(still) geeking out in the UK

Have I mentioned this city seems to inspire me at every turn?

I'm really, really sorry if I'm boring you with my London updates. Quickly, on books:

Cassandra and Jane is really good if you happen to be an Austen fan. Say, if you spent a portion of your Saturday afternoon at the London Literature Festival listening to how difficult and wonderful it is to work with Austen's texts to make movies and other books.

Okay, well maybe you don't have to be that big a fan.

But you should probably like Austen and be sort of familiar with her history (may I suggest Carol Shields' brief biography?). Because for all that Jill Pitkeathley is clearly riffing her own take on Austen and the relationship she shared with her sister, her take isn't really all that different from the official history. Which is kind of a surprise if you take a skim through other books on offer from Harper's historical fiction titles:

Revenge of the Rose -- "In a court of the Holy Roman Emperor, not even a knight is safe from gossip, schemes, and secrets."

The Fool's Tale -- "Travel back to Wales, 1198, a time of treachery, political unrest...and passion."

The Scroll of Seduction -- "A dual narrative of love, obsession madness, and betrayal surrounding one of history's most controversial monarchs, Juana the Mad."

See? So it's kind of shocking how tame Cassandra and Jane is. However, given the depth of love so many fans have of their Jane, Pitkeathley probably played it pretty close to facts for her own safety. Rather than a love story that would throw question on whether Miss Austen did in fact die a virgin, Pitkeathley opts to tell a tale of sisterly love in a first-person narrative from Cassandra's point of view.

My other travel companion in the last couple weeks has been Novel Destinations, a birthday gift from a dear friend. I can't possibly get to even half the places the book notes in London and England alone, but it's really just the start of a life journey.

Bought? Well, so far I've been really good about keeping my wallet in my purse.... Knowledge the pound continues to outstrip the Canadian dollar by nearly 2:1 helps. But I couldn't resist Let's Call the Whole Thing Off, an inspired collection of break-up tales I found at the South Bank Book Market that's perfect for reading before I go to sleep after I've toiled through hours of studying....

Yes. Yes I am supposed to be toiling right now.

But quickly: The London Literature Festival. My new favourite thing. Even though it wasn't exactly packed with people on the weekend. And the Austen industry talk featured at least two women sitting in the front row who gasped, giggled and sighed whenever they agreed with or were shocked by presenters' words. They were particularly agog by the idea someone might mash up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. (Which, by the way, has now been published in 22 languages and 37 countries, leading to a spike, too, in sales of the original book. Still, harrumph on principle.)

A Wuthering Heights seminar saw more people in attendance, but mostly because there is a new British mini-series expected out in the fall, and members of the press were invited out to see clips of the film and hear from the screenplay writer.

What was so interesting, to me, was how writers can work towards taking apart the original manuscripts and rebuilding them. Wuthering Heights, particularly, presents a problem because of the style of narrative, the two characters who tell the story but aren't really part of it. The screenwriter said he literally had three copies of the book, one of which he took a knife to in order to break apart the story and reorganize chronologically in order to navigate the tale.

Not initially a fan of Wuthering Heights -- I still think it presents a hero only infatuated teenage girls could truly love -- the evening discussion had me reconsidering. I never thought of Cathy and Heathcliff's children as the rays of hope, as the real hero and heroine of the novel....

I do wonder about the idea every generation needs its own Pride and Prejudice, or its own Wuthering Heights. Perhaps this is the line of thinking born of having a broadcast community almost wholly funded by the government?

Meanwhile, I should really get my hands on an old text to manipulate and reform as my own....

(Yes, Gurinder Chadha was at the lit fest -- she seemed really cool! And apparently she's sort of kind of maybe trying to work out a way for Bride and Prejudice to become a stage production....)

happily ever after, you say....

Ok. I may have told you this one before, so I apologize.

But, briefly, when I was in first year, I wrote a paper about the downside of Elizabeth Bennet's happy ending. My point was that Elizabeth, like Sophia in Tom Jones, had to sacrifice everything she stood for and believed in to fit the author's idea of a happy ending. Which, in turn, fit the expectations of their time.

