Decisions, Decisions

Bob and I are having one of those years in which it seems we are constantly bombarded with decisions that have to be made. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Some decisions are fun: a meeting we thought we had has been cancelled. Do we go out and see a movie or stay home and play board games? (Probably the latter.) Others just fun to consider: do we throttle that member of the church who's such a know-it-all and who does nothing but judge and whine? (No, it wouldn't be the Christian thing to do. Besides, I've always kind of hoped that if I ever made the headlines, it wouldn't be as a murderous minister and minister's wife.)

All kidding aside, though, we've also been faced with some tough decisions, and all this decision-making has left me feeling a bit decisioned-out. Nonetheless, I'm spending this Memorial Day weekend making some decisions. You see, earlier this year, I made some decisions that I've already begun to regret. And once you begin to regret a decision, it seems it becomes another decision that has to be made. Luckily, I'm not talking about any decisions that can't easily be undone, which is why I'm here today to discuss undoing some of the decisions I've made.

DECISION #1: Changing my blog.
At the beginning of the year, I decided that my blog needed resuscitating. I chose a new design template for it. This was a very wise decision. I still love the "new" look of my blog. It cheers me up every time I visit. I also decided to be more purposeful in my writing, alternating blog posts among my 3 passions: books, music, and food. This was the stupid decision. I'm writing less than ever now, and it seems it's just because I can't be bothered much to write about food and music, while I've become a slave to my plan, thinking "I can't write another post on books. It's been ages and ages since I wrote about food."
RE-DECISION #1: It seems this slave needs to run away (and take all her books with her). I'm leaving the overbearing plan. I'm back to writing mostly about books and whatever else strikes my fancy. We'll see if anymore blog posts about music and food appear.

DECISION #2: Joining 2 reading challenges (The Once Upon a Time Challenge and The Classics Challenge). I love both these challenges. Really, I do. But what was I thinking? I've never been good at completing any reading challenges, and I already belong to three book discussion groups, and now I'm on the One Book, One Community Committee, which means reading tons of books to help us decide which is going to be our community read in 2013. That's enough when it comes to reading assigned books by specific deadlines.
RE-DECISION #2: I will enjoy the two challenges vicariously, when I can, peeking at what others are reading and what they have to say, and I will continue to keep reading the books I planned to read, but I will read them on my own schedule. I may or may not write blog posts about them. You may have noticed I've replaced the beautiful buttons for both these challenges (a sad thing to do, but necessary to convince myself I've really dropped the two challenges) with new gadgets on my blog: "Album I'm Loving" (there. A little bit of music for you) and "Book I'm Loving."

DECISION #3: Making complicated monthly reading plans.
For a number of years I've been in the habit of planning what books I'm going to read each month. It's kind of fun. Around the end of each month, I begin browsing shelves and the pages of my TBR tome and draw up a list, which sometimes has to be changed when I discover that in order to read everything on it, I'll need to read 500 pages a day. This year, though, I decided to make my monthly plan far more complicated than I ever had. I had assigned categories I was trying to fill, like "contemporary fiction," "classic fiction", "children's/y.a.", "poetry". Talk about taking the joy out of reading (there must be some Puritan blood in me somewhere the way I'm able to take things I love and turn them into chores). Why on earth did I set up a plan that was basically the equivalent of revisiting the horror I call "high school English classes"?
RE-DECISION #3: No more complicated monthly plans. In fact, I'm considering just reading at will. I'm not sure it's something I can do. For some reason, I do like having some sort of a plan (probably why I'm so easily convinced to join challenges). A glimmer of hope is shining off in the distance, though: I have not yet drawn up any sort of list for June, and when I was at our annual library book sale last week and came across a pristine copy of Lonely Werewolf Girl, a book I've been wanting to read forever, I bought it, abandoned everything else I was reading (overdue library books be damned), and dove right in. I've gone back to reading other things while reading it (I will never be a one-book-at-a-time sort), but that's something I rarely ever do, buy a book and begin it the day I buy it.

DECISION #4: I'm going to eat one vegetarian, one vegan, and one anything goes meal a day (an idea I got from Mark Bittman when I read his Food Matters). This is a very hard thing to do when you're (for health reasons) also trying to eat more protein and to cut back on sugar, white flour, and gluten in your diet. My vegan meals often include bread or pasta. I've found gluten-free pasta that I love, but I have yet to find a gluten-free bread that I love. In fact, if you're trying to cut down on those three things. it seems the best diet to adopt is the paleo diet, which recommends eating some sort of lean meat at every meal (something I'm smart enough to know not to even pretend I'm going to try to do, especially since the diet also forbids dairy, and I love my raw milk, yogurt, and cheese).
RE-DECISION #4: Again, I will stop being a slave to the plan. I'm still trying to eat meat only occasionally and to eat more vegan meals, but I'm not trying so hard to stick to this one-one-one thing. First of all, it doesn't work too well if you love to eat leftovers (which I do) and find yourself with 3 vegetarian choices and 1 meat-based choice in your fridge but no vegan choices (unless all you're going to do is eat raw carrots and broccoli, which I'm not). And secondly, I'm tired of eating something, and then thinking, "Oh, wait a minute. That was supposed to be a vegan meal!"

