Let’s round out the year with a Jane Austen mini-series. Austen has a reputation among the uninformed of being treacly, old timey romance. Mark Twain famously declared that he wanted to “dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.” Twain always writes like the cat who got the cream and … Continue reading ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ Unanswerable Questions and Roguish Speculations
Month: November 2020
Notions, Of Memory and Forgetting
I spent my 21st birthday at a casino in Wendover, NV with my mother; my father's oldest friend, who had been Best Man at my by then-divorced parents' wedding; and a Catholic priest. I ordered a gin martini because I loved the glasses. It came in a cortado glass, however, filled with probably the worst … Continue reading Notions, Of Memory and Forgetting
Here There Be Monsters: ‘Lady From the Black Lagoon’ and ‘Margaret the First’
What does it mean to be a creative or creatively-engaged person in a culture that values you primarily for your body alone—your beauty, your procreative potential? Two books I read recently explore this question through the experiences of two very different women and they explore it in very different ways. Yet I find illuminating connections … Continue reading Here There Be Monsters: ‘Lady From the Black Lagoon’ and ‘Margaret the First’
Going Off Book-ish: Lord of the Rings and ‘Newcomers’ Podcast
The Lord of the Rings movies. That's what my partner and I decided we wanted to distract us this past Tuesday and throughout the week (because, let's be honest, those movies are looong). We've both seen the trilogy oodles of times so decided to start with the The Two Towers. It's my favorite of the … Continue reading Going Off Book-ish: Lord of the Rings and ‘Newcomers’ Podcast
Dogs, Coffee, & Books 