Drop Elizabeth in 2009, and Mr. Darcy's a snob she best wave off. (Ten years on I kind of think the world is lacking in Mr. Darcys, though.) And Sophia? Tom Jones is a ridiculous, Don Juan-lite figure. If he'd been a little more strategic and a little less accident-prone, he'd have been the John Mayer of the 18th Century. Girl: Walk Away.

Similarly -- spoiler alert -- Marianne Dashwood is a victim of her happy ending. Yes, marrying Colonel Brandon sets her for life. Even though he's 19 years older than her. And poorly drawn. And boring as all get-out.

I'm obviously not the first person to say that in the last 200 years. Sorry. And don't even get me started on my dislike of Edward Ferrars. He goes bumbling through the book, all, "Oops, did I lead you on? Did I not mention I'm engaged? Well, if I'm lucky, I'll get dumped, and we'll get married and I'll irritate the hell out of you forever, Elinor!"

But here's an excerpt from near the end of the book -- as if Austen herself were really reaching to tie it all up with a neat little bow:

Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to
discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract by her conduct her
most favourite maxims. She was born to overcome an affection formed so late in
life as at seventeen, and with no sentiment superior to strong esteem and lively
friendship, voluntarily to give her hand to another -- and that other, a man who
had suffered no less than herself under the event of a former attachment whom,
two years before, she had considered too old to be married, and who still sought
the constitutional safeguard of a flannel waistcoat!

I have a feeling that, in late-18th/early-19th century parlance, the flannel waistcoat is the rough equivalent to the windbreaker.

In other news....

• The next book club selection is Obasan. No date yet set for discussion, but the next hostess is crossing her fingers the novel gets the TSS Cool Seal of Approval.
• I love this bit from the April Vogue profile of Beyonce Knowles: "One senses that Beyonce wants to join the very small pantheon of pop superstars -- Cher, Diana, Barbra -- who went on to big dramatic-film careers. If she stays away from silly movies like Obsessed, she might actually have a shot at it...." Yow.
• I'm taking a low-brow (?) detour, reading Love the One You're With. Basic premise so far? Happily married woman happens to pass an ex-boyfriend on a random street in New York, sending her into a spiral. Excerpt?

"My favourite movie of all time is probably When Harry Met Sally....
What I had yet to learn, though, is that things are seldom as neat and tidy
as that starry-eyed anecdote you share documentary-style on a couch. What I
figured out over time is that almost always, when you hear those stories
from married couples, there is a little poetic license going on, a romantic
spin, polished to a high shine over time. And unless you marry your high
school sweetheart (and even sometimes then), there is usually a not-so-glorious back story. There are people and places and events that lead you to your final relationship, people and places and events you'd prefer to forget or at least gloss over. In the end, you can slap a pretty label on it -- like serendipity or fate. Or you can believe that it's just the random way life unfolds." (p. 7-8)

Ayesha

My loves keep colliding!

First hot dogs and books, now Bollywood and Austen. (Again, actually. And since Bride and Prejudice was not very good, I probably shouldn't be so excited. But it's Emma! What could go wrong with a Bollywood adaptation of Emma? And Abhay Deol, whom I've just discovered on YouTube, is adorable. Two thumbs up if he is to play Mr. Knightley.... although technically Knightley is one of my least favourite Austen men.... Right. I'm happy. I'll stop criticizing now.) I hope there will be dancing.



If things continue going my way, there will soon be a vending machine in the legislature. It will carry Skittles.

on a winter's Saturday

Setting: The Chapters on Whyte Avenue.
me: I think I'm going to get this. It seems to make a good argument.
Andy: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman? Uh.... You're not going to go throwing that in (politician's name)'s face, are you?
me: No, no. This was written in the 1700s. It would put things in perspective, right? Like Jane Austen?
Andy: You would stalk her if she were alive, wouldn't you?
me: No. Because if she were alive she wouldn't have written all six books by now.
Andy: That is your reason?

On the topic of Austen, Marvel is unveiling a Pride and Prejudice comic this spring. I applaud anything that gets children reading, but object to the cartoony hotness of the Bennet girls. The only one who's supposed to be obviously pretty is Jane, and possibly Lydia. (Fact.)

