hell. It's worth a shot, right? I haven't been to Six Flags in years. I'd love to go again, but tickets are so freaking expensive that it's just not worth it. But hey -- if it's free...why not?

Here's the link to click:

http://sixflags.progressingrewards.com/r/3ffc652a62621029b9dd

Yay, Joss Whedon!

2006-07-05T21:42:00.000-05:00

This is why I love Joss Whedon so much.

I'm off to check out the Equality Now website now.

Book Review: Big Girl Knits

2006-06-29T00:28:00.000-05:00

TITLE: Big Girl Knits

AUTHOR: Jillian Moreno and Amy R Singer

GENRE: Nonfiction -- Crafts -- Knitting

BACK COVER SUMMARY: Big Girl Knits features twenty-five unique patterns for women size 14 and up. From flattering pullovers and sexy tees to sleek skirts and fun accessories, this book is overflowing with options for knitting up an entire wardrobe to compliment your shapely shape.

Part knitting instruction, part fashion guide, Big Girl Knits is packed with expert advice to help you make the most of the three Bs: Boobs, Belly, and Butt. All the garments and accessories featured in the book are proportioned to fit and flatter a big girl’s body. Learn two fabulous adaptations to add to your knitting toolbox that you can apply to any sweater pattern. The book also features an easy-to-use measurement guide and tips to help you choose the right yarn, colors, and styles for you.

SHE WHO READ'S COMMENTS: This is an absolutely fabulous book -- a must-have for all plus-sized knitters out there! With the resurgence of knitting's popularity in recent years, there has been a corresponding resurgence in the publication of knitting books, much to my delight. There have been some lovely books put out, with patterns that I adore and want to knit for myself -- books that left me to gnash my teeth in frustration when I looked at the sizing information only to find that the author didn't write instructions beyond a size L. I am a large woman. I wear XXL clothing. My dress size is 22. I love to knit. I do not love to do the math to resize someone else's pattern. That's why I bought a pattern book instead of designing my own sweater -- to avoid the math!

Jillian Moreno and Amy R Singer feel my pain. They provide a wealth of information in the initial chapters at the beginning of the book about sizing and fashion -- those chapters are worth their weight in gold! They provide tips, hints, and advice on resizing too-small patterns for the full-figured and for the math-impaired! They tell you how to add waist-shaping to otherwise boxy and unflattering patterns and how to add short row darts to patterns that are too small in the bust (or other areas). Heck, they've even got a couple of pages of information about how to resize sock patterns to fit plus-sized feet! They also give invaluable advice on how to properly measure someone and they provide a handy-dandy, detailed chart to record your own measurements on.

The part that really got my motor running, however, was the fashion advice. They understand that not all plus-sized women look the same! For example, despite the fact that I am quite overweight, I have an hourglass figure (it's just a very ample hourglass!); my bust and hips are the same size, but my waist is several inches smaller. A sweater without shaping sized to fit my bust will hang like a box over my waist, disguising my curves: very unflattering. Waist shaping will help fix that problem. However, I have known women who wear the same dress size I do who are shaped differently -- someone with a round, apple-like figure (all stomach) or a pear-shaped figure (all hips and butt) will need a different cut and different shaping than I do to get a flattering result.

To accommodate differently-shaped knitters, the authors created the 3Bs -- icons on the top of the page to let you know if the pattern in question is good for a big bust, a big belly, a big butt, or any combination thereof. It makes selecting a pattern that much easier. They also provide each one of the Bs with a list of fashion dos and don'ts that will help me with my knitting, yes, but also with shopping. I can now go into Lane Bryant armed with specific information about what works for my body shape and what doesn't -- what kind of neckline, what kind of sleeves, waists, hems, etc. I'll never look at clothes the same way again!

As for the patterns themselves -- well, your milage may vary. I personally love almost every single pattern included in the book. I think they're gorgeous sweaters, designed to be flattering on full-figured women, and they range from the traditional to the funky. All of them are, in my opinion, fun to look at and seem like they would be interesting to knit. There were a few patterns I disliked (there always are), but they were usually not designed for my body type anyway. And then I looked at the reviews on Amazon.com. Many of the reviewers there said they thought the patterns were ugly. I guess that just goes to show the sheer diversity of opinion out there when it come to fashion and attractiveness.

This book has patterns for just about everything -- pullovers, cardigans, coats, skirts, tank tops, tee shirts, and accessories -- they've even got a pattern for yoga pants! I personally fell in love with the chapter on tanks and tees -- I want to knit every single one of those patterns! I started off with Bombshell (pictured at the left), one of the most flattering patterns in the entire book in my opinion. I love the square neckline, I adore the ribbing at the waist, I'm in love with the short row shaping in the bust (invisible to the naked eye, but makes such a huge difference to the fit!), and I fall into a swoon over the top-down construction -- everything about it makes me happy. I'll have to post pictures of my progress in this blog later.

One word of warning: for a book called "Big Girl Knits," the sizing did not go up as high as some may like. While I personally could fit all these patterns, they seem to go no higher than a size 24. Anyone larger than that will have to be prepared to whip out the old calculator and make their own adjustments. However, that was the only quibble I had with this book! Big Girl Knits is an essential addition to ample knitters everywhere!

books, knitting, knitting books

Inner European Quiz

2006-06-28T20:56:00.000-05:00

Your Inner European is Italian!

Passionate and colorful.
You show the world what culture really is.

Who's Your Inner European?

Session 416

2006-06-19T01:32:00.000-05:00

Has everyone else seen this already? I'm probably one of the last to know, as usual, but if you're a Firefly fan who somehow has not yet seen Session 416 yet, go check it out right now! It's a video clip (you'll need QuickTime to play it) of a series of interviews between a faceless man (we only see his back) and a young, pre-series River Tam.

Creepy. As. Hell.

I've still got shivers.

Here's the link: http://www.session416.com/.

More Quiz Stuff

2006-06-10T02:30:00.000-05:00

This is actually fairly accurate.

You Are 56% Open Minded

You are a very open minded person, but you're also well grounded.
Tolerant and flexible, you appreciate most lifestyles and viewpoints.
But you also know where you stand firm, and you can draw that line.
You're open to considering every possibility - but in the end, you stand true to yourself.

How Open Minded Are You?

The House Personality Test

2006-06-08T03:28:00.000-05:00

Dr. Lisa Cuddy

45% Eccentricity, 45% Confidence, 70% Kindness

Congratulations, you're Dr. Lisa Cuddy! You've got a healthy balance of confidence, kindness, and general oddity (because asking a person who works for you to stick a needle in your butt is odd, no matter how hot he may be). You're probably an excellent leader with a good sense of humor. You also probably have a vulnerable side that not many people know about.

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 40% on Eccentricity
You scored higher than 44% on Confidence
You scored higher than 84% on Kindness

Link: The House, MD Personality Test written by freedomdegrees on OkCupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

Instant Karma!

2006-05-30T04:36:00.000-05:00

This article made me laugh. It's not quite Darwin Awards material, but it still gave me that guilty/plesant/satisfied feeling that comes from reading about stupid people getting what they deserve. Ah, schadenfreude. (That's such a useful word, isn't it? I've never studied German, but it seems like a great language for creating words. Don't have a word for it? Fuse some other words together, and presto! New word! I guess English does that too, but it just seems cooler in German somehow.) I mean, yes, by all means keep your house vermin-free, but there's no need to be cruel about it.

Secrets and Lies? Um.

2006-05-03T21:48:00.000-05:00

I don't think I've mentioned it yet in this blog, but I've really been enjoying the new crime show Criminal Minds. I watch it every Wednesday, despite the fact that my family thinks I'm crazy for voluntarily watching a show about serial killers murdering people in horrible ways every week.

Anyway, I just watched tonight's episode.

First, spoiler space.

WARNING! THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE CRIMINAL MINDS EPISODE "SECRETS AND LIES." I tried to be as nonspecific as possible, but there are some spoilers nonetheless. Plus, if you haven't seen the ep, none of this will make any sense.

Read at your own risk.

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Was anyone else kind of disappointed with tonight's episode? It was obviously supposed to be all suspensful and full of twists and turns, but I had it figured out waaay in advance.

Okay, that sounded kind of arrogant.

What I mean to say, is that the only way this episode would surprise you is if you took everything you were seeing at face value. Was anyone really fooled by the "let's show a character something written on a sheet of paper but not let the audience see what it says -- hee hee, won't they be surprised when they find out!" trick? Even if you didn't know exactly what it did say, you knew for sure it didn't say what they said it said.

