amelia_petkova

I just got my hands on "Rose Under Fire" by Elizabeth Wein, which is the sort-of sequel to "Code Name Verity." I've only looked at page 1--JUST PAGE 1, MIND YOU!--and it mentions Maddie by name, then says, "Maddie had to write a big report herself last January and also be grilled in person by the Accident Committee."

OH MY GOD, MAKE ME START CRYING ALREADY WHY DON'T YOU?

What I should do is re-read "Code Name Verity" first because it's been a while and I'm sure I'll miss a lot of references to it in this new book, but Wein is really good at pulling your heart out and I'm not sure I can bear to read them back-to-back.

I'm looking at some lists along the type of "100 books everyone should read" and this one has some...interesting summaries. They're not necessarily inaccurate, just unexpected. (Note: I haven't read all of the following books.

( Some spoilers behind cut )

Recently I borrowed The Annotated Peter Pan edited by Maria Tartar from the library. It's great! I love well-done annotated editions and this is one of them. I haven't finished all the introductions yet but I'm already filled with glee. I just have to share these tidbits with you before I continue reading:

The illustrations include a number of playbills from various productions of Peter Pan, and looking at one of them I found that Gerald du Maurier once played Mr. Darling/Captain Hook. If that name sounds familiar, it's because in addition to being a famous actor in his own right, he was also the father of Daphne du Maurier. But it gets even better: while making sure that I was writing down the correct name, I also found out that he George du Maurier was the brother of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, the mother of the boys who inspired Peter Pan!!! Where the hell is my historical fiction about these people?!?! It's perfect story material!

In the same production, the role of Wendy Darling was played by Helena Trevelyan. I don't have anything special to say about the real person, just that now I want to write Bloody Jack fic about Randall or Amy's descendant becoming a famous actress in England.

The role of Captain Hook has also been played by Boris Karloff, perhaps most well-known for his work in 1930s horror films. Just to emphasize, the actor who played this guy also played this guy.

I can't wait to find out what else is in this book. Thank you, Maria Tartar!

ETA: While looking up books about the du Maurier family in my library's catalog, I came across Neverland by Piers Dudgeon. A nonfiction book, this is the summary provided:

Relates the tragic story of the author of the beloved children's novel, who learned hypnosis to captivate and psychologically abuse a family with whom he had become obsessed, the very family that inspired the Darlings of "Peter Pan."

...no, thanks.

I want a Blossom Culp/Flavia de Luce crossover. (Despite the slashing of the names, I don't want them to be slashed, just crossedover.) For people who are familiar with only one or neither of the fandoms, Blossom Culp is a YA series by Richard Peck set in the early 1900s U.S. Blossom is a girl from the wrong side of the tracks with psychic abilities and a love of trolling her classmates. bookelfe wrote up a good summary here. The Flavia de Luce books are an adult mystery series set in 1950s England, focusing on an adolescent girl who belongs to a genteely poor noble family in the English countryside. Flavia's hobbies are conducting chemistry experiments, solving murders, and finding ways to get revenge on her mean sisters. (In the first book, she puts poison ivy--an extract, I think--into her oldest sister's lipstick.)

Clearly, these girls need to hang out. Lacking time-traveling or anything like that, I think Blossom would be in her 50's during Flavia's books. Maybe she's traveling in England as a fortuneteller and they meet? They're both odd girls and I think they would have a great time brainstorming ideas for pranks.

Seriously, that series is my crack. It's like the creators took everything I love best about stories and fairy tales and classical music/ballet and put it together in a blender just for me.

I'd heard about Mark Reads a year or so ago when he started blogging Harry Potter but didn't pay much attention to it. Then I heard that he was going to be watching Princess Tutu.

YES! So I hopped on over there and (after reading all of his entries so far on the Tortall books) read his post on the first episode:

"HOLY SHIT, WHAT DID I JUST WATCH???"

And now we get to the part where I will never ever stop laughing because that was absolutely my reaction when I watched that same first episode. I love that he talks about the different worlds. I love his thoughts on the music. I love his reaction to Neko-sensei because let's face it, we all had the same reaction. I love his ranting about how Fakir is such an asshole. If you ever have the chance to watch the DVD extras for this series do it, because it includes commentary on the first episode from the dub actors for Ahiru and Fakir, and they talk about these same things. I can't wait to see how Mark reacts to the rest of the series.

Now I want him to watch Utena.

Holy shit, he "read" The Princess Bride as well?!?! Forget the job hunt, there goes the rest of my afternoon.

We made out all right where I am. Some people lost power during the storm but it's mostly a case of some messy roads here and there. When I woke up this morning there were some sections of blue sky and almost no wind. Surprise! If the weather's still calm later, I might drive to one of the piers on Lake Ontario and see how things look.