In other news.... A Toronto school is debating the appropriateness of reading The Handmaid's Tale in classrooms. This is old news, of course, but I for one believe there is nothing inappropriate about the book. (Shocking, I know.) It's clearly a better thought-out argument and less vulgar show of sexuality than anything a teenager will catch on Gossip Girl. (No offence to B or S.)

While we're talking about the Centre of the Universe, this story found its way into the front section of The Globe and Mail's national edition today. Strange, eh? An interesting read, though.

On a totally different topic, in London a crew of romantic authors have started a collective. I don't know why I find this cool, except that I hope there will be writing workshops and coffee sessions this summer. Imagine? Talking romance novels along the Thames? (And I'm a geek.)

Last of all, another Lost in Austen moment for you. (Before Sam Mendes works his hopefully-British-not-Hollywood magic on the storyline, you can pre-order the DVD of the original series.)

another snippet of Alias Grace... and Mr. Darcy isn't real

I haven't really gotten going on Oscar Wao yet, because I've been locked into Alias Grace for weeks now.

(Ok, I admit I took a wee break from Atwood last night to re-read favourite bits of Pride and Prejudice. I couldn't help myself. I had just watched the Keira Knightley version, and was all loving Matthew Macfadyen even though I fell asleep in the middle and then woke up at the end when he's all, "Mrs. Darcy, Mrs. Darcy, Mrs. Darcy." Sigh. He's imaginary, Trish. Imaginary.)

Anyway, I love how Margaret Atwood manages to weave a murder mystery into 19th century class struggles.

You know from the start Grace will go to prison in connection to the deaths of Nancy Montgomery and Thomas Kinnear. Montgomery being her coworker, if you will, and Kinnear being her boss. But this is the early 1800s, and really Kinnear is everyone's master and they all share a single roof.

"Mr. Kinnear said I was very inquisitive for such a young person, and soon he would have the most learned maidservant in Richmond Hill, and he would have to put me on display, and charge money for me, like the mathematical pig in Toronto." (p. 267)

I almost forgot!

I almost forgot to tell you about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies!

Seriously!

Knowing nothing about storyline, I am torn. On one hand, while I love a good Buffy the Vampire Slayer just as much as the next girl, I'm unsure about introducing monsters to Austen.

On the other hand, I feel Austen had just the right touch of sense of humour to, well, kind of get it. Maybe even embrace it. A little.

lost in Austen

I've spent much of the week ranting about how Austen men would never pull the kind of stunts modern men might. And, I've spent much of the weekend snuffling over a head cold.

So it's really no surprise I watched the entire Lost in Austen series last night.

It's British, so it's not really in Canada yet. And, considering the viewer turnout was just a few million over four weeks, I'm not sure it will come across the pond. (But I'm holding out hope, dear CBC.)

The show was brilliant! Loosely connected to a novel by the same name, it plops 21st century girl Amanda Price (wearing skinny jeans and low-cut top) into the pages of Pride and Prejudice. She messes the whole thing up royally, of course, somehow bumping in between Jane and Bingley, Charlotte and Collins, and Lydia and Wickham. Because Amanda has swapped spots with Elizabeth, she gets caught up in Darcy, too -- but isn't that what we would all do?

Well, you would think that's what we would all do, since we've all fallen in love with the sharp-tongued-but-shy hero a thousand times (no? just me?). But when faced with the real-life (likely still fictitious) Mr. Darcy, he's kind of an ass. He in fact would probably twist and turn all sorts of things to get his way and somehow justify it (kind of like a couple guys I've known over the years).

He does smoulder, though.... my favourite scene includes a water fountain, Darcy, and Amanda saying, "I am having a bit of a strange post-modern moment here."

Tee-hee.

Artistic licence is a great thing, too. Was Mrs. Bennett as completely insipid as she comes across on the page? Was Mr. Wickham a complete and utter cad? Were there lesbians in Austen's books?

As Amanda puts it, there are plot twists enough to send Miss Austen "spinning in her grave like a cat in a tumble dryer."

