Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy: the last man in the world, by Abigail Reynolds

I generally avoid chic-lit when I can. I find it too predictable, too idealistic and often flavorless. When I do pick up chic-lit, it's usually in the form of a Jane Austen "sequel" or a variation on the original novels. Pamela Aidan wrote my favorites of these - her Mr. Darcy, Gentleman trilogy which takes place over the course of Pride & Prejudice. Abigail Reynolds has penned a number of non-sequential Pride and Prejudice variations, each picking a spot in which the story could have changed, but inevitably bringing Elizabeth and Darcy together.

the warm breeze of home part deux

Well, I got my wish. At exactly 3pm this afternoon we got a crazy storm. Pouring rain, 60mph wind gusts....I even started keeping an eye out for signs of a tornado....and it'll all be over by 3:30. Thank you, Florida, for paying me a visit.

The warm breeze of home

As I stepped off of the train this evening and headed down the stairs, "Two Brothers" (the Ali Olmo version featured in The American Adventure at EPCOT) was playing on my iPod. As I exited the station, I could see the full moon, haloed by 2 distinct rings of color, giving both a face and a name, as it were, to the humidity hanging in the air.

Avocado & Lime Smoothie

Holy crappola, Batman, this was delicious. I drank it with a straw and am, even now, trying to suggest the last little bits in the bottom of the cup to hop into the straw so I can eat them.

I used a modified recipe from goneraw.com and I am SO happy I did. I had two avocados in the fridge, purchased last Thursday, on-sale as "eat today or refrigerate" aka "we have too many ripe avocados in the store!" I noticed that one of them was getting a little soft in the fridge, so I cut it open this evening to find that the inside still had some areas of brightness, but the sides were all a dark grey/brown and I was sad. I saved the best parts, and then decided to cut open the other avocado, which had just begun to soften the teeniest bit. Cut it open and voilà! it was PERFECT. So I scooped it out and made this:

Avocado-Lime smoothie (serves 1...maybe 1.5 persons)

Ingredients:
1 amazingly wonderful avocado, halved
2 to 3 large ice cubes
3 small frozen cubes of lime juice (or 3-4 teaspoons)
1/4 cup of cold water
2 (or 3) packets of Stevia in the Raw

Throw in the blender. Break ice. Blend until thick and smooth.
DELICIOUS!




Okay, so this isn't the actual picture, 
but this IS what it looked like :)

Murder at Mansfield Park, by Lynn Shepherd

I had anticipated this latest Austen adaptation to be a bit like The Matters at Mansfield, by Carrie Bebris. I expected quite a bit of pastiche, mixed with an Austenesque preservation of the characters, even amounting to reverently mounting them on a pedestal of Jane Austen's own personality. The fact is, the pastiche is there in full force - you get almost word-for-word passages from each of Austen's novels throughout the text, along with an undeniable nod at Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre towards the later chapters. But the character preservation is gone, tossed out the window - we've kept the old wooden chess board, but the original pieces have gone missing - we've got to make do with what plastic pieces we can find.

The characters are all present, but they have different pasts, different presents, entirely different characteristics and, to top it all off, our heroine is not Jane Austen's pale, sickly, first-cousin-loving weakling Fanny Price, but her incorrigible Mary Crawford (who, in Ms. Shepherd's hands, takes on a very odd amalgamation of characteristics, making her at once Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennett and Elinor Dashwood!) It's a very strange feeling to have the characters alter as they do, here.

As its own novel (though there is a bit too much allusion for my taste) it stands pretty well. And though it bears the characters and even quotations of Jane Austen, it heavily relies on Charlotte Brontë's mood, structure, and even certain particular characters themselves. The end result, however, is not disappointing in the least. It's a pretty quick read, in part due to the inherent mystery of which character takes on which identity in the crosshairs of Ms. Shepherd's and Jane Austen's understanding.

