July 12, 2019 at 5:12 am (Conversations, Lists, Places, television, Weather)
Tags: "The View", California, causes, CNN, elections, news, politics, summer
California light is harsh. There are no subtleties between light and dark.
You’re young and then you’re suddenly old. It just happens.
We’re at the very middle of summer. After tomorrow, the days will get shorter. Self is sorry that she didn’t enjoy the summer as much as she should have. The weather every day was so unsettling: some days cool, like early spring. And then, the very next day, intensely hot.
She loves watching CNN: that succession of animatronic talking heads. The best moments of the Democratic Campaign so far have been: 1) Pete Buttigieg being confronted by a crowd of angry black citizens of South Bend, asking him if he believed in Black Lives Matter (“Are you asking me if black lives matter?” Buttigieg asked. “Of course they do.” A woman yelled: SAY IT. WE WANT TO HEAR YOU SAY IT. High drama, self loved it. Buttigieg did not back down. 2) Michael Bennett’s speech highlights, shown this morning before he came on The View. Until this morning, she barely registered a thought about him. WOW, that speech they aired this morning was a scorcher.
Both Buttigieg and Bennet are long shots, but they each represent a uniquely American energy. Which is COMPLETELY LACKING in the GOP.
She watched both Democratic debates. She was not enthused by Kamala’s unleashing on Biden. Self means, someone had to go after Biden, and no one was doing it, good for Kamala for having the keenest ambition of all the candidates. But really, it felt almost too easy. She won’t find it that easy to go after POTUS the same way.
Self tries to imagine a presidential debate between Trump and Kamala. She doesn’t think he’ll go for creepily stalking her across the stage, as he did with Hillary (Or maybe he will. Who knows? He’s clearly used that tactic before. On someone. Alas, Hillary was completely unprepared for the grotesque gesture)
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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July 11, 2019 at 8:10 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, plans, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers)
Tags: essay, Filipino writers, Kelly Link, Poets & Writers, reading lists, summer
- A writer’s library is more than just a collection of books. It is also a piecemeal biography of that writer’s life, and measurably so, as most have writers have spent countless hours reading the books that they now own or have borrowed, hours that add up to years, perhaps decades, given a long enough life.
— James P. Blaylock, My Life in Books
Love this essay, which echoes so many of self’s feelings about her own library. Just recently, self decided to start reading some of her collection. Books she’s picked up from author’s readings, and then stashed away on a shelf, in the fond hope she’d get to them “someday.”
Someday is here!
Two of the books she’s owned for years but never got around to reading:
- Carlos Bulosan’s story collection, The Laughter of My Father
- Kelly Link’s short story collection, Get In Trouble (She read a couple of stories, not the whole collection)
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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June 6, 2019 at 1:45 am (Books, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: book lists, climate change, environment, favorites, novel, reading lists, science fiction, thrillers
Top reading year, this is turning out to be.
Her Favorites, by Month:
- February: The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry and November Road by Lou Berney.
- March: Becky Chambers’ Record of a Spaceborn Few.
- April: Milkman by Anna Burns; Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday; and Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush.
- May: Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges by Antony Beevor and Northanger Abbey.
- June: Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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June 5, 2019 at 3:43 am (Books, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: English writers, favorites, novel, reading lists
Lily is rather simple, and self is moving slow as slow through this deliciously rich narrative (which means, she is enjoying this novel immensely):
When she had done the laundry (and ironed the sheets and scrubbed the tiles and filled the log baskets and got the soot off the hearth and polished the furniture and shaken the curtains and knocked air into the cushions and gone round all the picture and mirror frames with a feather duster and put a shine on all the taps with vinegar and cooked the parson’s dinner and set it ready on the table under a cloth, and washed up and cleaned the stove and left everything in the kitchen neat and tidy), Lily went and knocked again at the study door.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 23, 2019 at 10:12 am (Lists, Personal Bookshelf, television, Women Writers)
Tags: Catherine Morland, disappointments, English writers, Game of Thrones, Gendry, Henry Tilney, Jane Austen, novel, reading lists
It’s nearly the end of Northanger Abbey, Henry Tilney still hasn’t declared any feelings for Catherine Morland, but self loves loves loves this him: his diffidence, his wit, his tenderness towards his sister Eleanor. So far, this is her favorite Jane Austen ever (a close second: Emma)
Still reading about Game of Thrones‘ final season because it hurt self to the core. Still more from yesterday’s USA Today (the first thing self grabbed during afternoon tea at the hotel yesterday):
- Much like Cersei’s death last week, Dany’s demise felt like a dull, anticlimactic end.
