Halloween hasn’t even come and gone and I’m skipping that aisle and heading straight for the Christmas stuff: cards, ornaments, lights. I even bought my stamps two weeks ago. I checked out the stash of gifts I’ve already bought and I’m seriously thinking about wrapping them and piling them up in the living room.
I’m not sure what’s gotten into me this year. It could simply be that I’m anticipating taking that week off (since I haven’t had a proper vacation all year) and I’m scheduling my Christmas activities already. Yes, there will be touristy events: Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, holiday windows and St Pat’s cathedral. Maybe I’ll drag a friend to the NY Botanical Gardens to see the toy train show or travel to Longwood Gardens. I’m even tempted to buy tickets to see the Radio City Rockettes! I will spend Christmas Eve with my friend and then Christmas dinner with my family.
I’ve switched to Pandora’s Christmas Classics channel and I cannot wait for my cable’s seasonal music to change from spooky to spiritual. I’m sorry that I didn’t get guitar lessons this year so I could produce my own favorite tunes on demand or share my enthusiasm with friends and family. That will go on the New Year’s resolution list!
I’m not sure why I’m so excited about Christmas this year. I’m just happy right now. Heck, I don’t even think I’d complain if it snowed in November.
I swear there is a trapdoor somewhere in my life. It’s been following me around since I was 7 and I keep losing things in it. First it was a stuffed toy. Then a ring when I was 14. I have no idea where the waffle iron went because I swear I didn’t put it in storage with the rest of my stuff and now my binoculars have gone missing. I remember looking at my neighbor’s Christmas tree. It should be on the bookcase, I swear.
I am sure all of these items, along with an assortment of hats, gloves and scarves, are altogether–in some other plane of existence. I would really like to find that trapdoor.
Not necessarily to retrieve the lost items but to escape.
Soulless (The Parasol Protectorate) by Gail Carriger is an alternate Victorian History, where vampires run the politics, werewolves run the military with a little Steampunk thrown in. I really like Miss Alexia Tarabotti, the protagonist of this fun read. She’s spunky, witty, very resourceful, oh–and soulless. However that doesn’t make her a bad person just different. To make up for this deficiency, she has read many books to develop her ethics. She also has her father’s journals, where she has learned a great deal about being soulless (as he was too) and a variety of other topics, (which shouldn’t be discussed in polite company). Miss Tarabotti is also known as The Cursebreaker because when she touches a supernatural creature, like a vampire or werewolf they become human again. Her family and friends are unaware of her supernatural proclivities. To them she is an intractable unattractive spinster. Her dearest friend, Miss Ivy Hisselpenny, has no sense of style, constantly wears the most outrageous hats and she has the poor taste to fall for a–thespian! The horror! Miss Tarabotti and the resident hunky werewolf Lord Conall Maccon, the Earl of Woolsey are constantly bickering so we can absolutely expect them to fall in love, if they haven’t already. (Do you see shades of Pride and Prejudice here?) I cannot overlook Lord Akeldama, he is an ancient vampire who looks like a young dandy and (gasp) he fancies men.
Ms Carriger does a nice job of explaining the supernatural terminology and the hierarchical structures within the werewolves and vampires. I appreciated not having to search for a glossary.
Out of curiosity, after having read the book, I decided to listen to the audio book. Emily Gray is the reader and she is fantastic. Her interpretations and deftness in creating the characters and setting the pace are wonderful. Honestly–don’t read the book, listen to it and if you have read the book, you will get even more out of listening to it.
I bought a Kindle. After much contemplation and several trips to Target and Best Buy and reading way too many reviews I finally bought the Kindle 3 WiFi version. So what sold me on it and not a Nook or a Kobo or a Sony? Well it came down to a few basic features. I like the size, it’s light and comfortable in my hands. I like the fonts I can choose from. Also, I like the no glare screen. I like the ease of getting books, since I love to shop on Amazon anyway. But for me the thing that tipped the scale were the buttons. I really hate touchscreens. Even though I have these skinny little fingers I always manage to fat finger any entries on a touch screen.