Most interesting is Ms. Shepherd's take on Fanny Price. She sets the story up for us, almost in the reverse of the original characters' fortunes. Fanny's mother marries the best out of all the three sisters, instead of shaming her family by marrying an eventually-destitute sea captain. Fanny is an only child (instead of being the eldest girl out of 7 children...or 18 kids, whatever it was) who upon her parents' and grandparents' untimely demise (didn't happen in the original), is now an heiress, needing to be raised by her only living relatives, the Bertrams (and Mrs. Norris, of course).

Instead of being tossed about like a servant waif, she is exalted, afforded 2 ladies maids, given the best of everything, and - most importantly - put up with...desired, even. Ms. Shepherd's take on this new personality is haughty and really a mix of Maria Bertram, Emma Woodhouse and Caroline Bingley - not an attractive picture....like a very young Lady Catherine de Bourgh, but a picture, nonetheless, that allows us to buy into Ms. Shepherd's version of the plot.

I really enjoyed it. If only Jane Austen's Fanny Price had been more like Ms. Shepherd's version of Mary Crawford, perhaps then she would not be so ill-appreciated. Ah, well. Enjoy.

Ice, ice baby

 I'm pretty sick and tired of this heat wave New York is having, called "Summer." I don't like it. Not only do I find that I have to shower approximately once every 1.01372 hours in order to keep cool on my days off, but it is depriving me of sleep!

Overnight, it's been between 74 and 79 every night for the last month (I might be exaggerating slightly, but I very much doubt it). Every night, I take an(other) ice cold shower (and bring a pajama shirt into the shower with me), don said wet, cold night shirt, lie in bed with the fan blowing at my feet, with a frozen water bottle pressed into my back, another one propped between my neck and shoulder, and pass out for approximately 4 hours (the average length of my REM cycle) before waking up because I'm now dry and just slightly too warm.

But can I go back to sleep after rinsing my face and running ice over my wrists? Nooooo because by the time I get back to sleep and squeeze another 4 hours in, I'll be late for work. So my only option is to stay awake.

Why, do you ask, do I not get an air conditioner? Well, here's the thing: a) I don't want that electric bill, b) that would obstruct half of my happy plant space, and c) I can't sleep with AC because it dries my throat out. Inevitably, I'm happier this way...or would be, were it about 15 degrees cooler and breezy.

No, I'll survive another summer without AC. I've dealt for 4 summers, now. Perhaps the fifth will be the charm and I'll finally break down....but no, probably not....(okay maybe). Or maybe I'll install a swimming pool in my apartment? Who knows!

It's supposed to rain later on today which will supposedly bring the overnight temperature down from 76 last night to a whopping 74 tonight. Oh goody. If it were practical (and didn't mean potentially drowning or, at the very least, a lot of back pain) I would just sleep in the shower.

Video Scrambled

Alack and alas!

A moment of silence, please, for my free basic cable. I knew thee well, oh 13-channel HD wondrousness. For many many months did we live in harmony, supplied by the cable splitter, left behind by the cable guy who picked up my DVR box. We didn't need DVR, you and I. We had each other: you, me, and the internet for which I am robbed in the amount of $49.95 a month.

I was just about to celebrate our favorite past time - watching WipeOut! - when the cruel, sadistic words "video scrambled" flashed across the screen, and Channel 7 disappeared forever into the black HD void. I tried to resurrect you on Channels 5 and 2, but the light had gone from your widescreen eye, and my viewing pleasure was blackened with despair.

Some day, perhaps very soon, I shall find myself a newer, better job with higher, better pay, and I shall resurrect you, oh god of the cable, though it may cost me many more dollars. You will be avenged.

“On Friday 18th inst. Died, in this city, Miss Jane Austen, youngest daughter of the late Rev. George Austen, rector of Steventon , in the county and authoress of Emma, Mansfield park, pride and prejudice and sense and Sensibility.”
                         
Salisbury and Winchester Journal,
July 1817

the will, and the way

In 2000, I was finishing up my freshman year in high school. That March, I spotted an advertisement (I think it was online) for auditions at the Orlando Science Center. My parents, always extremely supportive of whatever course I chose to follow, were all for it. The audition was for OSC's "Overnight Adventures."