DECISION #5: I'm going to go a year without buying any books.
Can we all just laugh at this one? I think I bought my first book within a week of making this decision ("Book discussion/OBOC books I can't get through our library system don't count.")
RE-DECISION #6: Stop pretending I'm not buying any books this year. I will, instead, make more of an effort to get rid of those I've read, will never read again, and that need to find new homes.

Malevolent and Odious Ghosts

"... the ghost should be malevolent or odious: amiable and helpful apparitions are all very well in fairy tales or in local legends, but I have no use for them in a fictitious ghost story."

Amen to that! Guess, everyone. Who said it? Here's a HUGE hint: whenever I speak of ghost story writers, I mention him. He's my favorite. He was The Master. Nothing I write could ever compare to what he wrote, but he is always on my mind when I'm writing ghost stories.

At least, I hope he said it. It certainly sounds like something he'd say (who else would use the words "malevolent" and "odious" and "amiable" and "apparitions" all in the same sentence?), but, sad to say, I have no proof of it and am left trusting Zachary Graves, author of Ghosts: the Complete Guide to the Supernatural (Chartwell Books, 2011). I read books like this (which are never "complete" no matter what their titles would like you to believe) for inspiration for my own ghost story writing, and I've come to realize that their authors often do what Graves did here. He informed us that Montague Rhodes James ("M.R." to us friends) wrote that, but (shame on him) he doesn't tell us when nor where.  One has to suspect books that don't source their quotes and question why so many books about demons, ghosts, vampires, etc. seem to be in the habit of ignoring copyright laws, as well as studies that back up claims, but that's a subject for another blog post.

The subject of this post is what M.R. James seems to have said, and I so hope he really said it, because, well, he's my hero, and we hero-worshippers need very little encouragement when it comes to finding evidence that "He's so much like me!" But, really, someone please tell me: what is the point of a friendly ghost? Okay, I will admit I was once touched by some ghost story about a kind ghost who cared for some woman's young son who babbled from his crib about the man who visited him. The ghost ended up saving the son in some way, but I don't remember how, which shows, that (quite obviously) I wasn't touched enough to remember the key elements of the story.

I also have to admit that, yes, when I was a child, I got up at some ungodly hour to watch Casper every Saturday morning. Casper the Friendly Ghost, if I remember correctly, was the first in my siblings' and my Saturday morning cartoon line up. Again, if I remember correctly, I have a sneaky suspicion that one of the reasons I was so attracted to it had nothing to do with its content and more to do with the fact that we were (for some inexplicable reason. Maybe because my father loved to watch Bugs Bunny? Maybe because my parents wanted to lie in bed and read on Saturday mornings and not be bothered by us?) allowed to watch cartoons all morning on Saturdays. You have to understand that this was in a household in which we were barely allowed to watch television. The rest of the week, we were allowed 1/2 hour of television-viewing a day, with the exception of things we watched with my parents -- such exciting fare as the nightly news and "What's My Line?" But on Saturdays, glorious Saturdays, we were allowed to get up, fix ourselves big bowls of cereal, and plop down in front of the TV until late morning. Is it any wonder I was up by 6:00, just waiting for Casper? I think I tolerated this friendly ghost because of the other ghosts -- the scary ones -- who sometimes appeared (and one could always hope they would this time) and Wendy. I was never all that into witches, so a good little witch was no problem (besides, I'd seen The Wizard of Oz), and Wendy was a girl, all reasons to like her. Casper himself, though? Meh! What a little goody-goody, huh?

I was much happier with any ghost who appeared on the scene in my favorite Saturday morning cartoon Scooby Doo. Nothing held a candle to that show, not only because Scooby was cute and funny, but also because he and his pals had the sorts of adventures I longed to have. They just happened upon mysteriously haunted places every time they piled into the Mystery Machine and headed down the road. You could always count on that road to become an unpaved one, surrounded by dark trees sporting oddly-bent branches and rickety wooden road signs that read "Beware" and "Turn Back Now."Malevolent, odious ghosts, indeed, would occupy such terrain. Too bad the ghosts always turned out to be some greedy human who would've raked in a fortune had it not been for those "snoopy kids and their dog."