[Okay, despite the Friends episode vibe of that last sentence ("But now that we know they know we know they know..."), I think that made sense. I'm really, really tired at the moment, but hopefully, I'm still comprehensible. To go on:]

Audiences are more sophisticated than that. In another episode, something like that might have worked, but not in this one. I mean, Gideon himself told us not to trust the obvious: "CIA agents are the smartest liars I've ever met. Be smarter." Heck, the title of the episode told us that! In an episode called "Secrets and Lies," you think maybe I'll be on the lookout for, you know, secrets and lies? Maybe? If you weren't expecting the BAU to lie to the CIA, then you just weren't paying attention.

It's too bad. This is the first time I've ever really been let down by the plotline of a Criminal Minds ep.

On a more positive note, I absolutely loved the guest characters! The CIA agents, the informant on the run (Aaliyah?), her kids -- they all rocked! Such great character development in such a short amount of time! They were all well-drawn, vivid, interesting, and real; I want to see these guys again. Aaliyah was so gutsy and brave -- my heart just went out to her. I'm really glad they didn't kill her at the end! And the female CIA agent who pretended to be the mole at the end (Olivia? Or was that the other female CIA agent? Ack! I just finished watching the thing half an hour ago, and already I've forgotten everyone's names!) -- she's smart, she's fierce, she's in control -- I am in love with this character. She's someone I think the PTBs might actually bring back for another episode -- Morgan needs a love interest, and she's just perfect for him. I hope so! And the guy, the corpse, the CIA agent who was protecting Aaliyah but who got killed off during the teaser: how awesome was he? The way he packed information into that session with Gideon -- very sneaky. I liked it! I even liked Red Herring Guy; he, too, was really smart and quick on the uptake, able to think on his feet -- and his reaction when he found out the other female CIA agent had been murdered just broke my heart. He didn't overplay it; he hit just the right note of denial/grief. So sad! I was least taken with the boss guy; his Monologue O' Evil at the end was a bit cliched and rather unfortunately melodramatic and comic book supervillian-y ("You can't get away with this!" "I've already gotten away with it! Bwa-ha-ha!"), but you can't have everything.

Anyway. Those are my initial thoughts and reactions to this episode. What do the rest of you think? Comments? I'm curious.

Television, TV, Entertainment, criminal minds, Criminal Minds

Wikipedia Birthday Meme

2006-04-08T03:46:00.000-05:00

This meme has been all over the place in LiveJournal lately, so I thought I'd play along!

Go to Wikipedia and look up your birth day (excluding the year). List three events, three births and one death in your journal, including the year.

September 30

Three Events
1888: Jack the Ripper kills his third and fourth victims, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes.

1927: Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 60 home runs in a season

2005: The controversial drawings of Muhammad are printed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

Three Births
1631: William Stoughton, American judge at the Salem witch trials

1924: Truman Capote, American author

1961: Eric Stoltz, American actor

One Death
1955: James Dean, American actor (automobile accident)

Book Review: Conversations with the Fat Girl

2006-03-27T00:12:00.000-05:00

TITLE: Conversations with the Fat Girl

AUTHOR: Liza Palmer

GENRE: Fiction

BACK COVER SUMMARY: Maggie and Olivia have been best friends since they were in grade school. Both overweight, they befriended each other when no one else would. Now grown up, Maggie is still shopping in the euphemism-if-there-ever-was-one "women's section," while Olivia went and had gastric bypass surgery in search of the elusive size 4, the holy grail for women everywhere. So now Olivia's thin and blond and getting married to a handsome surgeon, and Maggie's the fat bridesmaid, again, in charge of planning "The Shower" and keeping Olivia's secret: that she's really a fat girl in a thin body. Ain't life grand?

With wit and wisdom, Liza Palmer gives voice to women everywhere who wish for just once that they could forget about their weight.

SHE WHO READS'S COMMENTS: This was a wonderful first novel. I loved the characters -- Maggie (the narrator) in particular was just very vivid and real to me. I identified with her quite strongly, to the point where I was recognizing some of my own character flaws in Maggie's personality. I hope I have the strength to do what Maggie did at the end of the novel and take charge of my own life and change those things about myself that I don't like.

This is, as the title suggests, a book about what it's like to life as a fat woman in modern-day America. It deals with issues of appearance, weight, and self-esteem. But it also is a novel about friendship -- about why people become friends, what friendship means, and what happens when a friendship ends. The death of Maggie and Olivia's friendship is just as sad and bitter and slow as the breakup of a marriage -- and just as poignant and important and life-altering to the people involved.

Conversations with the Fat Girl was funny, sad, uplifting, and depressing, but most of all, it was honest. This was a conversation I both and enjoyed and needed to have, and I will no doubt be rereading this book many times in the future.

books, book reviews, weight

Okay, I'm back!

2006-03-27T00:08:00.000-05:00

Life has calmed down for me, finally! (And this in spite of a case of food poisioning I picked up a couple of days ago -- which is what I get for eating at that particular diner. But they have such good french fries! And a very tasty feta cheese dip. Yum! But not worth being sick for. At least it was quick -- it hit me as hard as a mach truck, but moved on just as fast. A few hours later I felt perfectly fine again.)

Anyway, if I owe you an email, you can expect it in the new few days.

Glad to be back!

Treading Water

2006-03-20T22:07:00.000-05:00

I'm still here, folks, just really, really busy. I promise I'll start posting again in a couple of days. If you've emailed me and I haven't responded to you yet, I'm not ignoring you -- I just don't have time to turn around at the moment.

My schedule should lighten up soon. Sorry for the hiatus.

Nerd Quiz

2006-03-18T20:52:00.000-05:00

Bleargh

2006-03-07T15:16:00.000-05:00

The only problem with being a substitute teacher is that you get exposed to every stray germ and bug that passes through town. I feel really crappy right now. Regular blogging will resume once I get over whatever this is.

The Agony of Defeat

2006-02-27T09:15:00.000-05:00

Well, I didn't finish my Olympic sweater. I, like figure skating great Michelle Kwan, had to withdraw from the competition due to injury. (And that's one comparison I never thought I'd hear myself make. Me and Michelle Kwan -- yeah, we're like this. Seriously, though. I can't ice skate. I've only ever even been ice skating once in my life, and I spent the whole time teetering precariously on my skates, clinging to the wall. Athletic, I'm not.) My left hand and wrist started aching fairly continuously. I figured the low-grade throbbing was not a good sign, so I gave myself a couple of days off from knitting. I thought I still had a shot -- after all, the back is finished, the left front is finished, and the right front is halfway finished, and at this point I still had Saturday and Sunday left. I could finish the right front on Saturday, I reasoned, then sew the various parts together and do the button band on Sunday. Easy, right?

Wrong! I had forgotten I was knitting a cardigan, not a vest.

Pesky sleeves.

My wrist was still giving me the occasional twinge at this point (it feels fine now, in case you're wondering), so I gave the whole thing up as a bad job. Yet another dream of Olympic gold crushed!

knitting olympics, Knitting

Book Review: The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

2006-02-22T15:26:00.000-05:00

TITLE: The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

AUTHOR: Lauren Willig

GENRE: Adventure/Chick Lit/Spy Novel/Historical Romance/Comedy/And Others. (Meg Cabot's description of this book as "genre-bending" is quite appropriate.)

SUMMARY: Nothing goes right for Eloise. The one day she wears her new suede boots, it rains cats and dogs. When the subway stops short, she's always the one thrown into some stranger's lap. Plus, she's had more than her share of misfortune in the way of love. In fact, after she realizes romantic heroes are a thing of the past, she decides it's time for a fresh start.

Setting off for England, Eloise is determined to finish her dissertation on the dashing pair of spies, the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian. But what she discovers is something the finest historians have missed: the secret history of the Pink Carnation -- the most elusive spy of all time. As she works to unmask this obscure spy, Eloise stumbles across answers to all kinds of questions. How did the Pink Carnation save England from Napoleon? What became of the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian? And will Eloise Kelly escape her bad luck and find a living, breathing hero all her own?

SHE-WHO-READS' COMMENTS: The summary on the back cover of this book is rather misleading. It gives you the impression that this is a typical chick lit book set in modern day England with occasional references to dashing spies and romantic heros of the past. That is incorrect. The bulk of the action actually takes place in the past, focusing on the exploits of Amy and Richard in the time of the Napoleonic War, with modern-day grad student Eloise's chapters serving as a framing story. Eloise is the narrator. She speaks to us in the first person at the beginning and the end (and the occasional middle chapter interspersed throughout) of the book, but make no mistake, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation is unquestionably Amy and Richard's story. They're the characters who we care the most about and who we're the most involved in. Which is not to say that we don't care about Eloise, because we do, and I, for one, am looking forward to seeing how her relationship with Colin progresses over the course of this new series, but she's not the focus. In a sense, she's almost a plot device to involve us in the historical story. But not completely. After all, if that was all she was, then the author could have cut her out altogether and just told a straightforward historical romance.

Okay, that was clear as mud, wasn't it.

Anyway.

