Hamlet

I finally finished Hamlet today. I had been putting it off forever, even though I'd had a class on it three years ago and saw a production of it last summer in Utah. Still, I didn't want to read it. As it turns out, it was okay. I think I'm just a little prejudiced against Shakespeare is all.

Paradise Lost

I finished it today. Let me set the stage here: I read about 100 pages an hour. That's not a super speed, but I can finish a good size novel in an afternoon. Most recently, I finished Cat's Cradle in four hours. But Paradise Lost?
SEVEN DAYS.
Today I read 150 pages, finishing the thing, and it took 8 hours.
It was good, other than that.
An excellent re-rendering of Christian ideals.

Cat's Cradle

Doctor Faustus

The Grapes of Wrath

Moved!

The hectic time has now passed, except I still need to find a job in Portland. I should resume posting in the next few weeks, since everyone here is reading all the time. Reading and drinking coffee. So cliche.

Twelfth Night

Just under five weeks to M-day

So.
N and I have lived in Vegas for 25 and 17 years respectively. Now we are picking up and relocating ourselves to Portland, OR.
N is going first, in about five weeks, and I'm following about a month later.
This week, on Wednesday, the movers are coming to survey how much crap we're moving, since N's parents have tenderly volunteered to pay for professionals to do the move for us. I am aware that they are going to steal all our possesions, don't worry. I'm keeping a month's worth of clothes, my favorite books, and all of my other important stuff on my person - Gramma's diaries? Staying with me. Also, my cat is staying with me.
I do not trust that N won't "free" him into a river.
Challenges for the coming week, then, include packing N's room, getting rid of, I dunno, THE COMMADOR? Yes. The THREE obsolete cpus? Yes. So I'll be posting before, during and after pictures.
Expect a lot of updates Wednesday morning, because N will finally get down to business on Tuesday night. :)
Anyway, this may seem a little silly, but I'm really impressed by the number of tasks I have to accomplish in the next five odd weeks.
My best bud just went through this and I simply mocked. Now I see the true horror and am humbled.
Hopefully the payoff will be worth the effort.
Civel

The Letters of Oscar Wilde

Edited by Rupert Hart-Davis. I've been reading this for my thesis. Wilde's letters are really witty, in fact. He looks like a fun correspondent. Other than this, I've been working my butt off and getting ready to move. So "my cliche existence" is going to temporarily change its face, since I miss posting.
More on that to come, later today.

Dibs in Search of Self

This is not a book I would have picked up, but it is a very interesting non-fiction psychology text. In it, Dr. Virginia Axline tells the story of a messed up, genius 5 year old boy...well, I'll leave it there, because you really should read it.

Little Porcelian cup in which biting acids could be mixed

Yes, that is the title, and no it didn't occur to me to figure out what that is referencing until this very moment-fear not, I'll look it up soon.
This is an amazingly well-written essay by Michael M. Kaylor. I hate his points, and I hate his ambiguous stance on moralizing and condemning - but I see myself caught up in excellent organization and phrasing that shows real attention to detail.
Therefore, it is an excellent essay, written by an ambiguous person who over estimates the importance of sex.

Oscar Wilde's Decorated Books

I read a lot of long, boring books. This book is, additionally, a mess to read. I don't know if any of the information was offered for a reason or a point, but there was a lot of it, thrown together under the guise of a book. The overall impression is that I still know almost nothing about core concepts the book initially pretended to be about, and my vocabulary of pompous words has run sobbing from the room.

Update: Why no updates...

Not only have I been stuck doing a completely useless paper for school, but I've been distracted with an upcoming move.
Although it didn't do you, my alleged readers, any good, I've been writing to you from Las Vegas, Nevada (Vegas, Baby!). Wouldn't guess that someone so boring would live in such a shiny place, huh? Raised there though, go figure. Anyway, N is going to accept a job in Portland, OR, and we're set to head up there in August. Today we went to Powell's books. Expect a lot on Pater.
So anyway, right now I'm celebrationally drunk half away from today and exceedingly excited.

Cheers,
Civel

Requiem - Akhmatova's best piece?

I wouldn't know, because I've only read four of her poems.
Hopefully, certain people will realize I don't have this book, I want it, and this is what it looks like.

Emma

Incidentally, my cover doesn't look like this at all.
Mine has a hideous picture of Austen on the front.

When Dreams Came True

Whew- busy month.
I will be less thorough and more productive, to keep my readers (all two of them) happy.

