This and That
So I realized it's been a while since I've posted. I've been keeping things up on Facebook, but fallen down on the blog--my apologies. All I can say is that I've been extremely busy with writing, researching and editing, and my mind is going about a thousand different directions.
So here: a few interesting things: The Stylist (U.K.) has a list of the 100 best opening lines for books. Check it out and see what you think. http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/the-bes...
Last night I watched "A Very Long Engagement" for about the sixth time (or perhaps more--I've lost count). I really love this movie. It jerks at every romantic bone I have (apparently, there are many more than I'd realized, which is a rather embarrassing admission). I've been reading a lot of 19th C works lately, which I often do when I'm researching and getting ready to write a new book. I read Henry James: Italian Hours, The Aspern Papers, and Turn of the Screw. I liked all of them. Italian Hours just for the amazing description, Turn of the Screw for its really insidious creepiness (I do NOT like ghost stories at all, and never read horror because I'm too susceptible to it, but the psychological underpinnings of this story were alluring). The Aspern Papers was kind of a different kind of animal. I really liked it and can't stop thinking about it. Some really great characterization, and a narrator who so consistently lies to himself and justifies his every action that it's like watching a train wreck.
I am also reading Don Juan by Byron because ... well, I love Byron and have never read it. I'm finding it fascinating, not just storywise, but stylistically. Byron developed a new way of writing poetry with Don Juan that really impacted every poet that followed after. It's immensely readable--more so than Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and also pretty profane. I think I'm learning a great deal from it. Ah, the Romantics--(oh, there goes that romanticism again).
Happy Sunday!
So here: a few interesting things: The Stylist (U.K.) has a list of the 100 best opening lines for books. Check it out and see what you think. http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/the-bes...
Last night I watched "A Very Long Engagement" for about the sixth time (or perhaps more--I've lost count). I really love this movie. It jerks at every romantic bone I have (apparently, there are many more than I'd realized, which is a rather embarrassing admission). I've been reading a lot of 19th C works lately, which I often do when I'm researching and getting ready to write a new book. I read Henry James: Italian Hours, The Aspern Papers, and Turn of the Screw. I liked all of them. Italian Hours just for the amazing description, Turn of the Screw for its really insidious creepiness (I do NOT like ghost stories at all, and never read horror because I'm too susceptible to it, but the psychological underpinnings of this story were alluring). The Aspern Papers was kind of a different kind of animal. I really liked it and can't stop thinking about it. Some really great characterization, and a narrator who so consistently lies to himself and justifies his every action that it's like watching a train wreck.
I am also reading Don Juan by Byron because ... well, I love Byron and have never read it. I'm finding it fascinating, not just storywise, but stylistically. Byron developed a new way of writing poetry with Don Juan that really impacted every poet that followed after. It's immensely readable--more so than Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and also pretty profane. I think I'm learning a great deal from it. Ah, the Romantics--(oh, there goes that romanticism again).
Happy Sunday!
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