**do not play the video below if a) you hate Vanessa Carlson or b) you don't want the miniseries spoilt for you**

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

some thoughts from the edge....

• I fancy myself a chick flick connoisseur. That's right, connoisseur. I was thinking about my chick flick know-all last night when playing the Disney version of Scene It (lost it). But I hate, hate, hate Pretty Woman. (The channel formerly known as TBS is showing it ad nauseum today.) Modern-day Cinderella story, my ass. This is a story about a man who picks up a prostitute, and yes, she's pretty and Julia Roberts, but it completely skirts the actual issues of drug addiction and fear and sexual abuse that go hand-in-hand with the sex trade.
• The previous book club selection created a couple hours' worth of discussion today on what exactly feminism is, what it's place in our society is, etc. Apparently I am the only one who -- rather breathlessly -- feels Carol Shields has changed her life.
• The next book club book is What is the What, by Dave Eggers. Already started it. Love the language. Will update later.
• Still wallowing in pain. Thus, spent much of the evening re-reading Pride and Prejudice as security blanket.

yet another book club

http://www.cjob.com/station/blog_adler_bookclub.aspx

Thanks to a friend for pointing out this link.... Now we can all take a moment to wonder at the effects of celebrity on private radio broadcasters listened to mostly by people who drive trucks. (At least it's not Rutherford? Whose first book, I assume, would be The Prince, and whose follow-ups might include the latest Harper biography?)

"Adler nation." ".... truly privileged in being part of something new and very special." (Because no one has ever come up with this broadcast-book concept before. Not some lady in Chicago and certainly not a national public broadcaster.) ".... one of the planet's top publishers."

Sigh. Okay, I'll stop picking now. Turns out yesterday was Grouch Day. But today I have no excuse.

(Top 5 books I would list should I ever become a radio personality/minor celebrity in charge of a book club and somehow bettering the nation's literacy:

1. Lady Oracle, Margaret Atwood -- hah, you thought I'd pick Handmaid's Tale, eh? Too obvious. This tome is a better think piece on femininity.
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen -- super obvious. After asking people to read Persuasion last autumn, I'm afraid of further ruining Austen for anyone who's never read her.
3. The Stone Carvers, Jane Urquhart -- a romantic, startling reflection of First World War-era Canada.
4. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle -- an excellent children's novel, possibly my all-time favourite. Publishers turned down the novel several times, making L'Engle re-write it and re-write it, honing it to perfection.
5. A new entry, and, I think, a starting- or end-point for a paper on the Jewish-American woman's experience in literature. I'm not sure if it's the start or end because, frankly, I'm not overwhelmingly familiar with how much Jewish-American women's literature there is out there. The Guy Not Taken, Jennifer Weiner.

Okay, that's enough for today. Surely all my choices will change tomorrow, or within the hour. Like, immediately I want to switch Urquhart for David Bergen's The Time in Between. Or Richard B. Wright's Clara Callan. And maybe L'Engle should be replaced by The Time Traveller's Wife? And do I really want to end the list off with a group of short stories by Weiner? Even if I did think "Swim" was absolutely gorgeous, does Weiner belong on the same bookshelf as Austen? Even if I was impressed by her notes at the end of the book, which explained how she came to write each piece, and in what year?)

you know you're a book nerd when....

I always know I'm a book nerd.
Having a bad day? I go to a book store and walk around, taking deep breaths.
Run out of cash? Back to the book store, not to buy, but just to look.
Man got you down? Scroll through the feminist lit on offer at an online bookstore. Or return to old favourites.
Anyway, in my real life I'm surrounded by lots of fellow book nerds -- thank goodness.
A perfect illustration of this came today, when we learned of this story.
The thought of a first-edition Austen out there somewhere -- really just an LRT ride away -- made my heart speed a little bit. I was immediately reminded of the premise of Possession, wherein the academic actually steals the 200-year-old letters he found in a book.
Then pals at work started to talk about their encounters with classic first-prints, and the temptation to pocket a 300-year-old work found on the shelves of a university library.
Clearly I'm not alone in my nerdiness -- and, while I'm pretty certain I wouldn't have the guts to steal the tome either, oh temptation.

channeling Austen

(May I preface this entry by apologizing to my friend Erin, who thinks she does not like Jane Austen -- and so is probably sick of reading about her on this blog -- even though she’s only ever read Persuasion. Not that I could ever judge someone for making such a decision since I think I do not like Mordecai Richler even though I have only ever read the first 30 pages of Barney’s Version. Three times. But Erin has never read Pride and Prejudice, regarded in most circles as Austen’s best book and one of the best English-language works of the late 17th century.So I think I’ve finally found her.