When I reached the age at which I started attending and hosting slumber parties, forget all that stupid talk of boys and prank phone calls, my #1 goal was to spend as much time telling ghost stories and scaring ourselves out of our wits. It helped that I lived in a house that had a mysterious tombstone (you can read my brother's take on that here and my take here) hidden in the crawl space off the basement. I could give "tours" of the "grave under our house," which guaranteed a wonderful atmosphere of horror that sequed into terrifying story telling that kept everyone up until dawn.

These days I like to think I don't scare so easily. Nonetheless, in my masochistic desire to be scared out of my wits, I want the ghosts in any story I read to be the sort of ghost James wanted in his stories.  An evil ghost, one that's come to drag me into the pits of hell with it, not one that's come to sing, "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands" with me. I want to walk down my basement stairs at night, push open the old wooden door that scrapes noisely along the floor of that part of the basement (the little room that should feature it's own "Beware!" and "Turn Back Now!" signs) and to be confronted with a floating skull, clacking it's teeth or a see-through child wielding an ax above her head. I do not want a chatty little golden-haired apparition here to bear witness to all the happiness and love that abounds in my life if only I'll acknowledge it (shouldn't that entity really be tagged an angel and not a ghost?).

Ghosts, from what I understand, should be creatures who died before their time -- violently. I will admit that they don't, necessarily. have to have it in for me. A sad woman carrying the arm her abusive husband severed with a saw, causing her to bleed to death, is fine. She can show up in my house, seeking revenge on her husband, and I'll probably help her. As a matter of fact, because I'm a chicken at heart, I'd much prefer any ghost I encounter to have it in for someone else and not me. I'm perfectly willing, goose-bumped, white-haired and all, to help some poor malevolent and odious apparition (in fact, let's make sure it's particularly odious, because I so love that word) do what it needs to do in order to "cross over." But a friendly ghost? He's on his own if he shows up in my house. Just like my good friend M.R. I have no use for helpful apparitions, most especially in any fictitious ghost story I might read or write.

But the Emperor Has No Clothes

A couple of months ago, I read yet another critically acclaimed contemporary novel that made me want to scream, "But the emperor has no clothes!" This one happens to be Bonnie Jo Campbell's Once Upon a River, which will probably be announced tomorrow as this year's Pulitzer Prize winner. I won't be surprised because I had to slog my way through it, which seems to be a pretty good indicator for something winning a major prize like the Pulitzer. I only slogged my way through it because it was on our list for the One Book One Community committee I'm on, and I felt it was my duty. I really wish I hadn't bothered. (Other members of the committee are not so diligent, gleefully announcing about some book they hated that they didn't bother wasting their time after the first 40 pages -- probably wise, given how many books we have to read.) I have to admit, though, that I often slog my way through such books, even when I have no call of duty, always hopeful that I'm going to find some redeeming quality, something that will make me think "So, that's what all the fuss is about!" I rarely do, and you'd think I'd learn, but I don't, and so I plod on until the bitter end and then want to throw the book across the room (or hit all the critics over the head with it).

Meanwhile, shortly after I read that catastrophe, I read a brilliant book that, as far as I can tell, has barely gotten any attention at all: Amor Towles's The Rules of Civility. In fact, I only discovered it because someone had returned it to our library, and I had to check it in and send it off to the other library in our system where it lives. I was immediately drawn to its cover (yes, I do judge a book by a cover, which is usually a better indicator than what the critics think of it). Shortly after I first saw it at the library, it, too, ended up on our One Book, One Community list. It's a wonderful rags-to-riches and riches-to-rags tale of Depression-era New York City, full of lovable characters, not the least of which is the city itself.

So, why does a book like Once Upon a River get picked up and carried around on all the critics' shoulders while a book like The Rules of Civility sits on the bench? I'm quite sure it's because contemporary critics like a certain mix of ingredients. In fact, take these ten ingredients, mix them up in any way you'd like, and you're bound to win some sort of literary prize.

1. The book must be grim. grim. grim. Avoid humor, levity at all costs. This is, of course, what will make it real, what will help you garner endorsements that say, "This gritty portrayal, reminiscent of a Greek tragedy, will make you question all you hold true about the grim realities of becoming a man in 21st-century America." The likes of Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Mark Twain probably wouldn't be published today since readers might actually laugh at the things their characters do and say, and, you know, laughter is just so unreal.

2.  All settings must be bleak, and your characters must be uneducated and poor (another reason Trollope and Austen wouldn't be published today). If you're going to write about the American South, you must write about people living in shacks in Appalachia during a horrible drought when babies and beloved grandparents die from heat stroke. If you're writing about New York, you must write about those living in sub-standard tenement housing during the worst winter on record, babies and beloved grandparents freezing to death. Writing about London? Your characters are squatting in squalor. You get the picture, which has not even a slight hint of a bright color anywhere.

