To write about...

-skydiving.
-innocence and experience.
-revolutionary road and your own personal paris.
-how having heat rash is a crappy way to spend the last week of summer before prepping for the semester becomes an absolute necessity.
-preserving fruit and other Hannah Housewife adventures.
-a weekend of weddings and sitting in the car (or, How I Went to Minnesota And Ate A Lot Of Food And Hugged A Lot Of Friends).
-evoking "place" and finding "home".

A little bit bitter, a little bit bored...

So, I was clicking through my blogs that I read, appreciating the thoughts of my friends, but wishing that there were more interesting things to read on the internet, and that certain people (*ahem! Blythe! ahem!*) would update more often, and then I realized that I haven't updated in two weeks, and the last post I did was not even very meaty, but really more of a tease- telling you all that I'd read some books and seen some movies, but not telling you what they were or if I liked them.

oops.

I really enjoyed the posts Ben and Christine did on the books they recently read, and I always enjoy Katie's book reviews... so then I thought, why don't you do a book review, too?

but alas, even though I have been quite the busy little book worm lately, I've been mostly re-reading the books that defined my childhood, in an attempt to identify "who i thought i was and what influenced me to be that way" and to reconcile that person with the person I find myself to be today... psychobabble psychobabble psychobabble. Needless to say, the Gutenberg Project is awesome, because I can read many of the vintage children's classics that provided fodder for my youthful imagination online! For free! Without having to put on pants or leave the house! Magic!

I am sure no one is really interested in a dissection of the ideology I must have digested along with these stories, and an essay as to how this may or may not have affected my neuroses, and I'm proctoring an exam today and thus have a headache, so I will summarize.

Books by Louisa May Alcott: The Little Women books are good, in others, plot and character are overshadowed by firm messages about Rich Little Girls Being Charitable and The Value Of Having Old-Fashioned Values. Everyone sews all the time. The representation of Irish and African-American characters is racist and disturbing. You will never be as perfect as the people in these books.

The Five Little Peppers Series: These are terrible books. Never let your children read them. Everything is an extreme in these books. The children are either elated or despondant. They are either being extremely good or feeling extremely guilty for some small sin of omission, like not brushing their hair properly. Again, the representation of Irish and African American characters is racist and disturbing. Also disturbing is the fact that it is considered wrong to cry- on almost every page, someone is distressed and struggles to hold back tears, and usually only suceeds in doing so when they are reminded that if they cry, someone they love will either also cry or get sick.

Anne of Green Gables and other books by LM Montgomery: these are beautiful, beautiful books. No one is too perfect (except for maybe Anne after she grows up and gets married) and all the people who think that they are perfect are generally justly ridiculed. The nature descriptions are breath-taking and fanciful. Perhaps too fanciful... trees and plants are always a little too pristine.. there are never any bugs or critters in the woods that the heroines walk in... only imaginary faries and other sprites. These are humorous, sensitive, thoughtful, idealistic books, perhaps a little over-sentimental but soothing and enjoyable nonetheless.

Well Worth Watching - and Segues!

Have you seen Everything is Illuminated? No? Well, go and put it at the top of your Netflix queue. Right now. It is the best movie I have seen in a long time. A very long time. This movie has lines just a quoteable as The Big Lebowski. It is touching and heartwarming and tragic like Finding Neverland (except without the whole akward 'is James M. Barrie maybe a little too into that kid?' thing) and Wings Over Berlin (except shorter). Oh, and it's funny, too. How can you not love a movie with a dog named Sammy Davis, Jr. Jr. and a very memorable scene with a potato? Hi-larious hi-jinks, I'm telling you. And then there's that whole 'plot' thing, with its valuable 'themes' like identity, memory, family, the role of the past in our present understanding of ourselves and the world, and friendship and shared experience overcoming the barriers of linguistic and cultural misunderstanding. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

Trust me. See this movie. You will love it.

I would like to read some of Jonathan Safran's novels now.

Currently, I'm reading The Master of St. Petersburg by J.M. Coetzee. It's quite complex and thought-provoking, but I'm not really enjoying it. Coetzee paints his geniuses so bleakly. Plus, novels set in Russia always make me cold. I actually don't know if I've ever enjoyed a Coetzee book... To be fair, I read Foe ages and ages ago and I never finished Waiting For the Barabarians so that just leaves Disgrace, and the sexual violence that fuels the plot of Disgrace is hard for me to stomach, so I will have to finish this one and sort out my thoughts before I make any proclamations.

On the other hand, I really, really love Regina Spektor's album Begin To Hope.

Oh what? You were expecting a cohesive blog post? On one singular subject? That does not meander? Too bad, so sad, it's too late at night for me to do that. You should consider yourself (yourselves? Does more than one person even read this blog?) lucky, because here is a list of relatively banal subjects about which I have refrained from waxing eloquent, even though the impusle moved me, JUST IN THE SPAN OF ONE MERE WEEKEND:
-Things Overheard On The Bus That Make Me Happy
-Why I Love My Kitty
-Why My Kitty Is The Best Kitty In The World
-Don't Go To Tar*Get On A Saturday Because Children Scream
-I Have Decorated My House Some More! Look At My Decorations!
-I Made Spotted Dick For Breakfast
-Why I Don't Like Grading
-My New Postage Stamps Are Cheap And Flimsy

Just kidding. I wasn't really going to write about that last one. I just made it up to be funny. Aren't you diverted? Didn't I say that I was only going to write wittily and elegantly/eloqently in this blog? What time is it? Why am I not in bed yet? Whose idea was it to drink coffee after 7pm? Stupid coffee.

Do you know how sometimes, when you don't have a lot of time, and maybe you are feeling kind of poor and/or low energy, and you just don't feel like making dinner, ordering in or going out? And maybe it's just all you can manage to eat some scrambled eggs and toast? Even if you don't really like scrambled eggs? And then the situation sort of magically becomes Officially Very Exciting once you declare that you are not just having scrambled eggs because they are easy and inexpensive and one of the few edible items left in your fridge, oh no, YOU hare having scrambled eggs because you are having Breakfast For Dinner, you lucky thing you?

Breakfast For Dinner is awesome and delicious! It's a celebration! It's dangerously and exhiliratingly close to (shhh, don't tell...) breaking the rules! Upsetting the norms! Etc!

Well, perhaps not too surprisingly, the same trick works when you are feeling tired and worn out and grumpy and not-necessarily-in-the-mood-for-going-out-or-hanging-out-in-a-large-group-of-people on a weekend. This bleak situation can be remedied by declaring a shockingly decadent Sweatpants Night! Break out the comfy clothes, the ice cream and a good movie! Nope, you can't make it should anyone try and tempt you out to the bar - you've got plans, you're having an Official Sweatpants Night with your sweetie. Your friends are free to join you, but they have to wear sweatpants and bring their own pint of Haagen Das and not talk during the movie, because those are the rules of Sweatpants Night. It's like the fun part of a slumber party, except for that everyone who doesn't live at your house goes back to their house to go to bed, so no one wakes up with genitalia drawn on their face -or if they do, at least it's not your problem. Magic. I am brilliant. People should pay me money to use this idea.

(Now you know what I really did this weekend.)