I found this book to be a great deal of fun, one of the most purely enjoyable books I've read in years. The sheer swashbuckling intrigue of the noble and romantic spy the Purple Gentian running around France foiling Napoleon’s evil plans was utterly charming, and it combined in an odd, quirky, but very appealing way with the Bridget Jones-esque tone of the modern-day chapters (although Eloise is far more intellectual than Bridget would ever dream of being) -- creating a frothy, satisfying confection of a novel, fascinating, surprising, and wonderful. The ensemble cast was a thoroughly delightful touch, adding a zany charm to moments that would otherwise have been hackneyed and cliched, familiar from a thousand other romance novels. This time, when the Pink Carnation makes a daring rescue at the end of the book, Richard's mother is along for the ride -- a welcome breath of originality.

The only flaw in this novel is, I'm sorry to say, a common one to mystery novels. Eloise serves as a stand-in for the reader; her reactions on her search for the identity of the Pink Carnation mirror the reader's reactions. Unfortunately, the reader is one step ahead of her the whole way through.

That one blemish was not enought to mar the whole, though, and I recommend this book highly for anyone in the mood for a fun, romantic, original, and light but still intelligent read!

books

Olympic Knitting Update

2006-02-20T20:14:00.000-05:00

The sweater is moving along nicely. I've finished the back already

although I still need to weave the ends in. The color in this photo isn't accurate. The true color is purple, not royal blue. I'm using two yarns, one a DK weight merino wool that's a true, rich purple, and one a suri alpaca that is fuzzy like mohair and is a more of a pastel lavender color. The two of them together creates a muted, but still rich color that I quite like.

I'm about one inch away from starting the armhole decreases on the left front panel. I might actually finish this thing on time! Nifty.

knitting, knitting olympics

Queen of Buffonia

2006-02-17T16:50:00.000-05:00

I got a perfect score on the How Big of a Buffy Fan Are You? quiz! Woo-hoo!

Um. Is it sad that I'm proud of that fact? Never mind.

We Are Amazed!

How Big of a Buffy Fan Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Go For the Bronze!

2006-02-13T21:59:00.000-05:00

I'm already behind on my Knitting Olympics sweater. I finally made a decision about what I was knitting (my very first thought, the Fuzzy Reception cardigan), only to realize that I didn't have the yarn I needed to knit it! So of course I ordered it from Knit Picks right away, but it didn't arrive until Monday. So I'm not terribly far behind -- I only missed a weekend's worth of knitting -- but still. Not the most auspicious start to this enterprize.

However, on the upside, I did find a nifty new button, courtesy of Jen La.

Go Sweater Team USA! Woo-hoo!

knitting olympics, knitting

Knit the Classics

2006-02-07T19:11:00.000-05:00

I found a new blog the other day that sounds like it could have been made for me: Knit the Classics, a combination book club/knitting group. They choose a book -- a classic, hence the title -- to read during the month (and there's a forum where you can discuss the current book), and everyone knits a project that fits in with the theme of the book somehow.

I think it sounds like a blast, and I can't wait to join in. They're currently reading Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. I'm off to try and track down a copy!

Puzzling

2006-01-25T15:50:00.000-05:00

Here's a link to a site I've been visiting a lot lately:

http://www.thepuzzleplayer.com

It's got a daily crossword puzzle, sudoko puzzle, word search, etc. The only thing to beware of is that it's an Australian site, so the clues are not in American English. For instance, the clue was "sugary treats," and the answer was 7 letters and began with an "L." I knew it couldn't be lollipops because there weren't enough letters, but I couldn't figure out what it was for the life of me. I had to use the cheats.

Turns out, it was "lollies." I felt pretty stupid once I realized that.

puzzles

More Olympic Contenders

2006-01-19T16:10:00.000-05:00

Instead of narrowing down my possible projects for the Knitting Olympics, I seem to be expanding them. I keep remembering more and more items that I looked at and said, "Cool. I want to knit that someday."

The most recent additions to the list:

1. Mariah from Knitty.com. This is a cardigan with cabled sleeves.

2. Arisaig, also from Knitty. It's a lace, wrap-around cardigan.

3. Lacey, ditto -- a mohair lace shrug.

4. Victorian Lace Shawl from Elann.com. This one's self-explanitory.

I think I'm getting carried away, here...

knitting olympics, knitting

Lowering the Level of Debate

2006-01-19T09:19:00.000-05:00

I found this link to a site spoofing the debate about intelligent design on Atuin's blog, and it gave me quite a giggle. It's even sillier than Brewster Rockit: Space Guy, if you can believe it.

This led me to look around for other links on the same topic, and I found this article from the New Yorker that made me just howl with laughter.

Yeah, I'm going to hell.

intelligent design, evolution, satire

A Low Taste for Bad Puns

2006-01-19T08:43:00.000-05:00

This made me giggle. I love Brewster Rockit: Space Guy. It's so silly! (Click on the comic strip below for a larger image.)

Knitting Olympics

2006-01-18T18:41:00.000-05:00

I was reading the Yarn Harlot's blog the other day, when I discovered she is hosting her very own Knitting Olympics. I was immediately intrigued. After all, as you can infer from the fact that I'm a two-time NaNoWriMo participant, incredibly huge projects with impossibly short deadlines are my idea of a good time.

Okay, sign me up!

The only question now is what am I going to make? There are two projects on KnitPicks.com that intrigue me. First is a cardigan, Fuzzy Reception. I don't know, though. It's always taken me at least two months to knit sweaters in the past. I don't know if it's humanly possible to knit one in two weeks! On the other hand, I finished the last sweater I knit about 7 months ago, and I almost finished that one in less than a month. I might have finished in three weeks, except I ran out of yarn. So I had to reorder and then wait for it to come in the mail. And -- here's the really embarrassing part of this story -- after it came in I realized I had underestimated the yardage I'd need again, ran out, reordered, and waited for it to come in. And Fuzzy Reception seems fairly simple. I might be able to do it in two weeks. Hmmm.

The other project I was considering was the Dreamy Throw. My cousin is going to be going away to college in Liverpool, England next year, and she'll need something warm to wrap up in, so I thought I'd make her an afghan for her birthday (which is in April, so there's plenty of time for me to change my mind between now and then!). I really like the Suri Dream yarn -- it's soft, not itchy at all, and light as a feather. I think it would make a beautiful afghan. The catch? If I have to knit 72 inches of anything in garter stitch, I think I might kill myself out of boredom.

Hmmm. Any suggestions?

Knitting, knitting olympics

Blonde At Heart, Apparently

2006-01-17T16:30:00.000-05:00

It's the best blonde joke ever.

Very silly and slightly irritating, but funny nonetheless.

Your Word of the Day

2006-01-13T09:22:00.000-05:00

It's time for Fun With Vocabulary!

Triskaidekaphobia: Fear of the number thirteen.

Paraskavedekatriaphobia: Fear of Friday the 13th.

Cool words, huh?

Superstitions are interesting. The human brain is a strange and wonderful thing. Fear of a number -- it's not a physical thing; it's not tangible. You can't touch it or hold it in your hand. How could it possibly hurt you? Fear of the number 13 is really just fear of an idea -- of what you think 13 represents. It's fear of a metaphor, when you get right down to it.

More proof that English literature can give us the power to control the world. My plot for world domination proceeds apace...

superstitions, friday the 13th, vocabulary

Grave Danger

2006-01-12T17:45:00.000-05:00

I just finished watching Season 5 of CSI (Netflix rules, btw), and I feel compelled to comment of the two part season finale, "Grave Danger." My reaction can be summed up in a single word:

Bleargh!

Admittedly, CSI is not for the faint of heart. They have produced some episodes which have haunted me, dealing as they do with extremely twisted and perverse crimes. But this...! This was seriously creepy.

If you haven't seen it yet, you should probably skip the rest of this post. (Brandy, I'm talking to you.) [Engaging spoiler font now!]

Being buried alive is creepy enough on its own. I can't think of anything more gut-wrenchingly, panic-inducingly, atavistically horrible. Oh, wait. I don't have to. The writers did it for me!

Were the fire ants really necessary? That's just mean.

Seriously, though. Fire ants are nasty, nasty critters. They may be rare in Nevada, but they sure ain't rare down here in Georgia. I can remember carelessly leaning against an outdoor, wooden wall at summer camp as a child and suddenly feeling several painful, burning stings. (They don't call them fire ants for nothing!) The wall was infested with 'em. If I'd looked at it first, I'd have seen them.

Fire ant bites hurt. They have an awful lot of venom for such tiny creatures. Being bitten by fire ants is no fun. And to be trapped in a tiny, claustrophobic space, unable to move, while they crawl all over you...

Thanks, CSI. I really needed those nightmares. I was getting too much sleep as it is. [/sarcasm]

[/spoiler font]

If you want to read the above, just click and drag your mouse over it to highlight it.

