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July 03
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Alix
is currently reading:
Mansfield Park (Paperback)
by
Jane Austen
bookshelves:
classics,
currently-reading,
library
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my rating:
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June 30
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Alix
read and liked
Elizabeth's
review of Emma (Penguin Classics):
"I don't like Emma.
Don't take that the wrong way. I don't like the character, Emma, not the book. I consider it yet another proof of Jane Austen's staggering abilities that I can't stand the protagonist, but love the book. Well, I sort o...more
I don't like Emma.
Don't take that the wrong way. I don't like the character, Emma, not the book. I consider it yet another proof of Jane Austen's staggering abilities that I can't stand the protagonist, but love the book. Well, I sort of love the book.
It's an Austen novel, so it's got all the charm, wit, scathing pain, and tea-drinking of her other novels. I love those parts. Jane (for she is my very good friend, obviously,) writes of the most horrible things happening to people: having their hopes crushed in public; being embarrassed by someone they thought a friend; being ignored by a potential partner at a dance (don't tell me that isn't horrible - I was a teenager once). She can create the most vivid picture of a social climbing woman -- all airs and pretension -- who makes everyone around her miserable. Rachel McAdams in Means Girls has nothing on Mrs. Elton. It's truly amazing that after all this time these truths about people and society are still current and that one can recognize Mrs. Elton as a character in a Lindsey Lohan movie.
So that's what I love about this book. Jane is a genius. No one else pulls this off as well. But back to my original comment about Emma. As awed as I am by Jane's ability to create these characters, I don't want to hang out with this one. Emma is painful. She's the popular girl in school who is very clever but has no sense. Ever know one of those? She's rich, she's kind, she's talkative, she's amusing. I'm sure she'd get everyone's vote for homecoming queen, but she's so stupid. She's misguided. She's oblivious. She's petty. I couldn't possibly be her friend.
And why is that important, Elizabeth? You don't have to be friends with the protagonist. Do you really like Newland Archer in The Age of Innocence? Mrs. Dalloway? Emily L? Beowulf? (Well, I'd kind of like to meet Beowulf, but I acknowledge that we wouldn't have much to talk about). True, but there is a kind of book I think I should get to like the main character and Jane Austen writes it. Anne Eliot, Elizabeth Bennett, Marianne and Elinor Dashwood, and even Fanny Price are intelligent, clever women. They feel deeply. They think about the feelings of others. They may flirt but they don't get stupid about it (Marianne, I will point out, was absolutely assured of her suitor's affection, she wasn't fabricating anything, and her principles, not the lack of them, led to her behavior. It's wasn't meaningless flirting). I would want to hang out with them any time. With Emma, I want to shout "grow up" and leave as soon as possible.
Jane Austen wrote this book almost in response to the criticism of Mansfield Park. No one liked Fanny Price. They thought her a prig. They felt the book was overly moral and heavy. So Jane produces Emma which is five hundred pages of silliness that is funny, but it just doesn't have the complexity of her last book, or her next book, Persuasion (my personal favorite). There is some fantastic stuff in Emma: if you want to know how Jane felt about the slave trade, read Emma; if you want to write about the concept of "gentility" in nineteenth century England, it's in here; and I'm sure there's a dissertation or two about Harriet Smith, Mrs. Elton, and the politics of marriage. But all the social commentary, for which I love Jane, is caught up in the details of the misunderstanding about the poem, the misunderstanding of who likes whom, and whether or not Emma is going to get invited to the party at the Coles'. I'm convinced that it could have been so much more.
It's worth the read though. It is. It really is amazing. And it does actually pick up in volume III. It took me a month to read the first 300 pages and less than a week to read the last 200. Most satisfying. And now I think I'm going to watch Clueless again.(less)
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Alix
gave  to:
Emma (Hardcover)
by
Jane Austen
bookshelves:
classics,
library
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my rating:
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read in June, 2009
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May 21
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Alix is on page 32 of 400 of Emma
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May 17
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Alix
read and liked
Polly's
review of The G-Free Diet: A Gluten-Free Survival Guide:
"OK, I know she's terrible, but I will read ANYTHING about gluten-free diets. And this book proves it.
So here's what I thought. Overall, it averages out to 3 stars. Let's remember that this woman isn't a doctor, a nutritionist, or frank...more
OK, I know she's terrible, but I will read ANYTHING about gluten-free diets. And this book proves it.
So here's what I thought. Overall, it averages out to 3 stars. Let's remember that this woman isn't a doctor, a nutritionist, or frankly anyone with even five seconds of experience working in healthcare, so she isn't entirely accurate in her use of terms like "allergy." But she is doing an OK job making celiac disease accessible to folks who maybe received a diagnosis but an inadequate education from their provider.
Her horrific personality has gifted her with many sneaky ways to avoid gluten, like swapping plates at a meal, and forcing other people to eat your glutened food. Seriously, I was impressed to find that she's really good at this. I thought the only things she could do were reproduce and spew homophobia, but it turns out she's good at one other thing.
Now the part that is irritating is that she tries (and frankly fails) at spinning a GF diet into the new diet craze. Sure, some people (myself included) lose weight when they go GF, but most celiacs are so malnourished from years of malabsorption that they GAIN weight upon going GF. Sure, I'm a huge advocate of GF, it's made my life better, and I probably wouldn't go back to eating gluten even if I could. But good luck selling that to most people who have functional digestive systems.