3. If you're writing a coming of age novel (why do I say "if"? It is, of course, a coming of age novel), and your main character is female, it's no longer enough for her to deal with the fact that she was orphaned at age 14. No, not only was she orphaned at age 14, but she was also sent to live with the uncle who has been sexually abusing her since she was three. She will go on to be raped at least three times by three other men before she is 21. She will also wind up pregnant. Oh, and yes, the boyfriend who got her pregnant is an abusive drug addict. Despite all she goes through, make sure that even your most empathetic readers won't really care less what happens to her by the end of the book.

4. If your main character is male, he either never knew his father, or his father is a drunk who is more absent than present and who "loves" with his fists. This boy's a wise-beyond-his-years high school dropout with a vocabulary that belies this status but who still manages to do so many stupid things that he is certainly headed for prison, especially since he thinks nothing of fighting back with his own fists. Provide a great hope that he might turn out differently from his father -- here's an idea: some kind, idealistic man who takes him under his wing and gives him the chance to live somewhere else. Or, even  better, a girl from a loving family who thinks he can be saved -- then yank that hope away as painfully as possible, so that, by the end of the book, your "hero" has become a clone of his father. Your last sentence might read, "The prison door echoed as it slammed behind him."

5. Mix up your tenses as much as you can. Write in the present tense and the past tense. Write in the future tense, too, if it makes sense (and even if it doesn't. If it doesn't, the critics are sure to think that you are deep and clever beyond all imagining, especially if you are a "bright young thing").

6. Likewise, mix up your narrative voice. Switch back and forth between first-person and third-person narrative, especially if you've begun with the first-person but need to explain something your narrator couldn't possibly know. Apparently, unlike me (who might be so cruel as to judge you a lazy writer), the critics will marvel at your "clever use of voice."

7. Get your characters to provide all kinds of lengthy background information via dialogue, because, you know, we all talk like this, "Well, cousin, as you will recall, your sister went off to New York when you were six years old. If only she'd stayed home where she belonged. You were too young to receive the phone calls all about Ronnie this and Ronnie that, but your poor mother was beside herself with worry over that guy, who, of course, turned out to be a drug dealer. If only Suzie hadn't gone to New York, we wouldn't be sitting in this rehab center today." The critics aren't bothered by such dialogue. Maybe they talk this way. Maybe they're also in the habit of explaining things to people's siblings that shouldn't need explaining.

8. Hit your readers over the head with symbolism. When your 16-year-old protagonist decides to tell her 36-year-old boyfriend she's pregnant, make sure you open the scene with a description of the fried egg breakfast she's cooking him, something like, "She watched the clear liquid turn to white and take shape, hoping she wouldn't overcook the yolks and wondering how he would take the news." A mother cat nursing kittens would be a good addition to such a scene. If your young male hero is headed for a life in prison, send him to a dog fight where he witnesses poor, weak dogs, stuck in their small crates, destined to die.

9. Make sure there are elements in your book that will encourage critics to compare it to classics. For instance, you can set it on a river (any river, apparently. It doesn't even matter if it's not the same one) a la Bonnie Jo Campbell, and it will draw "inevitable" (at least, according to one critic I read) comparisons to Huckleberry Finn. Set your book in an English village, and you will be a 21st-century Austen. Write about a teenaged boy, even a deaf, dumb, and blind one lost in Mongolia, and he's bound to draw comparisons to Holden Caulfield. Then again, if he's blind, he might be Oedipus. Don't make him blind. Caulfield is "edgier" than Oedipus, and you, of course, must be "edgy" (a favorite word amongst the critics).

10. Finally, most important of all: make sure your ending is ambiguous. Do not tie anything up -- or even together -- if you can possibly help it. The more you can make the reader think, "Huh?" the better. Besides, the more ambiguous it is, the easier it will be to write the sequel.

That's it: Emily's recipe for an award-winning book. Please let me know if I've missed some killer ingredient that will make it even better. I'm off to eat some dessert. Sophie Kinsella (who is actually an excellent writer and never pretends to be anything she isn't), anyone?

A Meme from the Queen

(Note all the labels for this post. This one conveniently fulfills all my recently created blog categories for The New and Improved Telecommuter Talk, except for "music." Seems I must do a couple of posts on music, then, no?)

Remember back in the day when I was dubbed "The Queen o' Memes"? No? I don't blame you. I barely remember it myself, seeing how long it's been since I either responded to or created a meme. There have been quite a few that I've meant to respond to, but, well, we all know the difference between meaning to do something and actually doing it. I'm much better at the former, not always so good at the latter. In other words, if proverbs are to be believed, you don't have to look too hard to see the good intentions oozing out of the big truck paving my road to hell.