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Recently my parents were at a conference where they received a number of party favors. My mother showed me something that looks like a metal barrel pen, but it unscrews to show screwdriver tips in the inside, which can be attached to the "pen's" tip. If you click the top end, a flashlight comes on. All I could think is, "somebody's trying to create sonic screwdrivers".

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As Halloween is coming, I've been skimming through the PotO novel. The part where Christine is telling Raoul about her first abduction by the Phantom is hair-raising. But this is the part that cracks me up:

Context: Raoul, who's a pretty ridiculous guy in the Leroux novel, hears of the Angel of Music and thinks that Christine is cheating on him. ("As for Christine, she was a brazen, satanically deceitful creature.") He runs home and--I can't recap this, you get the direct excerpt. "When he went into his room, he thought only of throwing himself on the bed and stifling his sobs. But his brother Philippe was there, and Raoul let himself fall into his arms, like a baby."

I love this book.

The good news: I finally got to read Code Name Verity! The bad news... I know at least a couple of people on my f-list have read it so you will probably know immediately what part I'm talking about when I say I got to That Event and immediately fell to pieces.

( cut for spoilers because HOLY SHIT )

I've loved Katherine Briggs since I was in third grade or so, and found a copy of An Encyclopedia of Fairies on my classroom's bookshelf. Fast-forward about thirteen years, and I bought my own copy to use for an independent study in anthropology. She's written a lot of other books and if you're at all interested in Great Britain's folklore/fairy tales/creatures that go bump in the night, she's your woman.

But I never knew she wrote children's books!!! How did I not know this? I was at the library when I saw a book titled Kate Crackernuts with an author of K.M. Briggs and after a few moments of "No way, it can't be the same person" I snatched it up in my hot little hand.

Kate Crackernuts is a retelling of the fairy tale by the same name, set mostly in Scotland during the English Civil war. Katherine Lindsay is the daughter of the local laird and Kate Maxwell is the daughter of a woman living in genteel poverty. This being a fairy tale, the laird and Grizel Maxwell (Kate's mother) end up married. Grizel immediately decides to shame/harm Katharine, because she and her daughter had turned up at a party in old-fashioned dresses. (Yes, really.) She ends up putting an enchantment on Katherine that makes her believe she has a sheep's head. No, I'm not making that up. Yes, it's in the original fairy tale. Katherine and Kate immediately run off to seek safety, and to try to find a way to break the enchantment.

This book passes the Bechdel Test without breaking a sweat. Katherine and Kate are best friends and Kate is made of pure awesome. She takes care of her sister, manages to outwit her mother (even though she loves Grizel as well), get the two girls down to England on their own while searching for help, and works at breaking curses left and right. Kate is my hero.

The book does have a lot of Scottish dialect/slang in it; it's very good for accuracy and setting but can be a bit confusing if you're not familiar with it. But most of it has enough context that you can figure the meaning out. All the references to current history and politics were more troublesome, and I ended up ignoring a lot of it because I couldn't keep things straight. Yet even if you aren't familiar with Katherine Briggs, you'd be able to tell that she knows her stuff: some of the main elements in the story are witches and fairies as they would have been perceived in 17th century Scotland and England.

( spoilers for very end of book )

I can't believe I've enjoyed Katherine Briggs for so long without knowing she wrote fiction as well. She wrote a second children's book called Hobbardy Dick that I haven't read yet. Both books are probably out of print but there's a good chance for finding them in libraries.

Just checked Amazon: they're setting Kate Crackernuts in paperback, so it might still be in print after all!

Or, my defense of Fanny Price

Time for some meta, people. Mansfield Park is not Jane Austen’s most popular novel. That honor seems to belong to Pride & Prejudice, with the follow-up probably being Sense & Sensibility. (Context for this discussion: I have read all three novels mentioned above, as well as Emma and Persuasion. I did read Northanger Abbey, but it was long enough ago that I don’t remember much of it.) Most of Austen’s heroines are clever, spirited, and can hold their own in a conversation. Fanny from Mansfield Park doesn’t fit that mold. She’s shy, quiet, and has somewhat fragile health. Many Austen fans do not care for Fanny. They think she’s boring. I feel the opposite: I think that Fanny is an awesome female lead in her own way.

( some spoilers behind cut )

I'm about 3/4 of the way through reading Wuthering Heights for the first time. My main reactions:

--Ellen Dean fits the trope of Only Sane Man (in this case, Woman). I have no clue how she managed to put up with the other main characters for so long.

--I would never admire Cathy and Heathcliff as a romantic couple. They're horrible people and I want to punch them (along with most of the main cast).

( last one behind cut due to spoilers for this and Anna Karenina )