Have you all heard about Google Video or am I behind the times? I have to say, it seems cool as all getout. And they have CSI! That's just neat.

Television, TV, CSI

Fashion Trends I Just Don't Get

2006-01-12T13:39:00.000-05:00

I recently landed a long-term subbing job at the local high school, and I've noticed a fashion trend among high school girls that I feel compelled to comment on.

Mukluks.

Honestly. Mukluks. You know, the big boots trimmed in fur with long, long laces with fur pom-poms on the end. Like so:

All I can say is, I really don't get teenage girls -- and this despite the fact I used to be one. I mean, mukluks? In Georgia? Hunh?

Let me repeat that. I live in Georgia. Yes, it's January, but even so, it just doesn't get that cold here. For example, right now it's 65°F and sunny. It's a gorgeous day, the kind of day you want to spend having a picnic in the park. And there are girls wearing mukluks. Why? Can anyone explain this to me? Don't their feet get hot?

Sheesh! Kids today!

(And suddenly I feel very, very old.)

fashion, teenagers

New Year, New Blog Entry

2006-01-11T13:16:00.000-05:00

Another year has come and gone, and I have some New Year's Resolutions to confess. I'm of two minds about resolutions, generally. On the one hand, I feel like resolutions are kind of pointless -- if we want to improve ourselves, shouldn't we be doing so all the time? Why should January be special? Also, resolutions are just another way of setting ourselves up for failure -- after all, if the change we want to make were something we were actually going to do, we would already be doing it!

On the other hand, I like the idea of having a fresh start. Most of us -- myself included -- are not very self-contemplative, so we need some kind of external reason to examine ourselves and our behavior -- like New Year's Resolutions, for example.

So. This year I'm only makine one resolution, as opposed to years past, when I've made anywhere from 5 to 15 and kept none of them.

Are you ready? Drum roll, please.

My New Year's Resolution is...

...to exercise more! Ta-dah

Um. Yeah. Not very exciting, is it? Everyone makes that exact same resolution every year. New Year's Resolutions are how gyms stay in business.

Anyway. In years past, I had always resolved to loose weight -- and I never did. This year, I'm going to exercise more. It's a subtle difference, but an important. I'm going to love my body this year, no matter what shape or size -- and part of loving my body is taking care of my body. So, exercise. 15 minutes a day, 3 days a week. A modest goal, but one I think I can actually meet! And I'll increase my goal during the year (assuming I keep it up, of course).

So, go me! Resolution girl! Woo-hoo!

I'll check in again every week, if you all are interested.

resolutions

Helpful Site for Writers

2005-10-14T14:26:00.000-05:00

I found a website (pointed out to me by the ever-lovely A'tuin) the other day called Rate Your Writing that I really like. It's a site for writers to get helpful feedback on their stories/poems/etc -- you post your work to the site, where it is read by other site members, who then comment on it. You, in turn, comment on other writers' work. It's a great way for writers to help writers improve their work!

Slip-Sliding Away

2005-10-06T16:54:00.000-05:00

File this under Things That Make You Feel Like a Moron:

It rained today. A lot. A torrential downpour in the morning that tapered off to a steady drizzle/wet mist in the air by the afternoon.

I had some time to kill before work, so I headed to the library, thinking I could check my email and maybe surf the net a little.

The walkway leading to the main doors of the library is covered by a breezeway; it's open on one side to the elements. On one side: the building. On the other side: a lawn. Grass. Dirt. Therefore, the sidewalk on the open side of the breezeway was covered with a fine coating of fresh, very damp mud.

I trust you all see where I'm going with this.

I, of course, stepped right in the mud and lost my balance. My feet just slid right out from under me and I landed -- thud! -- flat on my ass. In front of a party of interested onlookers, no less. What a great way to start the day!

I wasn't hurt, but I felt really stupid. Falling down in public makes everyone feel stupid, but everyone has also done it at one point or another, right? So no one feels too stupid.

What really takes the cake, though, is that I did it again on my way out of the building half an hour later! I felt like I had a scarlet M (for "moron," natch) stitched to my chest for the rest of the day.

I'm just glad I didn't do that at work. I was subbing at a middle school today, and that's just the sort of thing that 6th graders find hilarious.

Serenity

2005-09-20T18:35:00.000-05:00

I finally saw a commerical for this movie on TV the other day. I'm so excited; I can't wait for this to come out! I adored the TV series, and I was just thrilled when I found out they were making a Firefly movie. It looks like it's going to be Simon-and-River-centric, which makes sense, as that was the most obvious plot thread that was left dangling by the show's abrupt cancellation. Simon and River were two of my favorite characters, so you can see why I'm so psyched!

I wonder, though -- if you weren't a fan of the show, would that commerical make you want to see the movie? I'm not sure it would. Would you even have any idea what the movie was going to be about if you were unfamiliar with the show? I think the advertising department is falling down on their job of drawing viewers to see this flick; that commerical did not give you an accurate feel for the series.

I desperately want this movie to be a huge hit, and to spawn several sequels and eventually a second television series. That would just make my day. If you've never seen Firefly, rush to your local video store and rent the DVDs. I promise you'll love it!

And Serenity is coming out on September 30 -- my birthday. What a lovely birthday gift! Thanks, Joss!

Book Review: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

2005-09-12T11:40:00.000-05:00

TITLE: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

AUTHOR: Robert Heinlen

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

SUMMARY: It is a tale of revolution, of the rebellion of a former penal colony on the Moon against its masters on the Earth. It is a tale of a culture whose family structures are based on the presence of two men for every woman, leading to novel forms of marriage and family. It is the story of the disparate people—a computer technician, a vigorous young female agitator, and an elderly academic—who become the movement's leaders, and of Mike, the supercomputer whose sentience is known only to the revolt's inner circle, who for reasons of his own is committed to the revolution's ultimate success.

SHE-WHO-READS'S COMMENTS: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is an excellent novel, action-packed, exciting, and deftly-plotted, with fascinating, complex characters and some interesting science-fictional ideas. I also enjoyed reading about Luna's culture; I thought the marriage customs were particularly interesting.

One thing I noticed right off was the way the Loonies use language differently than people from earth do. In fact, it threw me at first -- I couldn't figure out what was going on or why the language was so rough and unpolished and choppy. Eventually, though, I found the rhythm of it and settled in just fine -- I didn't even notice it after a while. It makes sense; Luna started off as a penal colony and has since developed completely seperate from Earth and relatively unmolested. Of course they would have their own dialect and speech patterns! To my mind, their language seems to be as efficent as possible. They trimmed away any unnecessary deadwood -- they don't use articles, for example, and very few personal pronouns, and they seem to prefer to use fragments to complete sentences. Only the essentials remain, much the same as the original colonists/prisoners had to start their lives over with only the bare essentials and sometimes not even that.

This book was written about forty years ago, and it has stood the test of time quite well, but there are some aspects of it that do seem rather dated. For example, the idea behind the character of Mike -- the computer that is connected to everything and has "woken up" or become alive -- is one that is very familiar to modern readers, one that we accept easily. Apparently, we accept it much more easily than Heinlen expected his readers in 1965 to accept it, because he spends more time explaining it than he really needs to. When Mannie, the narrator, tells Wyoh about Mike and introduces them via a telephone conversation, she is shocked that Mike already knows what she looks like. He looked up her medical records and found a picture of her immediately after being introduced to her. To modern readers familiar with the internet, this is an obvious step and hardly shocking; we expect it, and Wyoh's shock and apparent need to have every detail and implication of Mike's "life" spelled out for her makes her seem a little bit stupid to us. If we don't remember that Heinlen is using Wyoh to explain things to his 1965 audience that his 2005 audience intuitively understands, then we'll get a little frustrated with Wyoh's denseness.

All in all, though, this is a novel about politics -- a very complex, deep, intellectual and sophisticated look at politics, government, revolution and war. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has a very definite world-view and political philosophy, some of which I agreed with, and some of which I really, really didn't. My agreement (or lack thereof) with the politics espoused in this book didn't seem to have much bearing on my enjoyment of it. This is a book that requires the reader to think. And that, I think, is why I loved it so much.

There is more to say about this book, but I think I'm going to stop here for now. Here's a link to an interesting article by Adam Roberts on the book, if you'd care to read more.

books, science fiction

Knitting Pictures

2005-09-09T16:05:00.000-05:00

I finally got some digital pictures of my latest knitting works-in-progress, if you'd care to see them! Just click on the thumbnails to see the full photo.

The first project I'm working on is a lace wrap. I'm using the Estonian Garden pattern from Fiber Trends; the yarn is Jaggerspun Zephyr, a lace-weight yarn that's 50% merino wool and 50% tussah silk. I've never actually knit using a lace-weight yarn before -- man, that stuff is tiny!

