five things

[jade_sabre]

i live! and lovie lives with me! these are all excellent things. like my job! but i will say nothing further about that for now. for now i just have links[ys].

1) can anyone give me the name of a good Napoleon biography? I feel like if I am going to be an obsessive coup-de-foudre fangirl of his I can at least know aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall the stories behind the heartache described in these kate beaton comics.

2) is it sad to say this changed my life? perhaps not changed, but threw it into startlingly beautiful perspective, if only for a moment. And I was content.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the desk,
Rubbing its back upon the Windows PC;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the icons that you meet;
There will be time to murder and respawn
And time for all the Chrome and Firefox
That drag and drop a website on your plate;
Time for .doc and time for .ppt
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred fanfics and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the players come and go
Talking of their scores on Halo.

it is like being seventeen-year-old me reading Prufrock for the first time in AP English and knowing that it would be an awesome class and that here I had a poem that I could take with me for the rest of my life and just enjoy the language of it and wallow in the meaning and just hold. I--am having trouble articulating my relationship with Prufrock, which makes it difficult to explain just what about this loving parody touched me so deeply. But it did.

3) Speaking of going back four-or-five years, someone on Facebook mentioned that Folk Choir is going to sing Biebl's Ave Maria, to which I scoffed a tiny bit because Folk Choir is good and all but this is not their kind of song, and also because freshman year of college I went to a ND-and-Michigan-Glee-Clubs concert, from which I discovered Guster due to the Michigan's-version-of-the-Undertones's cover of Mona Lisa (the only track I still have from the sadly lost CD). Anyway, they had the boys onstage and also in the balcony behind the stage, and the chant solo in the middle was sung from up there, and it was just--

The concert was in Leighton, which has among its many interesting amenities a balcony seating up above and behind the stage, so that you can...watch the back of the performers' heads? (Actually, I really want to sit there one day. It would be really cool.) So during the Michigan part of the performace, the ND Club sat back there. For this song, most of them moved down to the stage, but a bunch of tenor Is and maybe some tenor IIs (I couldn't tell, but I know some of them were tenor Is) stayed up there and moved around to the side a little, so they would be better picked up by the acoustics.

One of these guys up there I was just writing to my friend about how cute he was, and then he had a solo, a gorgeous soaring falsetto solo that just completely stole my heart and flew it up to him. The song itself was soaring, beautiful, gorgeous, prayerful--I closed my eyes and mouthed the chorus (Ave Maria) along with them and just let my soul fly. That concert hall is the most beautiful performing places in the world--I haven't been to too many, but I just know it. It was...fulfilling. Beautiful. I loved it.

4) Speaking of college, or things I learned in college, or rather a lot of conversations I have been having recently about women in college and the like, or perhaps just feminism: Maureen Johnson on the whole "boys aren't reading!/don't have anything to read!" outcry (or, how a penis makes what you write suddenly interesting to the populace at large).

5) New Glee! WHY IS MY FLIST NOT DISCUSSING THIS MORE. Please do not tell me I got into Glee just in time for everyone else to be bored and ditch it, because so much happened, and it was all pretty cool! *sob*

♥


EXTRA BONUS LIMITED-TIME-ONLY LINK: romanitas graciously agreed to un-flock this hilarious, almost Growing-Up-Cullen-esque Merlin...joke...parody...hilarious thing that she and her friend did. READ IT BEFORE SHE FLOCKS IT AGAIN.

Comments

[nessismore.livejournal.com]

1) NAPOLEON! In high school, I was totally obsessed with him! In a non-freaky kind of way...

2) Poem is awesome! I needs to read it when I am not sleep deprived.

3) Have never heard the song, will give it a listen soon. But I do miss the Glee Club and the Undertones and Notre Dame and concerts and...I WANT TO BE BACK IN COLLEGEEEEEEEE :(

4) Article is awesome.