Essentially, a bunch of Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts would arrive at the Science Center around 6pm, see a short, themed performance to set the scene for the "adventure" they were about to embark on, and then they would rotate between stations all over the museum, focusing on a certain problem to solve. We'd break for dinner at 8ish, then resume the stations until all of the problems had been solved, and then they'd get to sleep in the science center. OSC still has these programs, but unfortunately they have no information on their site about the one I participated in, so all I have my memories of how this worked.

The theme of the program was King Arthur's court. There was a King Arthur, a Gwinevere, a Merlin, a few knights (Gawain, Lancelot, etc.) and then two Witches and two Ladies of the Lake (so that we could split the kids up and have more than one group working on a given problem at once, on opposite sides of the museum. Anyway, I went on the audition and was cast as one of the Ladies of the Lake. Another kid from the theatre program at school was cast as one of the knights, and someone else from school whom I had never met before, was the other Lady of the Lake.

There was no pay involved, but we got a free dinner every week (the overnights were every Friday night for, I think, eight or nine weeks) and we had a great time. Us Ladies were each given a two-tone purple leotard dress (Oh how I wish I had a picture of this thing) and were assigned specific stations. Along with manning....er.... ladying(?)....womanning(?) one of the water stations, I was also bat-girl. No, I did not have a fancy costume. I stayed in my Lady of the Lake costume, climbed the ladder to the catwalk above the house in the auditorium, and dropped fake bats on strings, on cue. Ah, the life of the artist.

The basic plot of the evenings was this: King Arthur and his court were having a banquet. Merlin was there, of course. Anyway, everything was going swimmingly when POOF the evil witch (I have no idea which sorceress they used, whether she had a name, etc.) appeared and caused havoc. The king then gives the campers the task of undoing all of the witch's....witchery. As the campers rotated between stations, there was always what I called a "bye" period, where I didn't have a group. So I would hop and skip through the science center, peeking out from behind walls, floating my bubbly laughter (yes. bubbly. laughter.) across a hallway so that the campers who hadn't had my station yet would have the anticipation of it. I didn't write this crap, this was all assigned to me.

My station was, of course!, a water station. The kids would show up and I would tell them all about how the evil witch, among her other evil deeds, had caused an oil spill in my lake (and then some hyperbolic nonsense about not being able to breathe, etc. etc. etc.). They were given a basket of options - tools they could use to try and clean up the oil (olive oil). They had some baking powder, a net (I think?), cotton swabs, salt, and I think something wooden like toothpicks, or perhaps a piece of cork. I don't fully remember. What I do remember is that these kids were bright. Most of them figured it out pretty quickly, even amid my sitting on top of the rock fountain, occasionally splashing their efforts. They figured out that by using one item, it just split the oil up into smaller bubbles, and that using another did absolutely nothing but get them wet, another tool made the smaller bubbles come together again, and that the cotton balls worked at picking the oil up.

I find myself thinking about this a lot, lately. And I wonder if those kids think about it now, with the oil spill in the gulf, if they realize that they had the tools, then. And I wonder what kind of quick, fool-proof method for clean-up would come about, if only the BP execs put their heads together the way those tow-headed kids did.

Inkspell, by Cornelia Funke

" 'Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?' Mo had said when, on Meggie's last birthday, they were looking at all her dear old books again. 'A if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower...both strange and familiar.'"    - Inkspell, Chapter 5

And, indeed, I left my heart in Inkspell. So wrapped up in this book, was I, that I stopped comparing it mentally with your Peter Pans and your Neverending Stories the way I did the last one. Even though, in retrospect, there's a certain hint of Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Mermaid," but I didn't realize that one of the last 3 or 4 chapters where Elinor takes her signed copy of Anderson's fairy tales out of its glass case. And I weeped. Not then, but before then, when the ultimate sacrifice is made and I realized what it meant...then I wept (standing against the door of the subway car, halfway into the Bronx, because god forbid a girl should get a seat every now and then). 

This book was very different from its predecessor because so much of the world was yet to be discovered. In Inkheart, the action took place in the world we all know. The character who had stepped into it had done so unwillingly and, so, felt alien. But here, in Inkspell, the characters who should remain at home go abroad willingly (some more than others) and those with whom we associate best are now alien in this new country. 