- Bran “hasn’t had a personality since Season 6 and is the least-helpful all-seeing magical reason ever.”
Self is still bitter that they brought Gendry back in Season 7 just to function as Arya’s boy toy in Season 8 (also, if you really want to know, she thinks Ed Sheeran’s pointless cameo in Season 7 should have warned her: You’re not going to like the way this ends.) Cleganebowl happened too late to really matter. Bronn stayed on-brand as the No. 1 Advocate for Brothels. Nice job, Sansa Stark, becoming Queen of the North. The melting down of the Iron Throne was whatever. Jon got to keep his melancholy look. And Davos was sitting right next to Gendry during the gathering of all the remaining families of Westeros, so these two will get to become each other’s family.
Self thinks the wriers’ interest in the story ended with Season 6. After, they were just making sure they dotted their “i’s” and crossed their “t’s” per contractual basis.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
.
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May 14, 2019 at 1:28 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Lists, Plays, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: biographies, Cornwall, Daphne du Maurier, English writers, Events, Fowey, literary festivals, praise
Fowey: Tuesday, 14 May 2019
Have attended two talks, both of them brilliant. The one this morning was delivered by Kate Aspengren, an American playwright (from Iowa!): Where’s the Fire? A Playwright Considers the Plays of Daphne du Maurier.
Loved knowing about this other aspect of du Maurier. The woman tried her hand at everything: novels, short stories, plays — even poetry!
Aspengren talked about three du Maurier plays:
- The Years Between (first staged 1944, in Manchester)
- September Tide (first staged 1948, in Oxford)
- her own adaptation of Rebecca
Because self has read Tatiana de Rosnay’s Manderley Forever (one of her favorite reads of 2018), she knows of Daphne’s fraught marriage. Her husband was General “Boy” Browning who was mentioned (not flatteringly lol) in the book self just finished reading, Antony Beevor’s Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944. It was a very strained marriage, exacerbated by long absences. And du Maurier seems to have drawn on that for The Years Between.
As for September Tide, trust du Maurier to come up with this wickedly entertaining plot: A woman falls in love with her daughter’s husband. According to Aspengren, “the mother and son-in-law have an instant attraction to each other” despite an age gap of seven years.
Daphne du Maurier brings it.
Stay tuned.
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April 29, 2019 at 10:20 pm (Links, Lists, Places, Traveling)
Tags: Cee Neuner, Dublin, London, Mondays
At last! Am able to do a post on a new Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge this week!
The prompt is BRIDGES.
A Bridge in Dublin, 28 April 2019
Another Bridge in Dublin: 28 April 2019
The last picture isn’t really a bridge: it’s a stop on the London Underground. Which means it IS a bridge of sorts!
London Underground, Russell Square Station: 27 April 2019
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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April 24, 2019 at 1:21 pm (Books, Lists, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: book lists, mysteries, nonfiction, novel, reviews
Self is interested in reading the books on the list below:
- Small Days and Nights, by Tishani Doshi (novel)
- Don’t Touch My Hair, by Emma Dabiri (nonfiction)
- The Road to Grantchester, by James Runcie (mystery)
- Hey! Listen! by Steve McNeil (a journey through the golden age of video games)
- The Price of Paradise: How the Suicide Bomber Shaped the Modern Age, by Iain Overton (history)
- The Confessions of Frannie Langton, by Sara Collins (debut novel)
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April 18, 2019 at 4:05 am (Books, Lists, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: 9/11, favorites, novel, reading lists, science fiction, thrillers
Self picking her favorite reads so far, 2019. All three happen to be novels. They’re arranged according to the month she read them.
- November Road, by Louis Berney – read February
The Setting: America post-John F. Kennedy Assassination
- Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers – read March
Science Fiction
The Setting: Earth and Outer Space (The Future, of course)
- Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday – read April
The Setting: America post 9/11 to the time of the First Gulf War
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April 6, 2019 at 6:19 pm (Lists, Movies, Recommended)
Tags: action movies, adaptations, blockbusters, horror, Saturday, science fiction
- Annihilation, based on the novel by Jeff VanderMeer
- Avengers: Infinity War
- Black Panther
- A Quiet Place
- Sorry To Bother You
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
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