Luckily, I have Susan at You Can Never Have Too Many Books doing her best to save me from the fiery pits of hell. She tagged me for a meme that I just couldn't resist (and even emailed me to tell me she'd tagged me so that it wouldn't whizz by unnoticed, the way so many good blog posts seem to do these days, while I plod my way much more slowly around the blogosphere than I used to).

These are the rules for what I'm calling The Eleven Questions Meme:

1. Post the Rules.
2. Answer the eleven questions that were asked of you by the person who tagged you.
3. Make up eleven new questions and tag eleven new people to do the meme.
4. Let them know you tagged them.

And these are the questions Susan made up for those she tagged to answer, along with my answers to them:

1. What is your favourite place in the world?

I'm not sure. I absolutely love so many places and would move to any of them in a heartbeat (New York City; London; Edinburgh; Mt. Desert Island, ME; Portland, ME; Asheville, NC; etc.), but there are plenty of places in the world I've never been that I'm sure I would love just as much (Vienna, for instance. Rome for another). The world is just too big, and there's just too much to love.

2. Have you ever visited an author's home, and did the experience live up to your expectation?

When I was fifteen, I visited Beatrix Potter's home, and yes, it absolutely did live up to my expectations. It was the perfect place for the creator of Peter Rabbit, et al., and I loved discovering that she actually found dead animals and dissected them in order to be able to draw them as accurately as possible. I also, a couple of years ago, visited the home where Edgar Allan Poe lived during his Philadelphia years. There's a museum on the first floor, but the rest of the house is unfurnished, giving it a wonderfully eerie quality that just quietly whispers "Poe."

3. Do you read biographies of authors you like, or do you prefer to let their words speak for them?

I'd prefer to read biographies, and do, but not nearly as often as I'd like. I frequently find myself thinking, "Hmmm...I really ought to read a book about (Poe, say -- especially when touring his house)," but then I never do. Unfortunately, Wikipedia doesn't help when it comes to this. These days, I typically just refer to it and the links it provides when I want to know more about an author. When I do sit down with a biography (or autobiography or memoir), though, I always end up wishing I did so more often.

4. Do you have a comfort food?

I have tons of comfort foods: grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup, hot dogs, meat loaf and mashed potatoes, chicken pot pie (real chicken pot pie, not the chicken stew people in Lancaster County call "chicken pot pie"), bagels with cream cheese and lox, shrimp cocktail, fried egg on toast, baked beans on toast (actually, just toast, period)... I'm making myself hungry, so I'm going to stop now.

5. Do you have a favourite classical author?

That's like having a favorite place in the world. Many, many spring to mind: Louisa May Alcott, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe (he's popping up all over the place in this meme), Aristophanes, and I could go on. I'm sure, though, that I have plenty of undiscovered authors who would fit the bill once I get around to reading them. Maybe in my next life?

6. Do you prefer to watch the movie first, or read the book first?

Unless I know it's going to be my next lifetime before I finally get around to reading the book, I prefer to read the book first. There's nothing I hate more than being told what a character looks like (via images on a screen) before I've created the character in my own mind. In fact, it can ruin a book for me. Sometimes I accidentally see a movie first, because I don't realize it's a book (The Descendants), but usually I read the book before seeing the movie.

7. Do you have enough bookshelves? (I know this question is a cheat, because really do any of us have enough bookshelves?)

I would if my husband didn't have so many books :-)!

8. Is there an author that you are planning to read this year for the first time?

Yes, Jack Vance (and I've already begun to read him and have fallen in love with him).

9. Do you have a favourite historical period, and why is it your favourite?

The 1920s. It's my favorite because I love the 1960s, too, and all the radical changes that shook up the world, and the 1920s were the same. People forget that because our memories are short, and no one studies history much anymore. The 1920s were the original radical decade of the twentieth century.

10. Name a book that you are anticipating reading that is being published this year.

Tana French's Broken Harbour. Can. Not. Wait.

and just because I [Susan, although Emily loves this question, too] like this question so much:

11. Name two of your favourite novels that you have reread more than once.

Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, which I recently wrote about here and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Like The Phantom Tollbooth, I read it about once a decade or so.

These are my 11 questions (which will include some questions about music, so technically, I probably could label this post "music", as well, but I won't):

1. Have you ever liked a movie more than the book? If so, what movie(s)?

2. ________ opening for __________ would be a dream concert. Fill in the blanks. (You can fill them in with performers dead or alive.)

3. If you're making dinner and don't need to take into account anyone else's tastes but your own, what do you find yourself having over and over again?