Lu Xun: A Madman's Diary

Another short one! I'm dying to get on with a longer work though, and I have several waiting for me to get around to them, so hang in there. This, of course, is as interesting as the title suggests. The narrator is experiencing extreme paranoia, seeing things and imagining things and above all convinced that everyone wants to eat him, even his own brother. It isn't very long, so you'll forgive me for having very little to report! (Lu Xun/ aka. Zhou Shuren: 1881-1936)

Horst Schroeder: "Some Historical and Literary References in Oscar Wilde's 'The Birthday of the Infanta'"

A quick, interesting piece of research, "Some Historical..." proposes that the Infanta's father is actually meant to be Charles II of Spain. Schroeder builds his argument on some convincing circumstantial evidence- people of the times, similar names or traits, coinciding events. He does have several articles of evidence along these lines, which makes an overall believable argument. I don't know how useful this will be for my purposes, but I'm glad I read it.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Yellow Wallpaper

I've read this before, and it's very short, so it hardly counts for the purposes of this blog, but if you haven't read "The Yellow Wallpaper," you definitely should. Gilman is one of the few American writers (Connecticut) that I'm interested in. She deals with the social conditions of middle class and upper class women at the turn of the 19th century (1899 to 1900s). In this story, a woman is slowly driven insane by her husband/ physician, who has prescribed a strict regimen of rest and solitude to "cure" the narrator of post-partum depression. Her objective correlative, in this case, is the horrible yellow wallpaper that lines the room to which she is "confined" day and night. A quick read, and one I really recommend.

Austen: Mansfield Park

Possibly one of my favorite novels, up until the last chapter, where Austen winds everything up with a direct speech from the narrator. It is all rather hurriedly wrapped up and I don't like it. But the rest of the book is excellent. The main character, Fanny Price, is a very sweet, quiet main character with a great deal of sense ( as always). The intended love is Edmund Bertram, who has been her constant companion since the Mertrams adopted her at age nine. She is, at eighteen, in love with him, but he is smitten with Mary Crawford. Fanny's two cousins Maria and Julia Bertram are not the typical sort of horrible step-sister characters, but the effect of their slight snobbery is intensified in the narrator's depictions of Fanny because she is so sensitive. These girls get some recompence when Mr. Henry Crawford, Mary's sister, is suddenly mad for Fanny after flirting with them for months. And she rejects him, of course, because his manners are unseemly, so he runs of with Mrs. Rushworth (Maria) and ruins both of them. Because of Mary's callous attitude towards his sister, Edmund decides he cannot love her (for a trait that Fanny has pointed out since day one!) and decides to marry Fanny. Yay! Other important characters are Sir Thomas, William, and Mrs. Norris, the evil aunt who always reminds Fanny how low her position is.

Austen: Sense and Sensibility

Not much to say on this one, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood are the main characters, and the novel is very similar to Austen's other novels, in telling the story of women getting married despite numerous ups and downs. The main players are Willoughby, who doesn't marry either because he's a selfish stinker, and Edward Ferrar and Colonel Brandon. There is also that screwy Mrs. Jennings and Lucy Steele, who can't make up her mind to marry Edward or his brother.

National Dreams: The Remaking of Fairy Tales in Nineteenth Century England

National Dreams traces the introduction of the fairy tale tradition into England. England, evidently choosing to believe that it had Industrialized itself out of folklore, was eager to embrace the traditions of Germany, Ireland, India and from the Norse. The writer uses a narratological approach to determine the relationship between the writer and the peasant or middle class authors of early fairy tale collections. I really like that Schacker makes ample use of pictures. The illustrations used in the early editions reveal the prejudices of the English. Obviously there are some really interesting interactions between the different societies involved, keeping in mind that England had colonized Ireland and India at this time, and these are evident in the fairy tale collections. There are also interesting interactions between social classes, as the tellers are peasantry dying out and the partakers are usually bourgeois or wealthier.
Overall, a really fun book that I was really interested in, but the writing was a little dry and occasionally hard to follow. I got a lot of great ideas about format from it too, so I’m getting more excited about my own project.

Henry James: The Aspern Papers

A story about an old poet's old mistress and a cunning publisher who will stop at nothing to catch hold or their private correspondence. Main characters: Juliana Bordereau, Tita Bordereau, nameless narrator. Henry James may paint Tita as the heroine because, after her proposal to the narrator is rejected, she takes the moral high road and burns her aunt's letters.
I rate this a 5 out of 10. I didn't like it, but it was short.

Welcome to my blog

I have four different categories for reading:
1. Thesis: These are articles, books and stories I'm reading for my M.A. thesis.
2. GRE: A big, scary literature test I have to take in November.
3. Work: I teach literature classes.
4. Pleasure: HA HA HA HA! But if I happen to, I'll list it.

I intend to list the time of completion and give a brief summary and recommendation.

As for the coffee: I try new drinks whenever I have time and I like to visit new cafes. I also travel a lot. So if I have something great, I'll list it. For those who love Starbucks, despite their burnt beans, I frequently enjoy the tall soy white mocha, with three shots of espresso and two pumps of raspberry. If you're lucky enough to have a coffee bean and tea leaf near you, a large iced Americano, black, is my favorite.