I have a touchscreen on my phone. I hate it. I’m always putting in the wrong characters, the wrong numbers, dialing the wrong people. God forbid I have to enter someone into my contacts list! Since everyone is always trying to improve products, and I’ve had perfectly good products ruined because someone decided it might sell better if it was exactly like its competitor, I decided to buy the Kindle now before some fool decides to make it a “touchscream”, too. One thing that disappoints me: currently I cannot take books out of the library. I understand that Amazon is working with Overdrive so hopefully in a few months that disappointment will be fixed.
So now I’m ready for all those big 500-1000 page fantasy novels! Bring on Game of Thrones! Bring on Outlander! Ohhh–I can download any Jane Austen novel for free? Gotta run!
A friend was complaining that his wife kept buying day planners and not using them. Immediately I knew what was going on. She was trying to find a way to organize her time. I recognize it because I have all these pretty notebooks and pretty composition books and pretty journals that are mostly empty. The journals are sharing space on the shelf with titles like: Write Brain, Take Ten, The Writer’s Idea Book. The notebooks are everywhere. They are in the den, under my bed, under my desk. Small note taking pads travel around in my car. I even purchased a digital recorder so when the great idea strikes I don’t have to pull off the road and find a pen. I only have to push a button. Truthfully I have pushed the button a few times but those ideas are still stuck on the recorder when they should have been transferred to here.
I tend to talk to myself in the car and sometimes I have the whole essay talked out in my mind but once I walk in the door I’m completely distracted and all those elegant thoughts and clever quips fade away like the dream I had last night. I might remember a little of it but it’s just not the same. This is the reason why I bought the recorder. Now it seems I’ve gone from writer’s block to talker’s block.
So now I’m just going to babble. Stream of consciousness writing. Going to stop the internal editor, except to correct a misspelled word and hope for the best.
A couple of years ago I found myself out of work and I discovered a great way to save money, storage space and I’m sure the environment. I’m talking about the public library. I can search for books by topic, author or title, reserve them online and the only drawback is that they aren’t delivered to my doorstep. I can return the books anytime of the day and night and if I need to I can renew online. If I pick up an author I hate, it didn’t cost me anything. If I pick up an author I like, I can reserve every book they’ve ever written and it won’t cost me a fortune.
With the onset of the internet people kept predicting the end of libraries but those smart librarians have learned to adapt. My county library has become a major resource for job hunters. They offer career seminar courses that cover target job search, local resources, company research and online applications. They offer short courses on how to use word processing, spreadsheets and presentation software. I can even email or fax questions to the reference librarian.
The only thing missing is the cafe. I mentioned that to a friend and you’d think I was proposing that the devil should come to dinner. I think it would be a nice little moneymaker. Offer coffee and tea all the time and then there could be bake sale fund raisers on the weekend. With all the budget cutting going on it might be a clever way to raise a little extra money. The other weekend the librarians were wearing t-shirts to promote reading. Hey for $15-20 I would have purchased one.
Jane Bites Back by Michael Thomas Ford. So Jane Austen is a vampire and she’s been submitting her unpublished manuscript for last 200 years and had collected 116 rejection letters before someone decided to publish it. She complains about not getting royalties on her novels nor money from all the novelty items. (Can you imagine seeing a collectible finger puppet version of yourself on the shelf?)
I liked how Ford created a world where the vampires could simply fit in almost completely unnoticed. They can go out in the sunlight, they can eat food or drink wine, they can sleep in regular beds. And death wasn’t limited to a stake in the heart.
I liked Lucy in her role as substitute sister. She took Jane’s news very well, (perhaps too well) but she was needed to lighten up Jane and give her some perspective.
Byron as a vampire. Eternally handsome, writing poetry and romance novels? I saw that coming along with that crazy Violet Grey. Although the life sized mannequins in the kitchen did give me pause.