4. You get to interview the author of the book you are reading right now. What's the first question you'd ask?

5. If the world becomes one in which all new novels are only published in digital format, what will you miss most?

6. If you had been gifted to play any musical instrument brilliantly, what would you choose to play? (Or maybe you are so-gifted. If so, what do you play?)

7. The "war between the sexes" has been around since the beginning of time. What do you think is the biggest problem between the sexes today?

8. If you could switch places with any celebrity for three months, with whom would you like to switch places?

9. You can eat at any restaurant in the world. Where would you eat?

10. What book do you wish you hadn't wasted your time reading last year?

11. Would you like me to answer all these questions myself?

I'm tagging the following 11 people (some of whom have been tagged in almost every single meme I've ever done, I think, which reminds me of the good old days when I used to spend so much time whizzing around the blogosphere):

Ms. Musings

Zoe's Mom

Litlove

Danny

Bob

Fem Fem

Charlotte

Rebecca H.

Stefanie

Cam

Coutney

Looking forward to hearing what everyone has to say!

2012 Classics Challenge: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1897.

Earlier this month, I went down to Virginia to celebrate my mother's 80th birthday. While there, I came down with a cold. When you come down with a cold, there is no better cure than lying in bed at my parents' house and reading Pride and Prejudice, which, of course, was easy enough to find on their shelves. Unlike Pride and Prejudice's poor Jane Bennet, who, during her first visit with the Bingleys, comes down with a nasty cold that hangs on for days, I was over mine in no time. Happily, while feeding my cold, I was also fulfilling one of my assigned readings for November's Autumn's Classics Challenge.

Below are the challenge prompts and my answers to them. I've finished the book, so will work my way through all 3 levels of prompts.

Level 1 What phrases has the author used to introduce this character? What are your first impressions of them? Find a portrait or photograph that closely embodies how you imagine them.

Austen lets us know from the beginning that all the Bennet daughters are beautiful when she tells us,

"[Mr. Bingley] entertained hopes of being admitted to a sight of the young ladies, of whose beauty he had heard much." (p. 7). We then hear what Mr. Bingley thinks, specifically, of Elizabeth, when he tells Darcy, "'...there is one of her sisters sitting down just behind you, who is very pretty, and I dare say very agreeable.'" (p. 10). We learn a little more about Elizabeth when she and her sister Jane are talking, and she tells us how she differs from Jane, "'Compliments always take you by surprise, and me never.'" (p. 12), which points to a sort of confidence Elizabeth has, probably because, as we are later told, she is her father's favorite child. Early on in the book, Elizabeth comes across as discerning and serious, but she has a wry sense of humor that's charming, and she is not above giving into her heart, which she does when she worries about Jane falling ill with that cold and goes off to care for her sister. My first impressions are of someone I'd like to befriend.

I've always imagined Elizabeth Bennet as a woman in a Renoir painting. According to Austen's description of her, her eyes are her best feature. This woman in "At the Concert" (above) has large, beautiful eyes, doesn't she? And she's got an intelligent look about her, seeming to be lost in thought and not at all interested in that bouquet of flowers and program that seem to be holding the other girl's interest. Elizabeth is wise and intelligent, not the sort to be much impressed by bouquets.

Level 2 How has the character changed? Has your opinion of them altered? Are there aspects of their character you aspire to? or hope never to be? What are their strengths and faults? Do you find them believable? If not, how could they have been molded so? Would you want to meet them?

Although still quite judgmental, Elizabeth softens a little as the book goes on. My opinion of her never alters much. I'd still like to be her friend. When it comes to aspirations, I wish I were as good as she is at witty repartee. She always seems to know just what to say. What I hope never to be is someone who has to depend on a man in order to live (but that's not really her fault. She can't help the era into which she was born). She becomes very human to this reader when she suffers being embarrassed by her family in front of Darcy, a scene which always makes me laugh. Her weaknesses are her tendency to jump to conclusions and to be a bit of a know-it-all. Her strengths are her ability to admit when she's wrong and to handle hurt with humor. I find her to be very believable for a 21st-century character, but maybe a bit unbelievable for a woman of her time. That may just be because I have my own biases (or should we call them prejudices?) when it comes to the 18th and 19th centuries and women. Since I would like to befriend her, and I can't do so without meeting her, I absolutely want to meet her.

Level 3 Try writing a short (four sentences +) note or letter as the character, addressed to you, another character, the author, anyone.

Dear Emily,

I hear that it is your desire to meet me, and that you will be visiting our mutual friend Mrs. ---- in August. Please join us for dinner at Pemberly on August 12th. Mrs. ---- has indicated that a walk around the gardens, weather permitting, would make our first meeting most agreeable to you. This shall be arranged.

