Miscellany including LAS and Jerome Buckley and more Happiness

[lunabee34]

1. I thought that as I finish reading (or re-reading in many cases) a book on my reading list, I'd post about it briefly as a way to track my progress and to invite conversation. Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and The Victorian Temper by Jerome Buckley down. Please dear gods don't let them ask me a question about Buckley. I pretty much despise Victorian poetry anyway; I adore the novels and the drama and even the prose for the most part, but the poetry makes me want to spork myself in the eye. Couple that hatred with the fact that Buckley wrote the book in 1951 and it's all homophobic and seriously Old School Academy and he just drops names, LAST NAMES!, of people without saying who they are in the text or the footnote and sometimes they're poets and sometimes they're historical figures and sometimes they're royalty. *tears out hair* Lady Audley's Secret is awesome, though. I cry every damn time I read it, just at the part I have move Xander in Shadowlands. How's that for an endorsement? Spander loves it.

2. I am teaching in a learning community (linked class situation) in the fall and the World Civ prof I'm teaching with usually has her students read a historical fiction novel and write a book review. She's looking to change up but having trouble finding a suitable book. It can cover any period from ancient Mesopotamia to the Renaissance and pretty much any culture since it's World Civ. Restrictions: not too long (250ish pages), historically accurate in the general if not the particular, and no graphic sex. Any recommendations?

3. lyrstzha is going to Writercon! executrix (who should be receiving a package soon) is right: more lyr=better event. lyrstzha, one of these days I will answer your email telling me that you're coming. Probably the same day that I finally return crazydiamondsue's phone call.

4. Eve K. Sedgwick is dead. The world is down one more incredibly intelligent person. I think somebody needs to start a conduit fic fest in memoriam. *bats eyelashes* It could even be a drabble fest. Somebody who's BNFy and not me (so that people participate LOL), PLEASE DO THIS!!!

5. I won an award for my Dr. Horrible fic! Yay!

6. Fur in My Cap by Rob Roy. Watch it. Very cool music video.

7. So. Dreamwidth. I am still ambivalent because I bought a permanent lj account and I'm comfortable here but everybody's getting an account over there (granted I have a really small flist so my value of everybody is quite different from other people's *g*) and I guess maybe I ought to anticipate the mass migration. Are the invite codes for free accounts? If they're for free accounts, I'll take one if anybody has a spare.

8. Off to spend the last little bit of my allotted, scheduled, *sob*, regimented Livejournal time making Rodney cry.

Comments

[executrix.livejournal.com]

1. Package! Yay!
2. It's probably more than 250 pp, but "Romola". Srsly.
3. Award! Yay!

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

What is that about?

:)

[executrix.livejournal.com]

It's like Gone With the Wind only with Savonarola and without racism. And I think the Bonfire of the Vanities really is in there.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I think this is too long for the scope of Tracie's course, but you can read it online! (http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/eliot/romola/). And it's in my area.

(My list has more Dickens and Eliot on it than I would have thought and while I've read almost all the Dickens there is, I've not read any Eliot yet)

[executrix.livejournal.com]

[sound of jaw hitting floor]

I'm semi-literate* and I've read just about all the Eliot there is. [Your Leverage joke here] Warning: avoid Silas Marner at all costs. Also, the Masterpiece Theater adaptations of Eliot are worse than usual.


*cf. Holden Caulfield: "I'm practically illiterate, but I read a lot"

tapes jaw back together

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I don't have the list here in front of me, but I think I have to read 5 of the 7 novels.

I know, I know, it's awful. I do nothing but read all day long every day, really, even before this whole list thing and still there are such gaping holes in my reading. *shame*

Re: tapes jaw back together

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Eliot is the *bomb*. I can't remember which critic it was who said that if Daniel Deronda was divided into one novel called "Gwendolyn Harleth" and one called "Daniel Deronda"--and the latter conveniently lost--it would be renowned as the (half a) masterpiece it is.

Re: tapes jaw back together

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

That one is on the list for sure.

We will definitely have to talk Eliot when I finally get there. :)

Right now I'm re-reading MADWOMAN IN THE ATTIC by Gubar and Gilbert which I'm sure you've read before and really is an awesome book.

Re: tapes jaw back together

[executrix.livejournal.com]

+Confirmed+, as Zen would say. But my favorite is Russ' "How to Suppress Women's Writing."

Re: tapes jaw back together

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

As in Joanna?

Did you lend me that?

I swear I've read that.

Re: tapes jaw back together

[executrix.livejournal.com]

As in Joanna. I might've, I've bought a couple of copies and never keep track of who's got what.

ETA: Dominic practically said "It's a very old wall. It waits" in last week's Dollhouse.

Re: tapes jaw back together

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Heeeeee.

All our shows, how they love to intermingle.

[lyr]

1) Oh, yes, I've read Lady Audley's Secret. It was maybe 15 years ago, though, and it's a bit fuzzy now. I should probably re-read it.

2) Heldris de Cornuälle's Roman de Silence and Euripides' The Trojan Women are all that occur to me offhand. Everything else I can think of right now is longer. But both of those are really excellent, and also say fascinating things about gender, which isn't so common for works from either of their respective eras.

3) Aww, thanks! I am so looking forward to seeing you! I predict that we are going to have a wonderful time.

5) Yay! Go, you!

7) I figure I am going to get a Dreamwidth account eventually, and then crosspost. As I understand it, they've made crossposting really simple. But I feel no rush about the whole thing, and I have no plans to desert LJ.

8) Make that Rodney cry, cry, cry. How else can he be comforted?

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, more stuff to read! Yay recs! I'll pass those along to Tracie.

I'm just really interested to see what will happen with Dreamwidth. It seems like most of the BNFs want to move so I suspect that fandom will eventually leave lj. I don't know how I feel about that. It took me a long time to get comfortable with lj and feel like I knew what I was doing. I don't know about learning a whole new interface. It seems daunting.