I wasn’t initially reading the excerpts from Constance at the beginning of each chapter. When I did, I realized they were a foreshadowing device that I sometimes found clever and sometimes trite.
It was a quick fun summer read. I liked how it poked fun at vampire stories, Byron and Jane.
I just saw Pinter’s No Man’s Land. I can’t say I liked it but the acting was good. The question and answer with the cast and director was very enlightening. I think I would have just hated the play if I hadn’t stayed for the discussion which answered some of my questions.
At first I wasn’t sure who was the main character in the play. Is it Spooner? Spooner practically on stage the whole show. When he ends up alone in the locked in the room, I have to wonder is he simply crazy and this is his interpretation of his cell and are these his hallucination? Knowing this was a Pinter play I started to wonder if maybe it was Hirst, since he was the character physically in the center stage and his name and story remain the same throughout. So then, were the other character’s real, allegorical or imaginative?
The director pointed out that the viewer brought their own personal experience into the play. In other post-play discussions people felt that this could have been the result of Hirst’s drinking or that he had dementia or some other mental illness. However once the director pointed out that Pinter’s wife, Vivien Merchant had a drinking problem it was easier to see it in that light although any of the others would work as well.
Listening to the actors describe how they developed their characters was very interesting. The actor playing Hirst felt that all the other parts were characters representing different facets of the protag’s life. This was interesting because their names changed as they play went on as well as their stories, their roles, clothes, accents. Another actor played his role straight. Another said that he never built a backstory. He felt that the whole thing had a dreamlike feel, where the dream reality kept changing and flowing. All of these different methods meshed together.
Even the set with its subtly skewed perspectives added to the disturbing ambiance. The doors were slightly askance, instead of four walls there were in effect five. The ceiling radically sloped. The “floor” came to a point and jutted out over the front of the stage. The director added a Keyser Söze effect, the picture over the fireplace was painted by Spooner and there is a picture of a jonquil on the wall.
I doubt that I’ll ever really like the play, but I do think I’d like to see another interpretation of it.
Wow, Johanna Parker was fantastic reading the Sookie Stackhouse (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood)
Sookie is a waitress in Bon Temps, La. and she can read minds. Although I think “hear” would be a better description. Her brother Jason is a were-panther. She’s been involved with several supernatural creatures, a vampire, a weretiger and then there is her witch roommate and Bob the cat who wasn’t a cat before and well let’s just say now he’s a cat. But Sookie’s perky attitute, keen observations and the clever remarks (that frequently have me thinking that’s something I would say) help her survive everything that shows up at her door.
Ms. Harris has created a character that I would have liked to be my friend–a friend I would have warned about getting so involved with the supernatural. Slowly the problems and dangers build up as Sookie life becomes more entwined and by the last book I wanted to take my friend away and help her recover from the emotional and physical beating she had been experiencing. I would be interest to see what Ms Harris has planned for Sookie because Sookie has changed so much and has to change to survive . There is no going back only coping and adapting however I see a very dark future for her.
Below are links to a couple of the audiobooks. To find all of them on Amazon you will need to search on both Sookie Stackhouse and Parker.
Dead as a Doornail: Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mystery #5
All Together Dead (Sookie Stackhouse)
Okay, cue the spooky music. Christmas morning I’m trying to finish the last gift and the delicate aroma of dusting powder drifted into the room. To appreciate this odd event you have to understand that I was alone in the house, I don’t use dusting powder and the only person I know who did was mom and she’s been gone for 7 Christmases.
It had to be mom dropping in to wish me Merry Christmas. I miss mom. I miss her warmth, her humor, her excellent advice, her love. I told her about my year and how I was doing and that I still miss her. I also told her I hope she was having a good time, telling jokes with Aunt Ellen and that grandmother had developed a sense of humour. And that I hoped her cats where with her. I think the hereafter would be really lacking if it didn’t have cats and dogs and joke telling siblings.
I doubt that I’ll ever stop missing her.