With kindest regards,

Elizabeth

And when I get there, I will focus on becoming her friend and will not spend all my time gawking at Darcy, trying to figure out if he really is too good to be true.

P.S. Stay tuned. I will be writing up full reviews of both 1984 (the first book I read for this challenge) and Pride and Prejudice over at my library book review blog.

1984 by George Orwell

Orwell, George. 1984. New York: Signet Classics, 1984.

I'm about halfway into 1984 by George Orwell for November's Autumn Classics Challenge. It's a book that I'm having to discipline myself to read very, very slowly, because it's so terrifying and such a nail-biter that I want to race through it to see what happens next, but it's so meaty that it deserves to be chewed and digested bit by bit -- so much insight and wisdom on every. single. page. Why has it taken me so long to read such a brilliant work? (I now know I couldn't possibly have read it before, despite thinking for years that I may have read it in college. It would certainly have stuck with me the way other great classics I read back then have).

If you've never read it and think you couldn't possibly like it, you might want to re-think that thought. In many ways, it reads like the best of spy thrillers. The reader is constantly worried that the characters are going to get caught: have they made a mistake? Have they trusted someone who can't be trusted? I don't have the answers yet, since I haven't finished reading the book, but I'm hoping everyone, thus far, is what he or she seems to be and can be trusted. Since it's a dystopia, though, I'm guessing that horrible things (as if things can get much more horrible than living in this world in which a good idea -- socialism/communism -- has, in the hands of the wrong sorts of leaders, turned into a horrible reality, a totalitarian world in which no one is free and everyone is kept in oppressive roles) are yet to come.

Anyway, I've got prompts to answer for the challenge, and even though there are different levels, depending on how far the reader is into the book, I'm going to take a stab at answering all three prompts. It will be interesting to see if I change my mind by the time I reach the end of the book, and I'll let you know if I do.

Level 1

Who is the author? What does he look like? When was he born? Where did he live? What does his handwriting look like? What are some other novels he's written? What is an interesting and random fact about his life?

George Orwell was born Eric Blair in 1903 in India. I've posted his picture above. I think he looks intelligent (probably that large forehead makes me think that) and kindly (the look in his eyes and the way he's holding his mouth). He lived in India, England, and Spain (the latter because he had volunteered to fight for the Republicans against Franco's Nationalist uprising). I thought I might have a hard time finding a sample of his handwriting, but I eventually found one here. I'm glad to see that his writing, like mine, isn't exactly the neatest or the easiest to read. I wonder if he suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome, too (which is why my writing, which used to be quite neat, has gone way down hill over the years. I think that may be a problem for all those of us who've spent long hours writing ever since we learned how to grab a pen and get to it). He also wrote Animal Farm, which I haven't read, either. During his lifetime, though, he was better known as an essayist. An interesting fact about him is that, during WWII, he wrote propaganda for the BBC (they called it "programs") to gain East Asian and Indian support for the British war effort. He knew exactly what he was doing and said he felt like "an orange that's been trodden on by a dirty boot." It didn't take him long (2 years) to decide the pay wasn't worth it, and he resigned.

Level 2 What do you think of his writing style? What do you like about it? Or what would have made you more inclined to like it? Is there a particular quote that has stood out for you?

Orwell's writing style is crisp and clean without being fragmented or disjointed, and it's seamless. I'm not aware of an author who is desperately trying to write, to get his stitches straight, and to weave in awkward symbolism to make me think. Orwell just glides along like a well-oiled sewing machine, making me think, and I can disappear into his story without worrying about odd stitching. This seamlessness is what I like about it (I am always drawn to seamless writing). There are numerous good quotes, but here's a nice example of one:

'They can't get inside you. If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any result whatever, you've beaten them.' (p. 138)

Level 3

Why do you think he wrote this novel? How did his contemporaries view both the author and the novel?

I think he wrote this novel to portray the dangers of any political system if put into the hands of the wrong man. He'd fought and had been wounded in Spain and had seen what totalitarian socialist and communist dictators like Franco and Stalin could do. He was a "democratic socialist" himself, but he was able to imagine how someone (or a group of "someones") could twist and pound ideologies, using them to fulfill selfish goals and ambitions, to the detriment of those living under them. Again, I come back to the word "brilliant" to describe this work. I imagine his contemporaries who were pro-democratic and anti-communist probably also thought he was brilliant, while communist sympathizers probably loathed him. I found this bit of information here:

In 1949 Orwell was approached by a friend, Celia Kirwan, who had just started working for a Foreign Office unit, the Information Research Department, which had been set up by the Labour government to publish pro-democratic and anti-communist propaganda. He gave her a list of 37 writers and artists he considered to be unsuitable as IRD authors because of their pro-communist leanings. The list, not published until 2003, consists mainly of journalists (among them the editor of the New Statesman, Kingsley Martin) but also includes the actors Michael Redgrave and Charlie Chaplin. Orwell's motives for handing over the list are unclear, but the most likely explanantion is the simplest: that he was helping out a friend in a cause - anti-Stalinism - that both supported. There is no indication that Orwell ever abandoned the democratic socialism that he consistently promoted in his later writings - or that he believed the writers he named should be suppressed. Orwell's list was also accurate: the people on it had all at one time or another made pro-Soviet or pro-communist public pronouncements.

