2008-05-15

vacation!

This is what I'm taking on vacation:



Silver shoes for dancing? Check.
Flirty zippers on shoes? Check.
Bandage for sprained ankle? Sigh. Check.
I know, I know. It's hard to feel sorry for me when I get to take a break from work, etc. And when I spend so much time feeling sorry for myself.
Anyway, dear readers, I'll be taking a break from blog posting for the next bit. While gone, I plan to read Elizabeth Hay's Late Nights On Air. My not-so-secret subversive plan is to leave my copy at a hostel to spread the Canada summer lovin'. (Hey, it's not all just Atwood and L.M. Montgomery, people. There's more CanLit to love.) (Um, yes I do realize I haven't yet read Hay. But as if I won't love a Canadian author some have compared to Alice Hoffman.)
Your homework while I'm gone? Well, for book clubbers, it's time to pick up Hey Nostradamus!
Otherwise, I offer you a handful of first impressions:
".... it is sometimes a disadvantage to be so very guarded. If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him; and it will then be but poor consolation to believe the world equally in the dark. There is so much of gratitude or vanity in almost very attachment that it is not safe to leave any to itself. We can all begin freely -- a slight preference is natural enough; but there are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement. In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels...."
-- Pride and Prejudice
Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.... The real evils indeed of Emma's situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself; these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments. The danger, however, was at present so unperceived, that they did not by any means rank as misfortunes with her.
-- Emma
It sometimes happens, that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before; and, generally speaking, if there has been neither ill health nor anxiety, it is a time of life at which scarcely any charm is lost.
-- Persuasion

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