The One.

The character created by Jane Austen who I can best identify with.

If Austen’s women were characters in Sex and the City, I think most people would identify with Elizabeth Bennet the way most women think they are shades of Carrie Bradshaw. Miss Bennet has the best lines, Ms. Bradshaw the best shoes. Miss Bennet sees the irony all around her, ditto Ms. Bradshaw. Mr. Darcy? Mr. Big.

For those who see themselves a bit more Charlotte, I offer up Sense and Sensibility’s Marianne -- ever the dreamy, frankly not-swift romantic.

Samantha? The sexually avant garde Ms. Jones does not lend herself to 17th- or early 18th- century comparison. Mr. Wickham was too much a cad. Mary Crawford too sly. Mr. Willoughby too stupid.

Now, I have always thought of myself as something of a Miranda. Career-driven. Cake-driven. Prone to obsessing the failures of technology.

Miranda isn’t just commitment-phobic. She doesn’t need to be in a romantic relationship.

Love it, love her.

Love Emma.

Just hear me out for a second.

I have no familiarity whatsoever with Northanger Abbey. But the balance of Austen’s work is about relationships between men and women. Not love stories, really, though certainly stories about the importance of marriage.

Not necessarily marriage for love -- though that’s all well and good if you can put aside your pride and your prejudice, etc. etc. Instead, marriage to keep a woman going, keep her under a roof with food in her mouth, yadda yadda.

But Austen’s Emma deals with a girl who does not need to marry at all. Emma Woodhouse will do perfectly well, thank you very much, with a very large inheritance. And, while “it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,” not so for a single woman in possession of the same.

Thank you very much.

Yes, Emma is snobby. Very smart, but given to stupidity because she lets her imagination run away with her.

(Me! Me!)

But she isn’t some wimpy Anne Elliot. Or sad sack Fanny Price. Or chin-up martyr Elinor Dashwood. Or vaguely bull-shitting Elizabeth Bennet.

Emma doesn’t just think she doesn’t need a man.

She knows it.

She thrives on friendships and family. She honestly wants for nothing.

Take this haughty line, in the middle of a heated argument with her sister’s brother-in-law, Mr. Knightley:

“Oh! To be sure,” cried Emma. “It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anyone who asks her.”

I know, I know, just halfway through the book I’m getting ahead of myself.

Anyone who’s familiar with the Austen formula, or who has watched Clueless, knows what will happen. Emma will surely get her come-uppance. Probably more than once. She’ll realize snobbery is bad, or at least not to be celebrated as a virtue. She’ll hook up with the naggy brother-in-law. Who seemed rather less naggy and more hot when played by Paul Rudd.

I guess I might just be early Emma, rather than fully-developed Emma.

Sort of like being early Miranda rather than lives-in-Brooklyn-with-a-baby-and-a-puppy-and-a-bartender-husband-and-his-Alzheimer’s-stricken-mother Miranda.

Sucks/Doesn't Suck

Things that, frankly, suck:

• Moving
• Switching cable service from one floor to another (necessitating three weeks without Internet at home, leading to me sitting in a downtown café that has a high creep-factor, as a boy-child wearing a pink dress leans over my shoulder to look at my computer, while I review two-week-old Facebook messages that no longer make any sense and marvel at how Facebook had taken my life hostage and I think I might quit it altogether -- erm, Facebook, not life, to be clear)
• Mailboxes missing mailbox keys
• A broken iPod -- not related to anything else on this list, but sucky nonetheless.

