A little business first: Sarah Randles, I have been replying to your email address for ten days now and getting an error message. If you accidentally read this, then yes, I do want the article by A.S. Byatt about Georgette Heyer if it's different from the one contained in Georgette Heyer: A Critical Retrospective by Mary Fahnestock-Thomas. I just ordered that book based on your revelation that such a thing existed, so thank you very much.
Which reminds me, when did I become the sort of person who thought reading "Gendering Places: Georgette Heyer's Cultural Topography" sounded like fascinating reading instead of academic wibble? I also ordered Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel by Claudia L. Johnson, a book on the royal females of the English Georgian period (wives, daughters, and consorts) called Georgian Princesses, and The Gentleman's Daughter by Amanda Vickery which looks at the lives of genteel women in Georgian England -- women from the middle class, banking, industry and the like. I am looking forward intensely to reading these. I've been reading a lot of mysteries lately and I'm ready to wade around in history for a while instead.
The books which have kept me so interested recently are the gardening novels by Mary Freeman. I do not read contemporary mysteries as a rule, disliking police procedurals, thrillers, detailed gory descriptions, etc., but every once in a while my dear friend Janice Murray thrusts a book or four at me and says, "Read this. You'll love them." The funny thing is I always do, yet when I look at these same books in the bookstore I turn a few pages before deciding they don't look that great. These were a birthday gift; Janice even got them signed for me. Freeman's novels are terrific. I love the plots, I was unable to stop myself from rushing through the books to see what would happen next despite the pleasure of well-developed characters, a charming ambience in the setting, and the Pacific Northwest landscaping background information. Highly recommended.
My piano teacher continues to floor me with her faith in my abilities. After playing a fantastically truncated version of 'Ode to Joy' on Monday for my weekly credit I asked her what I could do to improve it and she said nothing, it was very expressive. She then came over and plopped a Bach prelude on my piano and said here, you learn this.
Okay. Let's review: I've just finished playing an easy version of a simple song. I held down one note with my left hand for the length of a measure, then played the fifth above it for the next measure, back, forth, back, forth, while plonking out dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee deeeeee dee-dee with the other. Now I have to work on something with a billion sixteenth notes, tricky fingering, extra clefs and a partridge in a pear tree because she wants me to be challenged. I had to practice 'Ode to Joy' for three hours in order to play it well! I practically expired right there on my Casio in the classroom at the sight of all those chords. I cannot sightread this. I cannot tell what fingering to use. Death would be too easy. At least she said I didn't have to learn the whole thing...but now that I think about it, I bet that's what she has in mind. I think I've just been handed my term project.
Well, I did say I wanted to learn to play Bach. Me and my big mouth.
John and I were both busy tonight so we taped but did not watch Joss Whedon's new tv show Firefly. I don't have high hopes for it. I love Buffy but hate Angel and I just don't get that whole pistols-in-space thing. But maybe it'll surprise me. Speaking of Buffy, the season premiere takes place while I'm taking my first big test in history. Color me bitter. I would so very much have liked to watch it with my friends.
Boy, school certainly interferes with my personal life. I'll grant you that I have learned many fine and interesting things thanks to the lower division requirements, but I can't say it has been the primary cause of my erudite and specialized reading habits. And lest you think I just said I have highly intellectual tastes, the definition of erudite is "one who has been brought out of a rough, untaught, rude state." In other words, I've taught myself about literature and history, and I derive enjoyment from reading material I used to think only academics would enjoy. Which says something about my natural inclinations, but I'm beginning to think everyone else was right and college is the hard way to learn what I want to know.
It's been an awfully long week. I'm dreaming about Journalcon every night, worrying over getting all my tasks done, worrying about no-shows, fret fret fret. Plus I'm still waiting to hear about the English credit and I need to file for graduation in the next fortnight. Two weeks to go. I'll be fifty percent less stressed out once September's over.
The Index
Next Incarnation