A.M. Offenwanger's Blog, page 56

Friday Frivolities

Steve was complaining about not getting enough screen time lately. Also, about my terrible habit of procrastinating instead of writing. Well, I said to him, what do you want me to do – write, or put up a blog post with a picture of you? I can’t very well do both. He chose the latter. Which goes to show just how seriously I need to take him when he grumbles at me about my procrastination.

So here he is, looking dapper in front of my screen. Now that he gets double screen time – in front on my...

Once Upon an Austen Novel

We watched the new Pride and Prejudice the other day, the one with Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen. And it struck me just how much of a fairy tale that particular interpretation is.

I’d never really noticed that before. I watch Austen films very firmly with the books in the back of my mind, and because I know that Austen’s stories are a form of realism – they were “contemporary fiction” in her day – I expect the movies to be the same, i.e. to portray the Regency period in the most accur...

Cross-Gender Writing Part II: Eleanor Harding Bold

You know how last time, I was saying that I hadn’t ever run across a well-written fictional woman from the pen of a male Victorian writer? Well, now I have! The lady in question is Eleanor Harding Bold, from Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers.

Actually, I had alrady met her several years ago during a course in Victorian lit.; I just forgot. But then last week, I took the DVD of the miniseries out of the library because I wanted to watch Alan Rickman play the marvellously slimy Mr Slope (or...

Cross-Gender Writing

As I mentioned last time, reading Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde got me thinking about what I’ll call, for lack of a better word, cross-gender writing: when an author writes a character who is of the opposite gender from their own.

Interestingly enough, both of Fforde’s series I’ve read so far, the Thursday Next novels and the Last Dragonslayer ones, feature a female protagonist. They’re great books – don’t get me wrong: I’ve thoroughly enjoyed them (in fact, I’m still th...

Thursday Next: Stories About Stories

I just finished Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next: First Among Sequels – book five in a series which is, incidentally, included on the Goodreads’ “Cosy Fantasy” list I mentioned last time. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s been quite a few years since I read the first four books (starting with The Eyre Affair), so I’d forgotten a lot of the story – and even if I had remembered it, I don’t know that I appreciated Fforde’s work quite the same way then.

Just to briefly bring you up to speed, Thursday Ne...

Cosy Fantasy – Or Is It Cozy?

I have a problem with my books: Seventh Son and Cat and Mouse, I don’t know what genre to stick them in.

People ask me what kind of books they are, and I usually say “fantasy” – but then I always feel compelled to qualify: “Well, it’s light fantasy,” or “It’s kind of a romance,” or “It doesn’t have any orcs in it.” Because, you see, when someone classifies a book or movie as “fantasy”, what is the first thing that comes to mind? For me, and I suspect for most people, it’s Tolkien. Well, he d...

Just Me and Art

Vancouver Art Gallery

It’s been quite some time since I got to be alone with art (I mean small-a art – visual constructions, not big-A Art – person named Arthur who had his name chopped down to a three-letter word; I don’t know any of the latter). But this past weekend I had some business to do in the big city – Vancouver, to be precise, a five-hour trip over the mountains – and when I was finished with what I had to do, I indulged myself with a visit to the Art Gallery.

It was lovely. They h...

Cinderella, the Movie

If anyone doubts that the “Cinderella” story is a perennial favourite, they have obviously not been attending a movie theatre in the last week since the release of the live-action film. We went on Tuesday evening, the first cheap Tuesday after the movie came out, and the theatre was packed – the show must have been nearly sold out.

One of the things I loved about it was the demographic of the audience. Sure, there were lots of families with young children. But the middle of the front row was...

Check It Out: “Patrick’s Song” by Norm Strauss

For today’s Check It Out let’s mix things up a bit: instead of a book, I want to introduce a song to you. Reader, meet Song, Song, Reader. Oh, that didn’t do it? Well, how about this: Check It Out: “Patrick’s Song”, by Norm Strauss, from his new album The Color of Everything. It being St Patrick’s Day and all – the song tells his story. If you want to know what actually happened sixteen hundred years ago to make St Patrick who he was, give it a listen (and no, shamrocks, shillelaghs and lepre...

The Power of Story Part II, or, RIP Sir Terry Pratchett

For the second time in as many weeks, the nerd world is having to say goodbye to one of its Greats: Sir Terry Pratchett passed away today from Alzheimer’s disease. Leonard Nimoy had reached a good old age; Terry Pratchett was still comparatively young – only 66.

But his passing, too, was not unexpected; the disease had been claiming him bit by bit for nearly eight years now. Alzheimer’s has a way of doing that. I think for the bereaved, the mourning has often been done long ahead of the time...