5) I'm sorry about my lack of interest in Glee! (Although I continue to have interest in Mike/Tina...I watched the opening scene and their "YOU THINK WE'RE DATING BECAUSE WE'RE ASIAN??? RACIST!!!!!" was kinda hilarious and I loved it and I just hope that both of them will get more screen time) And I saw the preview for the Britney Spears ep and it looks awesome, so I'll probably watch that. And...I don't even know where I was going with this anymore.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

1) I fell in love in the Louvre. Trufax, just ask MC.

2) YES, IT OWNS ME.

3) Is gorgeous. YES.

4) <3

5) IT HAPPENS, I UNDERSTAND, ALSO YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS BRITNEY SPEARS.

...things I never expected to say #a bazillion

[nessismore.livejournal.com]

♥

After reading your Twilight convo on FB, it makes me miss you guys even moooooooore :(

Just sayin.

[chaos-harmony.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure most of my reaction to the latest Glee was, "GEE RACHEL COULD YOU GET ANY LESS LIKABLE, and oh hi Mike Chang's abs, and oh my god, so much camp."

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

YEP PRETTY MUCH although I have soft spot for Rachel. It is not her fault the writers try to ram her down our throats as a sympathetic and likeable character! She works much better when she is just a lovable psycho.

...also man I just remembered that I used to ship Will/Rachel LOL, HOW LONG AGO IT WAS.

[amasaglajax.livejournal.com]

lmao I'm just getting into it SOB

[ladyfox.livejournal.com]

This is terribly OT, but I didn't get a chance to respond it to earlier posts. I'm in Washington also(Tacoma area) so if you ever wanted to hang or get together a meeting of reprobates, count me in.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

yes! we should organize that soon. my roommate just got here and so we are still running around like crazy, but hopefully things will settle down soon. :-)

[emerald-happy.livejournal.com]

HAHAHAHA That Copperbadge poem has been going round the internet. As someone who has read Sam's lj for the last 8 years, I am so amused.
*glomp*

I am glad you and Lovie are alive, instead of undead. :-)

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

HOW DID YOU FIND HIM SO LONG AGO i love him muchly.

:D

[emerald-happy.livejournal.com]

Through his ff.net page - I was reading Discworld fanfic. It is very good fanfic though almost 10 years old now. I started reading every day when Ro did and I am so glad. I mostly lurk though I have delurked to answer econ questions anonymously...

Also, I only read the original poem because you had it as an lj name or layout thing at some point a few years back and I googled it to figure out what you were on about.

So between you and Sam's Cafe I've got a pretty good education, lol :-)

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

I will have to look it up! I was not sure if it would be good, but I trust you. :-)

:D :D :D PRUFROCK IS LOVE.

/lives to serve

[emerald-happy.livejournal.com]

It is very good. His original writing - The Dead Isle is lots of fun (YA steampunk adventure) and very good too (though needs some work with the pacing before it can be published). Nameless and Charitable Getting I liked too.

[willow-41z.livejournal.com]

At first I got Maureen Johnson confused with Maureen Dowd, and was like, "... you do not speak for my feminism but I will give you a try," and then I was like, "Hey, this isn't a ranting polemical against men! Hooray!"

Also experiment: MY SHELVES ARE FILLED WITH WOMEN WRITERS I am a happy aberration

Anyway, my response usually is, "When women are behind in math and science the president of Harvard says it's 'cause we're just not good at it, but when men are behind in reading it's because feminists are waging a war?" (I used to have this argument with J. Could never get him to see my point.) I hadn't even thought of what she points out, so, thanks.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

hahahaha yay.

oh experiment! let us count.

50 books

12 by woman

of course if you wanted just to count number of authors on my shelf...

28 authors on the shelf (ish, I am doing this from far away, also my hardback books are not included on this list, they are still in boxes)

8 authors are women

iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinteresting.

<3

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

I thought that the president of Harvard just suggested that one possibility (of three that he mentioned) for there being fewer women than men in the sciences might be innate differences between men's brains and women's brains, and saying he hoped there would be more research on the matter.

In a scholarly, reasoned attempt to show that women are just the same as men, one professor walked out because it made her feel ill and faint (presumably she went to get her smelling salts).