Anyway, due to circumstances beyond my control -- some of them, at least -- I haven’t blogged in awhile. Which, I think, has been very disappointing for my (sole) readers.

Mom, Dad, Granny.

But I still have thoughts! And some of them are even new!

First, though, to go back to old thoughts that I’m still kind of proud of for their nouveau wannabe feminism -- when I was 18, I thought Elizabeth Bennet and Sophia Western were victims of happy endings, left to sacrifice any sort of individuality or independent thought or word to the men they would marry.

I may have been bluffing.

However, having just seen Becoming Jane, I’m contemplating the idea of victims or victors within happy endings.

The film -- starring the luminous Anne Hathaway and the blistering James McAvoy -- makes its heroine something of a victim of circumstance and love and destiny.

Which makes me think, really, that sometimes a woman is damned regardless.

Does Austen’s work really tell us she was unhappy with her lot in life? (Perhaps Persuasion does.)

For that matter, should we assume Emily Bronte or Lucy Maud Montgomery or Emily Dickinson or any other literary woman who died alone was unhappy?

(Or that they died alone? Most had nieces or nephews or brothers who later guarded their reputations rather well.)

Were the happy endings they put on the page representative of their dreams? Their wishes? Or an illustration of their own high standards? If these women could not have the perfection or passion of a Mr. Darcy, then did they simply not see the point of bothering at all?

I hate to put a 21st century spin on women I didn’t know, whose morals and needs likely couldn’t be less similar to my own.

But I wonder. Why think of any of these women -- authors or characters -- as victims when, perhaps, they simply made the best choices they could for themselves.

To make a film about Austen’s love life is to assume she wrote about herself in her books, developing her own sense of character through her heroines. It is also to assume she had a love life at all, and that the only way to write a love or a believable romance is to have tasted it herself. And to have somehow fallen short, left wanting forever.

On this, I can’t help but turn to an Austen biography written by Carol Shields.

“She was snatched from the good novel she had imagined herself into and placed into an alternate narrative of class bitterness…. The hero, it turned out, was part of a pragmatic design. For Jane Austen’s Tom Lefroy was gone, swiftly removed by the Lefroy family, who had greater plans for this young man than marriage to an unmoneyed clergyman’s daughter….
She never saw him again, although it is clear she thought of him. It is also apparent that the episode multiplied itself again and again in her novels, embedded in the theme of thwarted love and loss of nerve. In the novels, happily, there is often a second or third chance, a triumphant overriding of class difference but between Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy there is only silence. He returned to Ireland after his studies, married an heiress, produced a large family, became something of a pious bore, and eventually rose to become chief justice of Ireland.” (p. 50-51)

Bleh.

He also, apparently, named his oldest daughter Jane. Which, if they ever did do more than hold hands at a country ball, is icky. I do not believe I would smile courageously, lifting my chin and staring off into the near-distance for a moment, if I found out my ex had named his eldest child after me.

I think I’d more likely throw up a little in my mouth.

Speaking of throw-up, I have a single entry on the not-suck list.

• Two of my best friends, high school sweethearts since high school, welcomed their baby daughter to the world last week. A baby girl who will never ever lack for love from all the people around her and who, I am sure, will never be a victim of a happy ending but rather a victor.

right.... still late for that table....

I'm taking a second run at Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary.

I tried to read it several years ago, while still at university, but couldn't get past the main character's neurotic focus on herself, her daily list of how much she weighs (which doesn't make sense to me because I'm not British and have no idea what a stone means) and how much she has smoked. Her constant focus on being fat and not thin, on catching a man, are supposed to be funny, but they niggle at me.

This is hugely ironic because I am a huge fan of chick lit, which really does play on all the same elements. Really, the massive popularity of Fielding's Bridget Jones inspired entire branches of publishing houses dedicated to titles such as How To Meet Cute Boys (which I do own, courtesy of a friend).

In turn, Fielding was inspired by Jane Austen, whom I love. I could read Pride and Prejudice a thousand times and never sicken of it.

Similarly, I could and have watched the movie based on her book a thousand times. I know all the lines of dialogue.

So, yes, I'm taking another run at what Nick Hornby calls "a creation of comic genius" in his review.