But it looks good, if I do say so myself:

And a close-up:

The second project I'm working on is an oversized cabled shrug. The pattern is from the latest issue of Interweave Knits magazine, and the yarn is Knit Picks Merino Style, doubled. Unfortunately, I chose to use black, which means that it did not show up well in the photograph; it looks rather like a big black blob.

And a close-up of the blob:

The last project is a seed stitch shawl. I'm using two yarns, a mohair (Laines du Nord Kiddy Print) and a ribbon (Laines du Nord Eros) held together. I love the colors in this one, the beautiful jewel-toned blues and greens. Lovely!

Knitting

I'm back!

2005-09-06T14:57:00.000-05:00

And I had a very nice time at the beach. It was very relaxing, filled with sun, surf, and sand; I've even got a bit of a tan now! The only problem -- on our last day there, a largeish wave clobbered me and knocked my glasses off my face. I couldn't find them afterwards. There's probably a fish swimming around somewhere with them on.

That's the sort of thing that just makes you feel stupid, because it's not like you couldn't see it coming. As I got in the water, I thought to myself, Hmmm. It's rougher than usual out here. I should probably take my glasses off. But I didn't. Why? Because right after that, I thought, Nah. That'll never happen.

And of course it did.

So now I have to go back to my regular eye doctor (as opposed to my retina specialist) and get a new pair of glasses. Well, I needed a new prescription anyway, so it's not a total loss.

Blog Silence!

2005-09-01T15:17:00.000-05:00

I'm going out of town for Labor Day weekend, and my internet access will be erratic. I probably won't post anything here for a few days -- but I promise it will only be days this time, not months.

On Severus Snape

2005-09-01T14:13:00.000-05:00

Finally! After a delay of one day, here is my promised post on Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince!

WARNING!!! This post contains spoilers for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince! If you have not read HBP, then DO NOT read this post! Believe me, you don't want to be spoiled for this one!

To prevent accidental spoiling, I'm going to write this entry in white text. To read it, you'll have to highlight with your mouse. Click and drag your mouse over the area you want to read. It should show up.

There were two big shockers in HBP -- Dumbledore's death, and Snape's betrayal of him. Now, to be honest, I was expecting Dumbledore to die, although I thought it would happen in book 7. The narrative structure simply demanded it. Otherwise the dramatic tension simply isn't high enough. I mean, yes, Voldemort's evil. Check. We're all on board with that. We've known that since book 1, and it was reinforced at the end of GoF, when he came back from the dead. And Harry is going to have to fight him -- we've known that all along too, and it was brought home once again at the end of OotP, when we learned about the prophecy. So to simply have Harry fight Voldemort in the last book of the series -- well, okay. We've been expecting that. What's new?

But to have Harry fight Voldemort without Dumbledore's help...ahhh. Therein lies some serious drama. Suddenly, the stakes have been raised in a big way. Will Harry be able to do it? He's not ready -- we know it and, what's worse, he knows it. But, ready or not, he has to face Voldemort alone. And he has to win.

J. K. Rowling is setting up a real page-turner, here!

So, like I said, Dumbledore's death surprised me, but it didn't shock me. It was how he died that had me falling out of my chair in stunned disbelief.

Snape killed him. He murdered him!

I'm still in denial.

In fact, I plan to stay in denial until and unless J. K. forces me out of it in Book 7 -- but I don't think she will. And here's why:

Snape is not evil. Period.

I don't care what you say. He's not evil!

Yeah, he told Bellatrix Lestrange and Narcissa Malfoy that he was secretly loyal to Voldemort all along. So what? One is a Death Eater, and the other is a Death Eater's wife. What do you expect him to say to them? He's a spy after all. He has to maintain his cover.

It simply doesn't make any sense otherwise. Why would he work at Hogwarts and spend all that time with Harry so easily within his grasp and not kill him? He so obviously hates Harry. He hates Harry with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns, but he still goes out of his way to protect him. Is that something an evil person would do?

So he claimed that, with Voldemort dead, there was no reason to risk his sanctuary by murdering Harry, but...yeah, okay, that actually makes a lot of sense. Damn it. But, no, wait -- there's a difference between not murdering someone and actively protecting someone. How many times has Snape saved Harry's life now? The incident with the jinxed broom in Sorcerer's Stone comes to mind. Why try to keep Harry in the air? All he had to do was sit back. Quirrel would have knocked Harry off the broom, and that would have been that. But he didn't. Hah!

Here's what I think happened:

Snape was trying to convince Bellatrix to trust him so that he could get in good with the Death Eaters again -- but in order to be of use to Dumbledore, to gather intelligence that the Order of the Phoenix could use. He pretended that he knew what Narcissa was talking about when she mentioned the plan so that he could find out what the plan was. In reality, he had no clue. When he took the Unbreakable Vow to accomplish Draco's task if Draco couldn't, he really didn't know what he was agreeing to. I think he thought Draco was supposed to kill Harry -- or, more precisely, deliver Harry to Voldemort. After all, kidnapping Harry is something that Draco might reasonably be expected to accomplish -- it would be difficult (hence Narcissa's worry), but possible. But to expect Draco to murder Dumbledore -- well, you'd have to be a lunatic to think he had even a remote chance.

Which, of course, Voldemort is.

I think Snape thought Draco would kidnap Harry and deliver him to Voldemort, Snape would rescue Harry, and everything would continue on its merry way. He must have been so horrified when he discovered what he had really sworn to do. I imagine he told Dumbledore about it right away, and that Dumbledore and Snape spent all of HBP frantically trying to find a way out of it. When they weren't able to succeed -- well. Read the scene where Snape kills Dumbledore again, but this time read it assuming Snape really doesn't want to murder him but is being forced to by the spell/oath. It plays differently, doesn't it. The awful, twisted expression on Snape's face as he casts the Killing Curse -- he hated himself and what he was doing, not Dumbledore.

So, if my theory is correct, why didn't Snape go to McGonnagle afterwards and explain all of this?

After the deed was done, there was no point for Snape to confess. In fact, it would have been a waste. Here was iron-clad proof of his loyalty to Voldemort, a foolproof ticket into the inner circle! The Death Eaters have to trust him now. He killed Dumbledore! None of them has done as much. Imagine the things he could learn, the information he could gather, the evil plans he could sabotage! He would have to be a fool not to take advantage of the situation. And Severus Snape, no matter how grief-stricken or emotionally overwrought, is no fool.

Anyway. That's my theory, and I will believe it fervently until we get definitive proof one way or another in the next book.

What do you think? Agree? Disagree? See any holes? Please leave a comment and point them out!

books

Hurricane Relief

2005-09-01T13:31:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted anything on Katrina yet simply because I couldn't think of a single constructive thing to say. The devestation caused by that storm is so horrific...I can't come up with words for it. I figured private prayers and good wishes would do more good than inarticulate internet sympathies.

Well, I found a good reason to write on the subject: Liberal Blogs for Hurricane Relief. Let's donate whatever we can afford to. Hopefully, we can help contribute to some real, substantial help for the people of New Orleans, Mississippi, and all of Katrina's victims.

Blogday 2005!

2005-08-31T15:19:00.000-05:00

I was just browsing the Technorati website, and I discovered that today, August 31, is apparently Blogday!

Huh, I said. What's blogday?

Here's the answer:

BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to their blog visitors.

With the goal in mind, on this day every blogger will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs. In this way, all Blog web surfers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, previously unknown blogs.

Pretty neat, huh?

I immediately started surfing the web in search of new blogs to recommend. Here are the 5 I came up with:

Rullsenberg Rules: Much discussion of my favorite television show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as pop culture in general. How can I not like this blog?

Alas (a blog): a blog with multiple authors. Contains all kinds of interesting posts on various social issues. Definite liberal tone, but since I'm a big ol' lefty myself, I like that kind of thing.

Losing the Cow: An articulate, funny blog dealing with weight loss and size issues. Even if you don't struggle with your weight, you should give this a read. Unfortunately, it hasn't been updated in a while.

The Liberal Avenger: I love this title!

Feministe: Two feminists and their blog.

And one extra:

And She Knits Too: A cool knitting blog.

I think many of these blogs aren't "new" to anyone but me, but what can I say? I'm just a big dork that way.

Want to participate? Here are the rules:

Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting.
Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending them as part of BlogDay 2005.
Write a short description of the Blogs and place a link to the recommended Blogs
Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st) and
Add the BlogDay tag using this link: http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2005 and a link to the BlogDay web site at http://www.blogday.org .

Musings on Fahrenheit 451

2005-08-31T09:34:00.000-05:00

Well, instead of the promised post on Half-Blood Prince and Snape, I'm writing about Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 -- but, hey! At least it's book-related.

Somehow, I have gotten through life as an English major, book geek, and a science-fiction nerd without ever having read this book. I vaguely remember picking it up in high-school and not getting very far with it. It was an interesting premise, but far too depressing for my tastes at the time.