[willow-41z.livejournal.com]

Judging from his remarks here, he ranks these hypotheses in the following order of likelihood:

1.) Women are "unwilling" to put in the time required to rise in the ranks of science.

2.) Men are better at math and science in their brains than women... according to some tests somewhere.

3.) There might be a little discrimination and socializing of women away from science going on.

For a different take on it, Virginia Valian has done a brilliant job of cataloging studies that document just how pervasive and subconscious such discrimination is, and how it adds up over time, in Why So Slow? It's a great book. Barnett and Rivers also do a nice explication of the "tests" myth in Same Difference (I was surprised to learn that the spatial reasoning differences between the sexes vary wildly with the type of test given, and disappear altogether with about 1 hour of instruction for women).

*shrug* I can understand feeling ill and faint when someone tries to marginalize your existence and denigrate your accomplishments. Happens to me more frequently than I'd like.

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

Yes, he puts them in that order, and all the while does so saying that he doesn't *know*, he's hypothesizing from the evidence that he's read, and asks for more research. It's almost funny the way he keeps saying that he doesn't know, he's only going by the research he's read and personal observations, and please if somebody knows different information bring it out.

So - the question should be not, "HOW DARE HE SAY THAT?" The questions should be, "Does the amount of time people are willing to put into their jobs, both as hours-per-week and as uninterrupted-in-this career, affect how high one rises in the ranks, and, if so, do fewer women choose to put in that time, and can that explain the difference? What research has been done on differences between the brains of men and women, and what are the results of that research, and what flaws are there in that research and how can they be corrected, and what then does the research show? What evidence is there that preferences of boys and girls are innate as opposed to socialized?" And the man shouldn't have been pilloried and hounded for the speech.

As for the ill and faint - the professor who fled the room presumably believes that there are no innate differences between men and women, and that only discrimination is keeping the numbers of high-ranked academic women from being the same as that of men. That being the case, I would expect to see instances where male professors fled the room, ill and faint, because someone was suggesting that women were innately better than men at doing something. *crickets*

I don't see any denigration of the fleeing professor in Summers' speech. If anything, it would be a compliment: In spite of all these things, you're in this position; you must be incredibly good.

I haven't read Virginia Valian. Here's a discussion of Summers' speech that mentions her, though: http://old.nationalreview.com/comment/sommers200503220754.asp

And one might take a completely different track and ask: Why is it that we judge "success" as "how well you do in a paid profession?" Because that is denigrating anybody who chooses to be a homemaker instead.

[willow-41z.livejournal.com]

Well, that's the thing: if he's truly interested in finding out more, then the thing to do is write a paper (where he can cite his statistics) summarizing the research so far, not give "some attempts at provocation" at a summit for the National Bureau of Economic Research's panel. His speech sends up at least 4 red flags: 1.) no sources cited, 2.) he's not an authority in the field (he's an economist, not a scientist-- and the agenda for the conference is definitely looking at things from an economic/sociological standpoint), 3.) he wants to give "some attempts at provocation," which is usually not one's primary motive when setting out on a research hypothesis, 4.) (possibly the most egregious) he gives no justification for the ordering of his hypotheses other than his own opinion; he's supposed to be talking about the faculty research agenda, not just his research agenda. The speech is definitely not appropriate for the venue, because the venue is economics/sociology, not (hard) science (sociology of course being a science); he is definitely not the appropriate one for the speech, because he's an economist, not a scientist. So with all that in mind, the speech comes off as justification for him to stand up there and blather about things in an off-topic fashion. That is not the way one goes about research.

As for the ill and faint - the professor who fled the room presumably believes that there are no innate differences between men and women, and that only discrimination is keeping the numbers of high-ranked academic women from being the same as that of men.
I'm sure she believes men have penises and women have vaginas (though that's not a satisfactory definition. I've never actually been able to come up with one, since there is not an absolute correspondence between XY/male genitalia and XX/female genitalia. There's the famous case of a neuroscientist who had an F-to-M sex change, and people began to comment about how his work was better than that of his sister... but he had no sister, they were referring to his previous identity).