Funke has a gift of imagination that I envy. I love the way her story unravels. But in gifting us this brand new world, she has made home feel strange. I felt like Elinor needn't be involved anymore. The flashes back to home were distracting more than anything. I also felt as if the plot proceeded with the knowledge that a third book was coming. Does that make sense? I wanted there to be more about Violante and I wanted the real Cosimo to reappear, having been lost somewhere in our own world. I wanted the explanation for the Bluejay's "existence" to be that Balbulus or the Prince of Sighs' minstrel was a silvertongue, bringing things into being. And I found Orpheus to be a glob of scum hacked onto the beautiful pages. I see that he's going to be potentially instrumental in Inkdeath. I get that. But I wish we hadn't had to meet him before all of this. 

As for he who gave up his life - I don't want them to bring him back! In this, his death is heroic and loving and beautiful. But the other characters want him back too much. I have a feeling we'll be seeing him again, but I don't think I'm going to like it. I'm going to take some time to digest for a while before picking up Inkdeath. I think I need some time away from the ferocious beauty of the Inkworld.

Skeleton Man, by Joseph Bruchac

Recommended for ages 10 and up, Bruchac’s story is quite chilling. The young female protagonist, Molly, wakes up one day to find that her parents are missing. When the police are finally notified, a man Molly has never seen, nor heard of, comes to take care of her. He claims to be an uncle of her father’s but Molly is suspicious.

She recalls a legend told by her father’s Native American tribe of a carnivorous man who so loved the taste of flesh that he roasted all of his own, becoming a “skeleton man” and then devoured the flesh of his relatives as well. Molly’s imagination goes wild at the thought and she believes this new relative to have a similar appetite. The legend Bruchac refers to is pretty creepy to begin with, but when the clues start to add up to something more human and more sinister, you start wondering what kind of kids’ book this is.

However, what could resemble something uncomfortably adult is downplayed by the presence of Molly’s dreams which echo the original legend and which, in the end, save her from the nightmare of reality and help her recover her parents. It’s a quick read, and the dramatic build-up is great. I loved having a female protagonist (I’m so used to 10-year-old boys getting into this mischief!) and I appreciated the lessons taught in bravery, ingenuity and autonomy. A great book for young readers who don’t mind the fearsome challenge of human monsters with human motives.

and the botox monster lived happily ever after, the end.

it's really awkward when you see pictures of people you knew in middle school and you think "WOW they really did grow up to look just like their mom!" because you remember what their mom looked like....and then you facebook stalk them to find a picture of their mom, only to find that their mom has had so much plastic surgery that she's now unrecognizable......
yeah....like i said, awkward.

it is also very weird to see pictures of girls on facebook (again, I've been stalking) whom you've not seen in probably 12 years...and you remember them as either a tiny baby curled up in your lap, or as a bouncing messy little adorable curly-haired blonde thing....and they've now got black hair, dark eyeliner, and are taking more emo photos of themselves than Amy Lee*. It makes me feel old.






*lead singer of Evanescence.

The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck

This is one of my favorite books of all time. It's rare for me to have that opinion when I've only read the book once...so I re-read it, just to make sure my claim wasn't unfounded. I first read it in 2001 as part of my summer reading.

When I picked up the text nine years later, I felt as if I had never put it down. The same moments stuck with me and, since my emotional maturity has evolved over the last nine years, they stuck hard.

I still hold that chapter three of this novel (which, for those of you who don't know it, details a land turtle's journey across the road) is the most brilliant, poignant, graphic, and wonderful naturalistic passage in all of twentieth-century literature. In less than two pages, it offers a shining parabolic metaphor for the entirety of the novel.

The other bit that sticks with me the strongest is the very end. I don't want to give anything away for those who haven't read it, but the end makes me cry. Not a sad cry, not even a happy cry. But a cathartic empathetic cry. So much is unresolved at the end, and yet in that final moment, there is completion. Steinbeck's secret, laced in the text, is finally brought to fruition.  

"The old humorous eyes looked ahead, and the horny beak opened a little. His yellow toe nails slipped a fraction in the dust."