Fast-forward 15 years later. I just bought a copy the other day to register at BookCrossing for their Banned Books Month release challenge. The ALA celebrates Banned Books Week in September, so one BXer challenged us to wild release books that had at one point or another been banned in this country during the entire month. Fahrenheit 451 fits the bill -- an irony that is not lost on anyone, I trust. (Everyone knows Fahrenheit 451 is about the evils of censorship and banning books, right? The title refers to the temperature at which paper burns.)

I didn't intend to start reading it. I really didn't. Somehow it seduced me into it. I glanced at the first page and before I knew it, it was 1:00 in the morning and I was halfway through with the thing. It's really good! No wonder it's a modern classic. Montag's inner emotional and moral journey from a character who burns books gleefully and with a smile on his face to someone who is willing to risk his career, his marriage, his house, and eventually his life for the sake of books is extremely compelling. That this man, product of a culture that devalues reading and values easy, thoughtless entertainments designed to deaden the mind and prevent serious thought, could come to find literature so essential that he would kill for it...! Something about that really spoke to me.

It raises the question: why? What is it about books, about poetry, about literature that is so essential to us? There is no doubt in my mind that it is essential, if not for all individuals (although I find it hard to imagine life without books, I know there are some people who don't read for pleasure, bizzare as that seems to me), then for society. Why should that be? Books don't contain any hard-and-fast answers to all of life's questions. They might contain great philosophical Truths, but only subjectively so -- there will always be someone who will argue and disagree with whatever someone else says. In fact, as Captain Beatty, the evil fire chief, points out, no two books agree with each other. What one says, another contradicts. So what, then, is their allure? What is it that made Mildred's silly friend start to weep when Montag read the poem "Dover Beach" aloud to her? Where does the power of literature come from?

I think the reason that books are so important to our lives and to the health of our society -- of any society -- is not because they give us answers, but because they make us ask the questions. Books -- good books, the books that stay with you for years after you read them, the books that change your view of the world or your way of thinking -- aren't easy. They aren't facile. They aren't about surface; they're about depth. They are, quite literally, thought-provoking. They require complexity of thought. They require effort on the part of the reader. You get out of a book what you put into the reading of it, and therefore books satisfy in a way that other types of entertainment do not.

And they aren't mass-produced. They are individual, unique, gloriously singular. They are each an island, much-needed refuges from an increasingly homogenous culture.

I'm glad I read Fahrenheit 451, even if the ending was rather bleak. It challenged me and made me think, stimulated me intellectually. We could all do with a bit of intellectual stimulation now and then; it makes life much more fulfilling.

I'm really interested in what other people might have to say on this topic. Please share your thoughts; post a comment! I'd like to know what you think.

Some links that might be of interest:

The Wikipedia entry on Fahrenheit 451
Forbidden Library, a site about banned books and why they were challenged.
ALA's Banned Books Week page

books

Is Snape...Or Isn't He?

2005-08-30T15:40:00.000-05:00

To all you Harry Potter fans out there, check out today's Get Fuzzy comic strip:

http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/getfuzzy/archive/getfuzzy-20050830.html

I shall be posting an entry on that very topic tomorrow!

Well, let me modify that a little...

2005-08-30T15:34:00.000-05:00

BookWired.com is a potentially cool book review site. It's new, so it doesn't have a huge membership yet. I think once more people join, it will start to have more interesting, meaningful reviews.

Cool Book Review Site

2005-08-28T17:32:00.000-05:00

I just discovered a nifty new site called BookWired. It's a place for book lovers to congregate and chat and post book reviews. Check it out!

Knitting in Public

2005-08-26T14:33:00.000-05:00

I was at the eye doctor's the other day. I have to say, of all the unplesant waiting room experiences I've ever had, the eye doctor's waiting room is the worst. It's got all the bad qualities of waiting rooms everywhere -- overcrowding, a lack of comfortable places to sit, obsolete magazines that I wouldn't want to read even if they were brand new, and incredibly long waits -- plus the knowledge that as soon as they call you back there, the nurses are going to dilate both of your eyes, rendering it impossible to read. And then, to add insult to injury, there will be even more waiting.

The eye doctor's waiting room may not be quite the ninth circle of hell, but it's pretty darn close.

Knowing about the dilation, I didn't even bother to bring my old doctor's appointment standby (ie, a good book) with me. But I didn't want to be trapped there with nothing to do, so I brought my knitting with me.

Knitting in public is an interesting experience, not unlike being on the stage. As soon as I took out my needles, I instantly became the official Waiting Room Entertainment. Heads turned, curious stares ensued, and conversations started. "Look at her!" "What's she doing?" "I always wanted to learn how to knit..." "Remember Cousin Betty? She used to crochet." "I wonder what she's making?"

All I needed was a spotlight.

I didn't let it bother me though. I kept my head down and pretended like I couldn't hear all the comments, and just kept knitting away. I mean, hey. It's a waiting room. Any topic of conversation is better than reading another article about the cast of Friends or the best way to catch trout.

Besides, I knew in my heart that they were all desperately wishing that they had brought some knitting with them, too.

Knitting. It's portable and it allows you to be the center of attention. What else could you want in a hobby?

Knitting

The Five Questions Game

2005-08-23T15:21:00.000-05:00

I first found this on my friend A'Tuin's blog. Basically, someone asked her 5 questions, which she answered. Then I emailed her and asked if I could play, and she emailed me back 5 questions of my very own! (Then I lost my internet access and fell of the face of the blogosphere.) Anyway, I'm answering them now -- and if you out there in cyberland want to play too, just leave a comment (or email me, if you prefer), and I'll send you 5 questions. And so on, and so on...

Rules to be included if you want to play:
1)Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2)I will respond; I'll ask you five questions.
3)You'll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4)You'll include this explanation.

1)You seem to take a lot of quizes. Do you set much stock in how you pass them? What I mean is--is it is important that to you that you are a grammar goddess and so on?

No, I set no stock in them whatsoever. I mean, it's an internet quiz, not the Oracle of Delphii. How much can the automated quiz possibly learn about you from your answers to a few pre-set, multiple-choice questions? Not much, I think. I just think they're a fun way to kill a little time. (Plus they'll give me a blog entry when I can't come up with anything original or interesting on my own.)

That said, ocassionally I'll find a quiz that brings out my hidden competitive streak. I really wanted to get all the grammar questions correct, for example. I'm still a little irked I got a few of them wrong. But that's just me being a big nerdy doofus. For the most part, I don't take them too seriously!

2)I know that you have enjoyed the book about the Appalachian Trail. Now, would you actually hike the trail? If so, would you start in the North or the South, and why?

Dear God, no! I prefer to get my exercise vicariously, thank you very much.

3)Unoriginal, but what is the most difficult project you have knitted?
Hmmm. Well, in terms of personal achievement, I guess I would have to say the very first sweater I ever made. It was a very simple pattern -- a cardigan with garter stitch trim (from the Knitter's Stash book) -- but I was a pretty new knitter, and I wasn't sure I could do it at first. But I did, and I was very proud of myself. It came out looking fairly good, if I do say so myself! I ended up giving it to my aunt for Christmas.

However, in terms of actual difficulty, I would have to say the Estonian Garden lace wrap I'm currently in the process of knitting. I've knitted lace before, but never with actual laceweight yarn. It's so tiny! I'll try and get a picture up soon (I say to my friend with the spiffy new digital camera, hint hint).

4)As a townie in a college town, how do you feel about the university in general, football specifically?

In general, I'm all for the university. It brings a lot of cultural diversity to the town itself, as well as provides a venue for a lot of different, fun cultural activities (ie, the art museam, free classical music concerts in the Music School, plays put on by the Drama Dept., etc). I like the youthful energy it gives. However, I usually end up cursing its name in the fall when the semester is just starting up. All those students back in town, taking up all the good parking spaces! And all those clueless freshmen who drive like maniacs -- or, even worse, lost maniacs! None of them have any idea where they're going, which make the roads around campus a bit tricky to navigate.

As for football -- forget about it! I never went to a game while I was actually in college; I have no intention of starting now. And, again, it completely screws up the traffic. All those returning alumni! Sheesh! During home games (especially the big ones, like homecoming), you basically can't leave your house. I hate it. Passionately.

5)Do you have an internal editor when you are writing in your blog, or do you let it all hang out? Examples, please of specific issues if you do have an internal editor.

Yes, I do have an internal editor. Not in the sense of editing what I write so much as how I write. I try to write with an awareness of my audience, however minimal!

It's more evident in some posts than others, but I do my best to use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation in all my posts. It makes the reading experience so much more pleasant! I also try to maintain a light, humorous tone in my entries -- again, some days I have more energy and work harder at this than others. Sometimes I just write it and post it with very little editing; other times I write and rewrite and re-rewrite until I'm satisfied. It depends on my mood, really.

Here's a few more ways to waste time...