That being the case, I would expect to see instances where male professors fled the room, ill and faint, because someone was suggesting that women were innately better than men at doing something. *crickets*
Why? No one believes such statements (unless it's the usual trumpeting about "that feminine touch" and how women have this mystical power for relationships and intuition and making houses all pretty and raising children that men can't ever learn so let's not try, we'll just sit back and let them do all that), and they have no power. Nothing that women regularly do/are stuck with is considered desirable in our society. What we're "innately better" at is the stuff no one wants to do. The two statements would not be parallel, and not only because the power differentials. Also, you'd have to find the female equivalent of Summers to make a such a statement.

I'm reasonably sure, after reading Sommers' article, that she's never read Why So Slow?. It is not a manifesto. It is a very meta meta-analysis, and everything is meticulously documented, sourced and footnoted. It would be very hard to fudge data when presented in that fashion. It's disappointing that Sommers chooses to misrepresent such a book in order to achieve her ends... but I guess she was going for her own "attempt at provocation." It makes me suspicious of the rest of her claims.

And one might take a completely different track and ask: Why is it that we judge "success" as "how well you do in a paid profession?" Because that is denigrating anybody who chooses to be a homemaker instead.
Right, which is one reason men have to put up with such guff when they choose to become homemakers... "Don't you know you're supposed to be the provider, you sissy?"

However, looking at the agenda, this conference seems very much slated towards making sure women who want to be scientists and mathematicians have no systemic biases against them... there's no trace of bashing homemakers about it.

[willow-41z.livejournal.com]

This speech is the equivalent of going to a conference on diversifying science and math in terms of people's ethnicities, and arguing that the primary reason the fields of science and math are overwhelmingly white is because people of color don't want to put on the time, and then that they are less suited for such careers than white people.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

What aspect of Napoleon do you want to focus on? Some are better on his politics, some on his military exploits, some on his personal life (which could get somewhat grotty).

If you want a fictional, romantic but somewhat true view, read Selinko's Desiree--a delightful novel that does have its roots in what happened, though it's got some romantifying.

An entirely fascinating memoir is Laura Junot's. Naturally she finesses a lot (including trying to hint that she remained young and innocent into middle age!) but it's chock full of nifty details--I plan to rely on it heavily for my 1809 novel.

For political and military, I have other reccos. (Including Napoleon's own autobiography.)

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

!!!! I am so happy and grateful to have you on my flist, because I am pretty much convinced you know almost everything when it comes to books. :-)

Personal is my number one interest, so I am definitely adding your recs, but I'll take military and political ones too. :D :D

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Okay, Desiree first. It will be so much fun for you, I think!

Then try Alan Schom's bio, and see how you're doing. At that point, you can read Napoleon himself, and branch into smaller works focusing on aspects of his life.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, and oh lord am I ignorant in soooooo many ways . . .

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

Put on hold at the library (the Seattle library system appears to run on people ordering books from their house and then going to the library to pick them up, instead of just browsing the shelves. ...this did not stop me from returning two books today and coming home with another eleven. Heh.)!

thanks again for the recs. :-)

[xlovelylightx.livejournal.com]

4) BOOKMARKING!

5) Glee doesn't come out in my country until after xmas but I may make an exception and marathon it on the internet.

Faeijaoijfa;;faaeajofjao! It's amazing how in character that 'MANuscript' is. XD

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

:D :D :D

I AM GLAD YOU ENJOYED IT

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

I really liked that MJ post, too. This is exactly what I've been saying in my own feeble little comments around the web whenever kidlit folks wail about there being way too many books about girls now, and "where is the boy-friendly fiction?" Honestly! The boys had it their way since the beginning of time, and we're supposed to get upset because for the last, oh, maybe FIVE YEARS there have been a lot of girl MG/YA heroines????? Maybe it's because all those women MG/YA authors grew up with nothing on their shelves with interesting girl characters, and they're all trying to make up for that. And the way people always say, "boys won't read something about a girl," as if This Is The Way It Is And We Can Not And Should Not Change It. Grrrrr. Also, I would like to point out that there are still plenty of books with boy protagonists out there.

