On Really Good Books That Happen to Be My Mom's Favorites
@wilykit :D Am I a really bad person, for snickering at "[I] thought the men were supposed to be elves" ?
And w00t - my mom = indeed lovely. And I think the blackface scene was indeed in "Little Town." during the 'whirl of gaiety," which includes a spelling bee. I think.
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On Really Good Books That Happen to Be My Mom's Favorites
@The Lady of Shalott PHEW! It's been a while, so I am thrilled to hear that Francie is still safe from Boring Ben. hm. Maybe he was Big Ben, and that made up for it? :D
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On Hey Hester, Happy Mother's Day
I just love love lovvvvvve watching the Demi Moore film version. For the shock and awe, and also for the pleasure of rereading the New Yorker review of said film.
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Anthony Lane remarks that the film is, "in the words of the opening credits, `freely adapted from the novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne,' in the same way that methane is freely adapted from cows."
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On Really Good Books That Happen to Be My Mom's Favorites
First time I read "Girl of the Limberlost," I thought it was good ... although for whatever reason, the love interest telling his other lady friend (? maybe? or did he tell the heroine?) to "be a moth" for the fancy dress-up ball ... made me go a little 'zuh?' in my kiddy mind.
ETA: Ahhhh, the Little House books! My mom read them out to us. Some fantastic anecdotes:
1) She kept Ma's icky icky racism "in" - i.e. she read it aloud, and then we had a discussion about it. Damn, she even kept the bit with Pa in blackface in! /childhood trauma
2) She jettisoned a shit ton of the dress-making details. The golden poplin! GONE. Just because I had three brothers who were not interested in dresses. *sulks*
3) And finally, she did not upbraid me too loudly when I took a page out of little Laura Ingalls' book - perhaps Plum Creek? ... and led my brothers in a rousing game of "Poor Pussy Wants a Corner."***
In a hotel pool.
Gooooood times.
***it seemed to be some 19th-c. frontier version of musical chairs. My mother took me aside and told me to play "Poor Kitty Wants a Corner." I asked why. She did not explain. *sulks*
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On Really Good Books That Happen to Be My Mom's Favorites
@anachronistique
ruh-roh. I think the (kinda sorta) "sequel" to ATGIB, "Joy in the Morning," has the Francie character (now named Annie McGairy) travel to MI and marry the Ben character. Dun dun dunnn!
From amazon.com!
In Brooklyn, New York, in 1927, Carl Brown and Annie McGairy meet and fall in love.Though only eighteen, Annie travels alone to the Midwestern university where Carl is studying law to marry him. Little did they know how difficult their first year of marriage would be, in a faraway place with little money and few friends.But Carl and Annie come to realize that the struggles and uncertainty of poverty and hardship can be overcome by the strength of a loving, loyal relationship.An unsentimental yet uplifting story, Joy in the Morning is a timeless and radiant novel of marriage and young love.
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... waaaaaah, maybe if their names are different IT DOESN'T COUNT?! Although I think as well that they might get divorced towards the end? I forget. Maybe I've repressed it.
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On Real G’s Move in Silence Like Passacaglia
@SomeGayGuy OMG you ripped off 'In dulci jubilo" ? AWESOME.
And yeah, Bach's brain. Man alive. There's this anecdote - I think CPE wrote it in funeral notes or a memorial or something for his dad - in which it's related: Bach would listen to someone else start to play a fugue, and nudge the person sitting next to him (CPE, in this case) whenever one of the permutations came up in the way he predicted. Like, triple invertible counterpoint OR SOME CRAZY SHIT LIKE THAT? He'd be all: "CALLED IT." And he could also apparently pinpoint the player's mistake(s), if any, and then predict when all the wheels would come off the piece as a result.
I love picturing him in some church just grooving along, listening, and then wincing all, "Whoooops, that's gonna hurt." And then grinning when IT DOES and the organist gives the 18th century KEYBOARD SMASH.
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On Real G’s Move in Silence Like Passacaglia
@ lexsaur - how about THIS sucka, BWV 582? It's like a passacaglia wasn't enough - and Bach just said: watch me write a fugue using the ostinato for a subject - aw yeah!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F51uHpH3yQk
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On Real G’s Move in Silence Like Passacaglia
Fun fact: Bach was actually able to copy his (oft weekly) cantatas in Leipzig in due time ... because he had his children work as copyists! Holla! :D
(And only 10 of the 20 lived. Sadness.)
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On Sex: Necessity, Addiction, or Utter Nonsense?
@melis Totally. I adored the "From Here to Eternity" homage on the beach. Groundbreaking, really, in the depiction of male/male eroticism in action films.
WAIT. That didn't happen?
...
WHAT DO YOU MEAN, THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN?!
*sobs*
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On This is a Safe Space to Talk About Your Dissertation
@l'esprit de l'escalier - I think perhaps she's talking more about the first draft, rather than the project in its entirety. Which is to say: get words on paper, no matter how shitty they seem.
I wish I could do this. 1.5 years of ABD. Scary advisor. Words on paper: maybe 250. 1st chapter deadline: approximately 1 week ago. Who is fucked: me.