2005-08-20T01:38:00.000-05:00

Play Who Wants to Be a Ringbearer -- LotR trivia in a familiar gameshow format. Hee!

Or try playing Chain Reaction, an oddly-addicting game that should be a lot easier than it is...or maybe I'm just tired...

'Cause it's fun to chop complex philosophy up into little bitty quizzy chunks!

2005-08-19T23:48:00.000-05:00

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis.

Cultural Creative

75%

Postmodernist

75%

Romanticist

50%

Modernist

50%

Idealist

44%

Existentialist

44%

Materialist

19%

Fundamentalist

19%

What is Your World View? (updated)
created with QuizFarm.com

Pop-less

2005-08-15T22:09:00.000-05:00

You know, getting the hang of this blogging thing again after many months away? Not so easy. When I first stopped updating, I kept getting ideas for entries. They popped into my head like...um...popping things. (Popcorn, maybe? Yeah, okay, that works.) I'd be walking down the street and get a sudden and profound insight into the meaning of life...or just about how much I hate low-rise jeans...and, pop! Blog entry! And now I can't remember a single one of those wonderful, wonderful ideas.

::sigh::

Blogger's block? Serves me right. See, this is what happens when you don't write -- those muscles atrophy.

I'm Still Here!

2005-08-08T18:08:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to let you all know what's up with me and the whole not updating in 4 months thing. Basically, it boils down to internet access -- I don't have it at home anymore. I'm working on finding a new ISP, but in the meantime I'm updating from the public library.

I am updating again, though! So, yay!

Peace Fleece!

2005-04-15T22:27:00.000-05:00

I was browsing various knitting sites on the internet the other day, when I stumbled across Peace Fleece and fell in love. What a delightful idea, combining two beautiful things -- yarn and social change -- to make something truly wonderful. Here's a paragraph taken from their site:

The Peace Fleece office is a barn on a sheep farm in Maine. Peter Hagerty and his wife Marty Tracy started buying wool from the Soviet Union back in 1985 in hopes that through trade they could help diffuse the threat of nuclear war. Since then they have worked with shepherds in Russia, Kyrgyzia, Israel and the West Bank, as well as in Montana, Ohio, Texas and Maine. By working with people who tend livestock every day, they hope to find a common ground that slowly leads to mutual understanding and economic interdependence.

How can you not adore a yarn company like that?

I started browsing through their catalogue, intrigued by the notion that, by purchasing yarn, I could help create world peace, but not really intending to buy anything. After all, I work in a yarn store. I'm surrounded by yarn all day. The last thing I need in my life is even more woollen temptation.

And then I found this: Baghdad Blue yarn. In response to the war in Iraq, Peace Fleece is donating all the proceeds from the sale of this yarn to charities like Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salaam, which the website describes as "an intentional community in Israel where Palestinian and Israeli families live together every day struggling with the realities of war and peace." Well, okay. How can you resist that? I had to buy this yarn. It was practically my duty -- I could do my part to bring peace to the Middle East by making this purchase! So I whipped out my credit card and bought some.

Plus, it was really pretty.

It came in the mail today, and it is indeed really, really pretty. The photograph doesn't do it justice. It's a gorgeous, rich, intense blue with occasional flecks of purple, creating an absolutely lovely tweedy effect. It feels great to the touch, and it has that smell -- you knitters out there know what I mean -- that pleasant, sheepy, "yes, this yarn came from a real, live animal" smell to it. I'm delighted with it.

I have no idea what I'm going to make with it, but that doesn't matter. I'm delighted with it just the same! Maybe I'll just take it out and admire it once in a while before returing it to its home in my stash. I don't even think I want to make anything out of it right away. After all, if I did that, then I wouldn't have any more yarn.

Who, me? Obsessed? Nah!

My One-Year BookCrossing Anniversary

2005-04-14T00:07:00.000-05:00

I discovered BookCrossing one year ago this month, and in celebration, I'm giving away books! If either of the books below look interesting, just email me your mailing address, and I'll send you the book! Hopefully, after you've read it, you'll go to the BookCrossing website and journal it (that is, write a short note telling us what you thought of the book), and then pass it on to someone else to read (who then will hopefully do the same, etc, etc...). But that's not required.

Anyway, the books!

A Very Long Engagement by Sebastien Japrisot.

The Outstretched Shadow by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory

Keep checking back here, as I'll probably add more to this list in a few days.

A Bit of Fashion Advice

2005-04-09T22:15:00.000-05:00

I hate low-rise jeans. I think they are an abomination upon the face of the earth, and whoever invented them should be taken out and shot. I mean, any pair of pants that accentuates the widest part of a woman's hips and causes otherwise invisible rolls of fat to bulge out over the waistband is just a bad idea. If you are asking yourself if you should buy a pair of low-rise jeans, the answer, in my opinion, should always be no.

That said, it appears that it is possible to commit an even worse fashion faux pas than simply wearing low-rise jeans in the first place. I found this out when I ran into a casual accquantance of mine today. Anyway, my fashion advice? Well, let me put it to you this way:

If, when you bend over, I can tell you've got a pimple on your ass, then your low-rise jeans are TOO LOW. Buy a pair of pants that fit. Sheesh.

My Mistakes

2005-04-04T15:42:00.000-05:00

This entry contains spoilers for the "Commonly Confused Words" quiz. (Please check out my previous post if this is the first you've heard of it!) If you want to take the quiz yourself, please do so before reading this entry.

ADDING SPOILER SPACE

Okay. Here are all the questions I got wrong. You know. In case you care.

* I confused stationary (which means "not moving, fixed, standing still") with stationery (which means "writing materials"). Yeah. I suck at spelling. Always have. Always will.

* I confused hanged (the past tense of hang, meaning to suspend by the neck until dead) with hung (the past tense of hang, meaning to fasten from above with no support from below). I'm actually glad to finally know the difference between these two. I knew there was a difference, but I wasn't sure which meant what.

* I got the following question wrong:

33. Please stay __________
a. a while
b. awhile
c. for a while
d. All of the above
The correct answer is All of the above.
Points: a=1, b=1, c=1, d=3
Definitions:
awhile - adv. for a short time
while - n. a period of time
Explanation:
Because the word awhile is an adverb, it cannot be used in a prepositional phrase. Since while is a noun, it can be used with or without the preposition for. Therefore, all three are correct.
Resource(s):
http://www.wsu.edu/%7Ebrians/errors/awhile.html

I chose A instead of D.

I'm sorry. No matter what anyone says, I will never accept awhile as an actual word. That's just wrong. It is two words: a while. I defy all you who say "awhile"! Nyah nyah nyah!

* I confused further (used when referring to nonphysical, metaphorical advancement) and farther (used when referring to physical distance). I can't believe I did that! I'm kicking myself in the head for this one.

I Am A Grammar Goddess!

2005-04-04T15:40:00.000-05:00

Well, sort of.

I took the Commonly Confused Words Test, and I scored 100% on both beginner and intermediate questions, 93% on advanced questions, and a measly 73% on expert questions. I feel personally affronted by that last score. I'm off to check the answer key and see what I got wrong!

Advanced
You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 73% Expert! You have an extremely good understanding of beginner, intermediate, and advanced level commonly confused English words, getting at least 75% of each of these three levels' questions correct. This is an exceptional score. Remember, these are commonly confused English words, which means most people don't use them properly. You got an extremely respectable score.

Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it!

For the complete Answer Key, visit my blog: http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 64% on Beginner You scored higher than 69% on Intermediate You scored higher than 39% on Advanced You scored higher than 64% on Expert

Link: The Commonly Confused Words Test written by shortredhead78 on Ok Cupid

TMI? Nah!

2005-03-30T01:38:00.000-05:00

I just want to take this opportunity to say to whoever invented ThermaCare patches -- you are a bona fide genius! May the deity of your choice shower blessings upon you! Women in the throes of menstrual cramps everywhere shall sing your praises!

(Yes, I got my period today, and, my God, did that patch feel good!)

Um. That is all! Nothing more to see here!

Tree Murderers!

2005-03-28T14:33:00.000-05:00

I was reading A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson's book about hiking the Appalachian Trail, when I came across a passage which particularly resonated with me. It describes the beautiful New England town of Hanover, New Hampshire and the new roads that have been built there. It reads:

The road that led form Norwich to Hanover was once a leafy, gently sinuous two-lane affair -- the sort of tranquil, alluring byway you would hope to find connecting two old New England towns a mile apart. Then some highway official or other decided that what would be a really good idea would be to build a big, fast road between the two towns. That way, people could drive the one mile from Norwich to Hanover perhaps as much as eight seconds faster and not have to suffer paroxysms of anguish if somebody ahead wanted to turn onto a side road....