Sorry, pet peeve.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

♥

right there with you

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

In my previous library I had both the Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys books. More boys read the Nancy Drew books than read the Hardy Boys.

[beth-shulman.livejournal.com]

it is like being seventeen-year-old me reading Prufrock for the first time in AP English and knowing that it would be an awesome class and that here I had a poem that I could take with me for the rest of my life and just enjoy the language of it and wallow in the meaning and just hold. I--am having trouble articulating my relationship with Prufrock, which makes it difficult to explain just what about this loving parody touched me so deeply. But it did.

HUGS. I know what you mean EXACTLY. The first time I closed The Great Gatsby, and the first time I read my favorite Robert Frost Poem ever, and the first time I read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, it was this eerie experience where I saw them in my future.

And I have never discussed any of those works in any classes, so I just know what they mean to me, which - maybe? - is best.

Also: I feel so guilty that I don't love Maureen Johnson because I love all her opinions and writings on literature. (Also, I wish she had an LJ feed so I could keep up with her.)

And - I seem to be an aberration as well! Because I just counted the books on my shelf, and OH MY GOSH I DON'T EVEN BELIEVE IT but out of the 129 books on my bookshelf RIGHT NOW, FIFTEEN were written by men. Fifteen out of one hundred twenty-nine. The Great Gatsby, The Sound and the Fury, four Andrew Clements (I love him, haters-who-look-disdainfully-at-childrens-lit), four Gordon Kormans, Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, and The Name of the Wind (love love love). It will be fourteen son, because I am buying The Cardturner by Louis Sachar as soon as I can (also: I don't own Holes?!?). And it's slightly less because the Narnia books - all seven - are in my basement. But - I've got MWT, and Madeleine L'Engle, and Susan Cooper, and L. M. Montgomery, and Agatha Cristie, and Hilari Bell, and Ellen Emerson White, and Diana Wynne Jones, and (the sadly-underappreciated) Cinda Williams Chima.

Women authors ROCK and more people should know that. But I really think (and hope) that people do, and it just hasn't seeped into the curriculum yet. Although I did have an awesome professor who made sure to teach Gertrude Stein and Willa Cather in a semester of utter maleness. (And seriously, I couldn't care less what gender Fitzgerald and Faulker are, I just praise them to the skies for their works.)

I ... don't remember what I started off my comment by saying, but if you read this, you are awesome. And I'm glad you like Seattle, and how's their library system? (You have been there, right? It would be - my first stop. Or second, after the Barnes and Noble.

[beth-shulman.livejournal.com]

EDIT: It will be sixteen soon, not fourteen. Headdesk.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

mmmmmmmmmm I still have in my secret place my original interpretation of Prufrock--we were having a discussion about where the turning point of the poem is, and I put it earlier, I think, and changed the tone of what it was about, not that I really remember.

I FEEL THE SAME WAY ABOUT JUSTINE LARBELEISTER or however you spell her name. Love her blog, rather despised How to Ditch Your Fairy, couldn't get more than a page into Liar.

WOW. Part of my problem is that the books I have with me now are the books I took to school every year, so there's a lot of my reading list on there--and while I read lots of poetry and short stories by women (especially last semester), I haven't read so many novels by them. Most of my YA (aside from the most important ones) are at home for my sister to read, so DWJ, among others, didn't make it here, and instead I have Terry Pratchett (who I worship without caring for gender as well!) and Spenser (ditto, also he was pretty feministic for his time, turns out) and Forster and Nietzsche and Tolkien.

I really did read a ton of female authors in my lit classes, they were just all...in anthologies. So they are definitely in the curriculum--and in my survey curriculums, no less. (I just wish we didn't necessarily have to...grope around for them, because sometimes I feel like women authors get stuck in because they're women and not because they're, well, good. I mean, you can still study them as a product of that literary time period, but they are not pleasant to read. ...of course, I would also stick Gertrude Stein in that category, so there's that.)

OH HONEY I already have a fine! $0.75, and considering I didn't turn in the book for a week, I'm shocked. I actually went to the library the day my dad left, and then again the next day (different branch), because my first full week here was the week the library closed all its branches due to lack of funding. They're open again, now, but the hours are kind of weird, and parking is (of course) a pain.