(I have a rough time with Hornby. His characters are similarly satisfied with neurotically obsessing about themselves and their angst-ridden lots in life. In a way, I enjoy this because it proves men and women are not all that different, we all embrace an element of crazy. However, his characters also embrace an element of nastiness that can be disheartening. Like Fielding's, Hornby's books make absolutely awesome movies. Perhaps both should move on to screenwriting, although I'm sure there are whole soccer teams of people who would forcefully disagree with me on that.)

Anyway, on second read-through, as in first read-through, this snippet from Fielding's book makes me laugh out loud:

The rich, divorced-by-a-cruel-wife Mark -- quite tall -- was standing with his back to the room, scrutinizing the contents of the Alconburys' bookshelves: mainly leather-bound series of books about the Third Reich, which Geoffrey sends off for from Reader's Digest. It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party. It's like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting 'Cathy' and banging your head against a tree. (p. 13)

***source of picture

so.... bored....

It's still February. Which means it's not spring yet, and definitely not summer yet.

And I'm sick. I hate being sick. I mean, obviously, everyone hates to be sick. No one walks around, licking sick people in the hopes of catching a cold of their own.

But I hate having a cold, I hate the way the back of my throat gets rough, and my throat hurts, and I just generally ooze.

I also hate the way other people back away from me, as if they will catch the terrible short-term disease I've come across. Excuse me, but I am already coughing into my sleeve the way Capital Health wants me to, and disinfecting the desk at my office constantly with Lysol.

What else do you want from me?

Anyway, this all makes me wonder about Meg Ryan.

Have you ever noticed Meg Ryan getting sick in a film is the turning point in a romantic comedy?

In You've Got Mail, it's a red-nosed, bleary-eyed Ryan that Tom Hanks finally reveals his love to. In Sleepless in Seattle, it's a stuffed-up Ryan who realizes she should cross the continent to find the love of her life after hearing his voice on the radio. When Harry Met Sally's tearful, snuffly Ryan finally gets it on with Billy Crystal (okay, so in that case she's more heart-sick than sick, but still, she's pretty gross).

The Meg Ryan Is Sick Turning Point is not the first time illness has been used to bring on the romance, however.

In her day, Jane Austen was a huge fan of sending her characters to bed for a day or two in order to bring on a plot twist.

Mrs. Bennet's plan to show off the virtues of her eldest daughter, Jane, gets totally twisted around in Pride and Prejudice when Jane falls deathly ill because she walks in the cold rain. She has to spend days at the Bingley home. The only benefit is it sends Elizabeth after her, putting her in direct contact with the snooty Mr. Darcy, who is ultimately her soulmate in pride and prejudice.

(And, I guess it shows the Bingleys that the Bennets are not an altogether embarrassing family to get to know, even if Mrs. Bennet is outrageous.... which ultimately paves the way for Jane's happiness, too.)

That's Austen's first published book. Her last, Persuasion, also sends a character to bed. This time the ridiculous Louisa Musgrove, whose playful day trip turns for the worst when she falls off a low stone ridge and nearly dies. We think. It's all very serious by 19th century standards. Miss Musgrove being bed-ridden, however, ultimately gets her out of the way and enables the ever-patient Anne Elliott to get her man, Capt. Wentworth.

But why?

Why is being gross and bed-ridden and cough-y a plot twist to bring on the love?

When I am these things, the very last thing I want is some guy bugging me with roses or poetry. I look gross at the moment. My hair is not done. I really just want to watch bad television and groan periodically into my pillows.

This is not how I want to remember the start of a romance.

Which is just as well. I think in Austen's day, getting a character sick was the only way the author could think of to ensure her male and female characters properly got to know and spend some time with each other.

Not to mention, a lot of these people have nothing better to do than lie around in bed in a dark room all day, drinking tea and having people speak to them softly.

But the modern-day heroine can not possibly manoeuvre sickness into a starting point for a relationship.

The modern woman takes care of herself. She doesn't call anyone over to bring a box of tissues or prepare her chicken soup.

Honestly, there is nothing less romantic than being sick.

Man, am I bored.


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