Good for newbie celiacs and partners/families of celiacs, but if you've been living GF for a while, none of this is news.(less)
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Alix
gave  to:
The G-Free Diet: A Gluten-Free Survival Guide (Hardcover)
by
Elisabeth Hasselbeck
bookshelves:
health,
library,
nonfic
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my rating:
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read in May, 2009
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April 11
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Alix
read and liked
Jennifer's
review of The Knitting Sutra: Craft as a Spiritual Practice:
"I was all set to rip this book apart in my review. I was going to put it on my bad-bad-bad shelf and laugh when it wept. But I cannot. Sadly I actually got a few little moments of joy out of this book.
This is a tiny book and really shoul...more
I was all set to rip this book apart in my review. I was going to put it on my bad-bad-bad shelf and laugh when it wept. But I cannot. Sadly I actually got a few little moments of joy out of this book.
This is a tiny book and really should be read in one chunk some lazy afternoon while you sip hot tea. I made the mistake of reading a little section and then running away screaming. I think the thing I struggled with was the feel-good-tree-hugging-schizophrenic-menopausal-self-absorption that I kept seeing. Yeah. I developed a bit of an attitude problem with this book. Here is the thing. I am a knitter and I am obsessed. Today at work I finished a container of dried prunes (shut up - they are actually really sweet and tasty and I am trying to be HEALTHIER - ok?!?) and I looked at the container and thought it would be perfect for putting double point needles in. I think about knitting in the morning before work. (Should I knit with my coffee today? No - I am too tired - I will mess it up!) I talk about it with strangers at coffee shops and my co-worker. I come home and turn on my computer and go to "my" knitting sight. I lay in bed and think of patterns. You get the point here. (ha!) So when I picked up the book and read the title Knitting Sutra: Craft as a Spiritual Practice I thought it would be more inclusive of other people besides the author. I was only a few pages in when I started feeling like this book was more like a therapy session slash journal entry with research done to boot. Instead of feeling inspired by what the author went through and the teachers she studied with I felt like she was kind of whining about things and too self-absorbed to include her readers in on how her experience relates to them too.
There was the occasional antidote that was relatable - but really it felt like this was one woman’s life story told through the metaphor of knitting with A LOT of religious (mostly Native American and Eastern Religious thought) thrown in to try and force a sense of inclusion.
But I did walk away from this book with a few things. The first thing I got was a good conversation with my husband about how through a craft you are connecting to a culture or an ancestry or even just a single designer of a pattern in a much more dimensional way then we could through just talking to them or knowing of there existences. When I work a knitting pattern I get a sense of the person who wrote it. Usually I pick the pattern for aesthetic value - which means I am already sharing something with the designer. Then I read it to see if I am up to the challenge and if I speak the same language as the author. Then I pick out my yarn and begin working it. There are certain designers who just feel so cold and presumptuous in their patterns. (I can't tell you how often I get excited by a pattern only to be crushed when I see that the designer included crochet instructions for parts of the pattern. And as brilliant as Debbie Bliss is her patterns leave me kind of cold.) Sometimes while working the pattern I see the humor of the author (Stephanie Pearl-McPhee) and sometimes I see how very clever they are. You have to trust the designer to be able to tell you in written word how to do something that is not natural and that you are intimidated by. And when you finish and are successful you like the designer. And if you finish and realize there is an error in the pattern you feel sad and betrayed. (I am looking at you Lion Brand web site!)
Recently my mom gave me some patterns from her basement as she was cleaning and included are some patterns in my great grandma's writing. I feel a NEED to do these patterns even though I have no need for the product. I just want to walk in her shoes and feel the connection.
And I have to say the last couple of chapters in the book were a bit more relatable. Chapter 10 is called Dreaming of Dragons and she talks about this sweater that was insanely hard to make and had dragons all over it and it was just evil to make. But she was driven. She was compelled. She was determined. And she talked about why and I got it. I understood. Ah ha!
There is also a quote (the book is full of homilies and paragraphs destined for cross stitch samplers) that REALLY spoke to me. It's on page 145 and here it is:
Letting go is the lesson. Letting go is always the lesson. Have you ever noticed how much of our agony is all tied up with craving and loss?
I read that and went WHOA. YEAH. It was my moment. 145 pages in and months of wrestling with this book and it got me. I finally had a moment that made me read and reread something over and over and then stare into space and reflect. DAMN. It totally got me.
So in the end I have to show the book a little respect. I can't say I liked it, but it was ok. (less)
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Alix
gave to:
Pride and Prejudice (Paperback)
by
Jane Austen
bookshelves:
classics,
dailylit,
library
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my rating:
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read in April, 2009
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April 06
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Alix
gave to:
Ghost Stories of St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Pinellas County: Tales From a Haunted Peninsula (Paperback)
by
Deborah Frethem
bookshelves:
history,
library,
local,
nonfic
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my rating:
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read in April, 2009
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March 29
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Alix
gave to:
The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World (Paperback)
by
Marti Olsen Laney
bookshelves:
health,
library,
nonfic,
psychology
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my rating:
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read in March, 2009
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