...[S]o, as I write, they are replacing that uselessly attractive old bridge with something much grander and in keeping with the Age of Concrete. For good measure they are widening the street that leads up a short hill to the center of Hanover and its handsome, historic green. Of course, that means chopping down trees all along the street and drastically foreshortening most of the front yards with concrete retaining walls, and even a highway official would have to admit that the result is not exactly a picture, not something you would want to put on a calendar called "Beautiful New England," but it will shave a further four seconds off that daunting trek from Norwich, and that's the main thing.

This struck a chord with me because something very similar is happening right in my own back yard. The highway that connects the nearby town of Jefferson to my hometown of Athens is four lanes wide in most places, but narrows to two lanes as it crosses into Athens Clarke-County, right as it passes by my neighborhood. Those pesky highway officials (annoying breed, that) have decreed that, despite the fact that traffic always flows smoothly along this road and the road itself widens back out to four lanes a short drive down -- even so, the highway officials decreed two lanes to be unacceptable. They're widening the road.

Not that I have any objection to this idea in theory, mind you. However, in practice, it means that they have to cut down all the trees that grace the side of the road and the entrance to my neighborhood. And there are -- or rather, were -- a lot of trees along the side of the road here. Beautiful old trees, huge kudzu vines (okay, I'm not going to mourn the kudzu so much -- there's plenty more where that came from), even some absolutely gorgeous wisteria bushes that would be blooming right now if they hadn't been bulldozed.

Now all that lines the side of the road is devestation. It's awful. I wish I had a digital camera so you could see the horror of this mass tree murder for yourself. And the worst part about it is that it's so totally unnecessary. There was already a perfectly good road there! Why cut down all those trees just to add even more road to the already pre-existing road? Why? What's the point?

I consoled myself with more of Bill Bryson's words:

Luckily, I have a good imagination, so as I strode from Norwich to Hanover, I imagined not a lively mini-expressway but a country lane shaded with trees, bounded with hedges and wildflowers, and graced with a stately line of modestly scaled lampposts, from each of which was suspended, upside down, a highway official, and I felt much better.

Who Would You Be In The Middle Ages?

2005-03-26T17:44:00.000-05:00

I found this quiz over at The Biblio Philes. Except for the bit about being a saint, this was really pretty accurate!

The Prioress
You scored 10% Cardinal, 61% Monk, 61% Lady, and 40% Knight!

You are a moral person and are also highly intellectual. You like your
solitude but are also kind and helpful to those around you. Guided by a
belief in the goodness of mankind you will likely be christened a saint
after your life is over.

You scored high as both the Lady and the Monk. You can try again to
get a more precise description of either the Monk or the lady, or you
can be happy that you're an individual.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 1% on Cardinal
You scored higher than 93% on Monk
You scored higher than 81% on Lady
You scored higher than 33% on Knight

Link: The Who Would You Be in 1400 AD Test written by KnightlyKnave on Ok Cupid

Southern Dialect Quiz

2005-03-24T21:54:00.000-05:00

Here's a quiz that I had a lot of fun taking: The Southern Dialect Quiz. It doesn't measure your accent so much as it measures your turns-of-phrase and the names you call things. As a child of Yankee parents who was raised in the south (my parents are both from New Jersey, but I grew up in Georgia), I found this to be a pretty interesting quiz. We moved to Georgia when I was 4 years old, and I scored 76% Southern. My little sister, on the other hand, was just a baby when we moved here, and she scored 99% Southern. Just those few years made a big difference! Both of my parents, who are from New Jersey but who have lived here in the South for almost 30 years, scored around 60% Southern -- which I think was something of a shock for them. My father in particular still has a very strong Jersey accent, but as I said earlier, that's not really what this test measures.

What's your rating?

Television Causes Anxiety

2005-03-22T13:48:00.000-05:00

I was watching TV last night when I saw a commerical for Clorox bleach that went something like this:

GUY CONDUCTING AN OBVIOUSLY FAKE IMPROMPTU POLL: Did you know that your bedsheets are full of dried sweat and dead skin cells? (in faux academic tones, as if he's a teacher educating the masses) It's called body dirt. (in his normal tone of voice) Aren't human beings just disgusting?

SUPPOSED TO BE A WOMAN-ON-THE-STREET BUT OBVIOUSLY AN ACTRESS: Eeeeuuw! We sure are! But won't it come out in the wash?

POLLSTER DUDE: (Tsking) Ah, you ignorant little peon. How wrong you are. It's tragic, really.

ACTRESS: Oh no! But what can we possibly do? If only there were some commerically-sold product that could save me from this totally gross fate!

POLLSTER DUDE: Thankfully, there is! Clorox Bleach!

ACTRESS: Thank goodness! I may have been completely unaware of the horror that is body dirt until just a few minutes ago, but now I will make it my mission in life to wipe it from the face of the earth!

INVISIBLE ANNOUNCER DUDE: Buy Clorox Bleach and eliminate the fear you didn't know you had until we told you about it!

ACTRESS: Thanks, Clorox! At last I can sleep at night!

Well, okay, not quite that silly, but you get the idea. And not to pick on Clorox, which I actually think is a really good product -- all cleaning product ads are like this.

How sad is it that advertisers have to invent things for the consumer to be afraid of in order to sell their product? And how sad is it that this tactic works so well? I think my subject line is probably right -- television, or television commericals at least, really does cause a low-grade level of anxiety.

The only defense? Actually think about what you're seeing. Deconstuct it. Make fun of it.

'Cause, really. TV commericals are so stupid, how can you not make fun of them?

Television

Insomnia: The Haiku

2005-03-21T04:42:00.000-05:00

It's four forty-five
in the morning, and yet I
am still awake. Why?

Poetry

Book Review: Strip City

2005-03-21T00:37:00.000-05:00

books

TITLE: Strip City

AUTHOR: Lily Burana

GENRE: Nonfiction -- memoir

BACK COVER SUMMARY: Join journalist and former stripper Lily Burana in the ultimate road trip across America. Burana packs up her high heels, hairspray, and body glitter, and travels from the top gentlemen's clubs of Dallas to the blue-collar go-go bars of New Jersey. From Anchorage to Tijuana, Las Vegas to Los Angeles and beyond, Burana illuminates the complex life of an exotic dancer. Along the way, she meets a host of colorful women who share with her the secret history of striptease. With a shrewd journalist's eye, she she reveals the paradoxes that face strippers -- from the exhilaration that overtakes a dancer on stage to the darker realities that assail her heart when she's out of the spotlight. Compelling, smart, and candid, Strip City is an unforgettable portrayal of one woman's life in a notorious business.

SHE-WHO-READS'S COMMENTS: I am a feminist. In college, I minored in women's studies, and I ended up taking lots of classes with some very earnest, intelligent women about various "women's issues." Inevitably in these classes, the sex industry would come up for discussion at some point or another -- stripping, pornography, prostitution, etc. I didn't know what I thought about the subject back then, and I still don't today. I'm deeply ambivalent about it. On the one hand, I agree with the argument that says that all sex industry workers are being exploited, degraded, and objectified; on the other hand, I agree with the argument that glorifies sex industry workers for taking charge of their sexuality, and asks what's wrong with being (or being seen as) a sexual being anyway? I have absolutely no personal experience with the sex industry, so all this discussion was purely theoretical. So when I saw this book, I knew I had to read it. Surely I would find some clarification, some resolution to this conundrum, in the memoirs of an ex-stripper?

As it turns out, not so much. Lily Burana herself is deeply ambivalent about stripping, about what it means to her, to her friends and family, and to society at large. That's why she decided to write this book in the first place -- to get some closure on a sticky subject. In the end, she finds personal peace of mind, but no absolute answer, no epiphany. The truth, I think, probably lies somewhere in the middle of those two opposing points of view -- as well as at both extremes. The two different arguments are both true, at the same time. It's enough to give you a headache!

The book itself was very good, I thought. I found it entertaining, informative, and intersting. The author has a gift for descriptive prose, for immersing the reader in a particular time and place so that you feel you're there, part of the action. I enjoyed the parts about the various strip clubs she worked at and the parts about her personal life and history equally. Ms. Burana is a gifted autobiographer, and she wrote the book so that her personal journey interwove itself with the nitty-gritty details of what it's like to live as a working stripper seamlessly, each half of a larger whole.

An excellent book! Very different from my normal reading fare, but worth the trip!

My Very First Post!

2005-03-20T03:17:00.000-05:00

Well, not really. I've had a blog on AOL for a while (which I plan to maintain, by the way). I just got a little tired of the fact that AOL only allows other AOL members to comment on their blogs. I mean, the whole point of the internet is that its content is accessible to the whole world, right?

So I got a gmail account and started a blog here. Even though I haven't worked with blogspot much yet -- I mean, I only signed up a few minutes ago! -- I think I like it better than AOL already. It seems much more versatile and flexible.

So, anyway! More tomorrow, when it isn't the middle of the night and my brain isn't fried.