Also, I guess since it's such a spread-out system, it really seems to be a holds-based library system. Like, instead of browsing shelves, you put the books you want on hold, and they're delivered to the designated branch, and you just pick them up. I'm trying this out for the first time with Desiree, so we'll see how it goes. But, like, one of the two close branches (I'm equidistant between them) has SARAH MONETTE. IN HARDBACK. ON THE SHELF. And the other one has Sherwood Smith and they had Silver Phoenix (which I read, and wished was better, because I really wanted to like it, but oh well) and Sarah Rees Brennan and just, like, gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah books, and actually having the time to read what I like!

So, as far as I can tell, the library system is awesome. I mean, today I went to return the sixish books I'd finished, and I came home with eleven more. I have decided I am going to try to check out a book per shelf from one of my branches (it is much tinier than the other), because I am trying to read New Literature or at least Stuff About Other Places and I just, *flail*, books. And libraries. And needing to do another media consumed post. Eek.

[beth-shulman.livejournal.com]

OH! I feel the same way about Justine Last Name as well, and Kristen Cashore.

And lol at what you said about Gertrude Stein, because I loved Three Lives (THE ONLY ONE IN MY CLASS. So yes, I am prepared to defend that).

Seattle libraries sound awesome. There's a library about half an hour from me that always, always has books I want on the shelf. It's the oddest thing. In my library, all the books I want are checked out. So I use the holds system anyway, but - yeah, Seattle sounds like that one awesome library.

And about trying to read New Literature: I'm working on Jonathan Franzen. And Carson McCullers. And Cormac McCarthy. I don't know why I'm so unexcited about them all. Probably because I don't believe any hype anymore.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

KRISTEN CASHORE I kind of hated Graceling (and everyone who gave it positive reviews) so much that I could care less about what she has to say about anything. I AM SURE SHE IS COOL, I JUST HATED HER BOOK.

well, we read...a story about a sad little German girl whose name starts with an L and it was just really depressing and repetitive and I was like, oh Gertrude Stein, you so grumpy. You and Ezra Pound should have, like, grumpy babies together or something.

:-D :-D

I don't believe any hype anymore either! And Cormac McCarthy just looks depressing, and I do not have time for such things. If I want to read something gritty, I'll just reread American Gods. Which is gritty and mythological.

Oh! I checked out The Graveyard Book. I am telling you this because you posted part of Neil Gaiman's Newberry Acceptance speech and the things he said about it just--made sense to me? A lot? In terms of waiting to write a story and it becoming more than it was meant to be and such, and I just--really want to read it now. So it is in my hands! I shall...get on that. :-)

[beth-shulman.livejournal.com]

See, we read Three Lives, and the writing was incredible.

I'm really glad I'm not the only one who thinks that McCarthy looks unbearably depressing. And so does Carson McCullers. I have this "I'm gearing up to fight" mentality toward both their books.

And I am looking forward to your thoughts on The Graveyard Book. Because I have very many thoughts, which I will not say, because I don't want to influence your reading at all.

But his speech was great. He's one of the most quotable people I know.

Oh - and I've never read American Gods, but I put it on hold because a friend recced it to me recently, and it sounds amazing.

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

Haha, I have met Ms. Cashore and she seems very nice, but yeah. Anyway, Ms. Penguin has sent back my copy of Graceling, with her own annotations which are quite hilarious. She would love me to pass them on to you, but we neither of us have an address for such purposes. Just saying.

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

Andrew Clements is wonderful. His kids are not smarter-than-the-adults smart-alecs (even in Frindle, it turns out that the seemingly unsympathetic teacher was actually not). They are realistic. The stories are believable, the characters are human - I just love his books.

And Gordon Korman's early books (haven't read any of the recent ones) make my tummy hurt from laughing so much.

I plodded my way through My Antonia and hated it. Haven't read any Gertrude Stein. My problem is not so much that they are women as that I'm not at all fond of most adult 20th-century literature. Austen and the Brontes I love. Children's books and some young adults' authors, probably the majority of whom are women, I love. The adult-aimed literature I find largely alien and unpleasant.

