2009-09-01

September 1st round-up

It's been gorgeous the last few days in Edmonton, almost completely unlike the rest of the summer.

Still, there's something about knowing it's September that makes me uneasy. I wonder if people were happier before calendars.

Anyway. Books.

From my friend T. and his coworkers, suggestions of other new ways to pillage Jane Austen's work:

"Given the runaway success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters will arrive shortly, the inevitable, ahem, modification of Austen' much-loved (definitely by you) canon is at hand. My co-workers and I started throwing around titles. What do you think?

The Vampire of Mansfield Park (thematic too!)
Emma and Mr. Hyde
Northanger Abbey's Alien Invasion (sort of thematic?)
Haunting Persuasion"

I personally love the idea of vampires overtaking Mansfield Park. Especially if that means Fanny becomes some sort of Buffy-esque vampire slayer, which would mean she has a personality and new toughness. But T.'s suggestion Capt. Wentworth get the chance to exorcise a ghost-like Anne Elliot.... why, that's just blasphemy for a girl whose favourite Austen is Persuasion.

This, on the other hand -- Darcy gone vampire -- is not?

On another note, what are you reading these days?

If you're in book club, hopefully you've started reading Lorrie Moore's collection, Birds of America.

I'm really digging it so far -- I know this is a strange line to pull out of the story, "Which is More Than I Can Say About Some People," but here goes nonetheless:

"It was really the world that was one's brutal mother, the one that nursed and neglected you, and your own mother was only your sibling in that world." p. 46

I'm also half-reading Vanity Fair. And have decided to give my first child the middle name Makepeace. No matter gender.

Becky Sharp is, obviously, hateful in a Scarlett O'Hara kind of way. But you kind of have to appreciate a 19th century girl who realizes she has to get married to net income to survive. And so she goes about making it happen.... or trying to make it happen.... without romantic aspirations. (I'm less than 100 pages in, I realize that.)

This is kind of funny:

"If a person is too poor to keep a servant, though ever so elegant, he must sweep his own rooms: if a dear girl has no dear Mamma to settle matters with the young man, she must do it for herself. And oh, what a mercy it is that these women do not exercise their powers oftener! We can't resist them, if they do. Let them show ever so little inclination, and men go down on their knees at once: old or ugly, it is all the same. And this I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the field, and don't know their own power. They would overcome us entirely if they did." (p. 40)

My my, what power I must have at my fingertips....

Last of all, how gorgeous is this bookshelf?

2 comments:

TSS said...

Aw, man. You could at least edit my ramblings.

I am currently reading DFW's "Infinite Jest" and just started James Wood's "How Fiction Works." One is at home reading, the other is bus/at work reading.

I just finished DFW's outstanding "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," which convinced me that I have to read ever damn thing this man wrote.

I can't wait for "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters." I suppose I should read "Sense and Sensibility" first.

erin said...

I am incredibly jealous of you folks who actually have time to read for pleasure... I've made it through the first short story of "Birds of America" though, so I'm allowed to come to Book Club now, right? And I remember why I HATE short stories... just when I'm starting to get into the mood of the story, the minds of the characters, it ends. It's kinda like the surgery of the literary world... no long stories, no unneccessary tangents or descriptions, nothing extraneous, just get the job done and leave... and I am just not a surgery kind of gal. Apologies if this makes no sense - I am averaging 5 hours of sleep a night.