Jan. 20th, 2018

lunabee34: (food:  sushi color by cattyhunts)
1. I am sick again, or rather, I have never ceased to be sick. I do not get sick very often. Usually about once a year, I get some kind of respiratory thing, and that's about it. I got a cold right before we went to Josh's parents' for Christmas, and I've just kept it. I haven't been unremittingly ill; I will feel like I'm starting to get better, and then it'll come back with a vengeance. I went to the doctor a couple weeks ago and got some antibiotics, and that seemed to clear things up for a bit, but a couple days ago, I started feeling wretched again, and yesterday I was completely useless. I feel better today, but still not tip-top. This is just so maddening. I don't get sick like this. And I don't know what to do to get better. I don't have a fever. I'm not deeply ill, just ill enough to feel terrible and not ill enough to really get out of doing anything. I suspect that those antibiotics were wasted; I don't think I have any kind of infection. Aaaaargh.

I am starting to wonder if my thyroid has finally crapped out. Oh, Lorraine, you say. You have thought that so many times, and your doctor is always like, "Pshaw. You're levels are normal. Now give me some money." But! When my levels were checked six months ago, they were normal; however, I am positive I was in a hyperthyroid cycle at that point. I had a lot of energy. I had night sweats and insomnia. Within a couple weeks after that test, I hit a point of utter exhaustion. I have been so so tired and sluggish since then. I have been sleeping very well, and yet it's not enough. I'm not really having night sweats much anymore, and I've gained a pound. Yes, yes. It's a pound. But the way I'm staying so sick, I wonder if my thyroid is done, and I can finally get medicated! I'm going to see if I can get an appointment this week to check my levels.

2. [personal profile] archersangel asked: [what's the] the best meal (or one of the best) you've ever eaten?

I have had the privilege of eating many amazing meals: Laduree in Paris on the Champs Elysees in the late nineties with two of my friends on a study abroad (macarons that tasted like rose water and so many courses and a bottle of wine apiece), Frontera Grill in Chicago in the early 2000s (the best soup I've ever eaten; I had two bowls; I don't even remember what it was really anymore; I think it contained shrimp?), Commander's Palace in New Orleans multiple times. I feel like just about every meal we ate in Oxford, MS was exquisite; from Big Bad Breakfast (the most perfectly poached egg ever) to Ajax to Two Sticks to City Grocery to the Indian restaurant (gobi manchuria OMG yummers) to the Yocona River Inn (poached oysters, glorious red wine sauce for steak, melon wrapped with prosciutto) where Josh worked for most of the time we lived there, that town is full up with good eats. Or more recently, at Natalia's in Macon; so freaking swanky. The lemons came in cheese cloth so you wouldn't get any seeds in your water. LOL Lots of awesome eating in Atlanta: Leon's (so many artisanal cocktails; a bacon slab stuck in a glass of homemade peanut butter), Taco del Sol, and Fox Brothers Barbecue.
lunabee34: (reading by sallymn)
The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A RomanceThe History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance by Lucas Malet

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


First, a note on the format. The edition I read has the same ISBN as this one but is published by a different company in 2015. It's weirdly sized; there were two versions for sale on Amazon, and I got this one because it was the cheapest. It's the size of a legal pad, though, and the font is pretty small which makes it a bit unwieldy and hard to read.

I found out about this book from Talia Schaffer's The Forgotten Female Aesthetes. Lucas Malet is the nom de plume of Charles Kingsley's daughter, and The History of Sir Richard Calmady is a doozy of a book. Schaffer's assertion that it contains one of the most shocking scenes of any fin de siecle novel made me rush out to find it.

It contains all this salacious material--physical deformity and disability that is fetishized, a quasi-incestual mother-son relationship (I mean, at the end of the novel they sort of get married and go on a honeymoon!), an unapologetic lesbian, adultery galore, and the piece de resistance that Schaffer so gleefully writes about is the mom walking in on her son as he's receiving fellatio. So all this scandalous material, and yet, the effect as I read it was not of titillation. The prose is so beautiful, the description of the natural world so lush and well-crafted. The characters are so self-reflective and so many of them are searching for something better and something more, something beyond, and all this combines to make the book seem very spiritual and somehow transcendent. The blow jobs and the way the woman he ultimately marries is more in love with his mom than Richard are somehow a means to achieve that spiritual contemplation and not just a spot of eroticism to wallow in.

I thought this was a fantastic read. I'm definitely interested in reading more Malet.



View all my reviews

ETA: And to be clear, I don't mean that I think disability or lesbians are salacious but that Malet would have assumed her Victorian audience would think them so.

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