[beth-shulman.livejournal.com]

I know :) And while sometimes I can read and appreciate books about awful lives and awful people, most of the time I like to believe that people are generally good and nice and kind and every other cliche that is actually some of the nicest compliments you can pay people. (That is a muddled sentence, but it's late and I can't think of a way to make it better. I hope it's semi-coherent.) Andrew Clements writes books about people I either know, feel like I know, or wish I knew. I like when authors acknowledge that good people actually exist.

Some of Gordon Korman's best books are the old, out-of-print ones. I love them. The only funny current one is Losing Joe's Place, in my opinion. It was hilarious.

I had to plod my way through My Antonia as well. Although our tastes are different in other areas, because I don't like Austen or the Bronte sisters. And there are so many people who disagree with me (vehemently) that I reread a book by one of them every so often, and I still don't see the genius. Which bothers me, it really does. I'm not in any way putting down your taste, if anything, I'm in a tiny minority because more people love Jane Austen than dislike her.

What do you think about, say, The Great Gatsby, or The Sound and the Fury? Or are you referring to later 20th century?

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

Haven't read Gatsby or The Sound and the Fury. I read short stories by the two authors in a class, loathed them, and felt disinclined to read anything else by them. (Same with James Joyce and several others). I don't like Dickens, either, or several other pre-20th-century folks.

I'm not offended that you don't like the Brontes or Austen, any more than I think Dickens fans should be offended at my not liking him. Tastes differ! What do you think about Sir Walter Scott? I absolutely adore Ivanhoe and The Talisman, but when I convinced a friend (and this was an adult friend, not when I was in school and first read it) to try Ivanhoe, she gave up after a few pages. On the other hand, I didn't much like Waverly - of all the useless pathetic *losers* our "hero" took the cake.

The Bruno & Boots books are great. And the three whose titles will maybe come back to me in a minute - the kid who travels on a class trip raking in money in the most amazing ways, and the kid who went reluctantly to summer camp, and Who Is Bugs Potter? - are if possible even funnier.

And I agree wholeheartedly with your first paragraph, which is quite coherent to me!

[beth-shulman.livejournal.com]

I'm not exactly a fan of James Joyce, either, but if you have time, give Gatsby a try. It's a great book. And it's seriously got some of the most amazing writing I've ever read. Ever.

*confession* I haven't read Ivanhoe. I will add to my list, though!

I love Bruno and Boots. And the one about the summer camp - I can't recall the title either - is hysterically funny. I think I fell off my friend's couch while reading it because I was laughing so hard.

There's that one about the kid who thinks he's royalty? From some nameless country? And he comes to a new school and joins some sort of after-school group? Oh! The Twinkie Squad! That was hilarious as well.

PS Who's the person in your icon? I can't place it, though it looks oddly familiar.

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

Well - *maybe* someday I'll read Gatsby. Though it does sound dreary and depressing, from what I've heard about it.

I don't think I've read Twinkie Squad. Must find it. I wish I could order the earlier books for my school library (I had them in my old one). *Why* must they be out of print?

My icon is John Grahame of Claverhouse, first Viscount Dundee. If you've read Rosemary Sutcliffe's Bonnie Dundee, that's him (or rather he). If you haven't read Rosemary Sutcliffe's Bonnie Dundee, it's still he, and you should immediately go out and read Rosemary Sutcliffe's Bonnie Dundee!

(And this icon is Dundee, too).

[beth-shulman.livejournal.com]

Haven't read it, in fact, I just got The Eagle of the Ninth from my library. It will be the first book by her that I read. I have no idea why your icon looks familiar, because I've never heard of him. Hmmm.

The Twinkie Squad is one of his most outrageous books, I think.

And I love The Great Gatsby, so I'm biased, but I didn't think it was dreary or depressing. If I was ever forced to pick one book as the Great American Novel, it would be Gatbsy. It's so - timeless, oddly enough, even though it catalogs a specific time :)