You can see why I've been led to believe that probably many of his contemporaries despised him.

I'd like to end this post with one more observation. I don't know why on earth any student would be made to read this book in high school, as many have been through the years. It's one of those books that people need to read after they've lived a while, have observed human nature and emotions in ways most teenagers haven't, and who have a pretty good understanding of different sorts of political states. (Having said that, I know that Bob taught it to high school students, and my guess is that he made it come alive.)

The New and Improved Telecommuter Talk

It's been over a month since I posted anything on this blog, and I haven't been reading any blogs, either. Some of this is due to the fact that 2011 -- a year that will be memorable for not being one of the best in the Barton household -- went out with a bang (our car broke down on the way to Maine and what should have been a relaxing vacation, after an exhausting Thanksgiving and Christmas season, instead became an exhausting vacation dealing with what to do with it and, ultimately, buying a new car -- the Prius v, Prius's new station wagon, which is proving to be a fabulous car so far). That happened during the week of December 26th, and we got back to Pennsylvania on January 3, though, so I can't really blame it for my disappearance from the blogosphere for all of January as well. I can say, however, that because I didn't have the relaxing vacation I'd planned, in which I was going to spend the majority of my days reading in front of a fire, I came back with three long books to read for our One Book, One Community committee (I'm serving on that to choose the book our three counties will be reading for 2013). I had to spend every spare minute reading them. Then again, that meeting was a week ago, so I can't really use it as an excuse anymore. Finally, I've decided that I was just a little bit bored with my blog, but I don't want to give up on blogging altogether. After 5 1/2 years, I just needed to tweak it a bit.

First up: a face lift. I've changed the design template (Blogger has much more to offer in this regard than they did when I first came on board with them). I hope you like it. I'm way too much of a Luddite to design my own look, but this one caught my eye.

Secondly, I've decided to be more purposeful in my posting. Those of you who've been with me since the beginning know that I started this blog with the intent of writing about my experiences as a telecommuter. I quickly ran out of content and started writing about any and everything. My blog's title now seems like false advertising; I don't even telecommute anymore; but I like it (I'm a huge fan of alliteration), so I'm going to keep it. How to be more purposeful? I started thinking about my passions, and I came up with three:

1. Books

2. Food

3. Music

I'm not at all original in my passions, huh? I'm passionate about other things: animals (especially frogs), for instance, but I don't particularly like reading and writing about them. I mean, there are only so many fascinating facts about frogs that I would care to share with my readers and only so many pictures I could take of new additions to the frog collection I've had since I was five. Books, food, and music, though, are passions that lend themselves well to blog posts. After all, I've already been blogging about books and music for years. I recently realized that, although I talk about loving food and cooking, I rarely ever post anything about my adventures in the kitchen (kind of like I talk about writing a novel and a collection of ghost stories and never seem to finish them -- but I am. I promise! It's just taking much longer than I'd like). I think it's about time I did.

With these three passions in mind, I've come up with a weekly game plan for the blog, as follows:

One post a week will be focused on books. This won't necessarily be a book review, although I hope to include plenty of those, but it will always be about books or authors or publishing or libraries or some such thing.

One post a week will be focused on music. Again, it may be more than a favorite song (which I've been doing for years on Music Monday), and I do still plan to share favorite songs, but I want to broaden this category and write about groups or composers or types of music, etc. And I hope to stop being so lazy, giving you something a little more substantial than mere links to YouTube videos.

One post a week will be about food. Same thing. I hope to share original recipes with you, but I also want to share other aspects of food that interest me, like nutrition and the celebrity chef phenomenon, etc.

Finally, one post a week will be a free-for-all. This is where all the other stuff I like to ponder will appear.

I'm not going to assign days of the week to these posts, although Music Monday seems like it ought to remain on Mondays (lovely alliteration yet again), so it probably will. My goal is to be more purposeful but not more anal: no need to assign specific days of the week to specific types of posts. I'm going to start using the label function, so if you're not interested, say, in reading about music, you can skip that post and spend your time reading what does interest you.

So, Happy New Year, everyone, and Happy New Telecommuter Talk (I hope)!