I really didn’t read all that much in June. The only new book was The General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel García Márquez, which I give 3.75 out of 5 stars. Other than that, I re-read Robin Maxwell’s The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn after I finished watching The Tudors on Netflix.
And, speaking of The Tudors, I wasn’t expecting much in the accuracy department, so I was pleasantly surprised by just how historically accurate they were. Listen to the dialogue, some of it comes direct from history.
Now, cue the Hallelujah Chorus . . .
The new server has been installed at the library, so I’ve got a big pile of new releases that I picked up earlier today. 
I didn’t get much reading done in May, unfortunately. But, at least I liked most of what I read. I even enjoyed Man in Control to some extent. It was just so awful it was entertaining.
- Sweet Hush by Deborah Smith – 4
- Midnight Bayou by Nora Roberts – 4 (re-read)
- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides – 5
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck – 4.5
- Man in Control by Diana Palmer – 2.5
This is one of those rare, treasured books that suck you in from page one. Admittedly, I was a bit reluctant to read this book. The concept just sounded too Jerry Springer/Maury Povich for my taste. But, finally, the deficit of books at my local library that I haven’t read led me to pick it up. I’m very glad that I did. There’s no Springer-esque trailer-park-exhibitionism here, no hokey Povich circus-act-disguised-as-emotional-tear-jerker-moment antics. There are, however, a few ”ick!” moments. I’m a Southern girl, born and bred, so intermarriage within families is nothing new to me, but no one I know has actually married a sibling. Or, if they have, they’ve had the mercy not to tell me about it.
Middlesex is a novel about assimilation. About the process of absorbing one culture into another. How one is usually subducted (not an actual word, but you know what I mean) by the other. But it also tells of our differences. No matter how well we are absorbed into the whole, we are still separate due to our own individuality. This book celebrates that while, at the same time, describing the awkwardness and pain of being different. No matter how we outwardly celebrate individuality, inwardly there is still something in us that wishes to be “normal”.
The character of Desdemona fascinated me. As did the whole character of Greekness. I’ll admit to being completely unaware of the burning of Smyrna in the 1920s, which is a excellent example of the insularity of the American education system. I googled it.
Middlesex is a wonderful, absorbing novel that I would definitely recommend to anyone. Mr. Eugenides’ other novel, The Virgin Suicides, is definitely going on my “to be read” list. I loved this book!
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Good morning, y’all. It’s a warm sunny day, right now, but they’re calling for more rain later on. It’s more like July and August than late May.
Currently, I’m reading Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides and loving it. These people are seriously messed up. Not just Cal, but his/her whole family. And I thought my family, being Southern, was weird. My mother’s sister and her aunt married brothers, while my mother married the brothers’ nephew, so that’s made for some convoluted kinship ties. Nobody committed incest, there were just a lot of marriages between the two families.
Anyway, when I’m not reading, playing with my cats, or tending the roses, I’ve done a couple of layouts.
First, is Bree using my Road Trip kit. I really just wanted an excuse to play with the corkboard.
And this one is Kaylee back in February. The kit is Express Yourself by Ronna Penner of Scrapadelic, which I got at Shabby Princess.
Hi, y’all, on the this somewhat rainy Sunday afternoon. It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything, I know, but I’m still here. I think.
Netflix finally sent me The Reader last week. Personally, I thought it was pretty much on par with the book, though Kate Winslet’s performance was excellent. Definitely worth all the buzz she got. One riff: in the book, Michael had hepatitis, while in the movie, he had scarlet fever. Why was this changed? What possible artistic gain was achieved by it?
I also watched Mongol last week. This was a much better movie, in my opinion. My sister wouldn’t watch it because it’s in Mongolian so you have to read the subtitles as you watch. She says that distracts her from the movie. I wonder how she plans to watch Apocolypto, which is in Mayan?
Anyway, here’s a little something I’ve been working on, perfect for summer vacations.
Road Trip contains:
- 9 papers
- 1 corkboard and frame
- 6 road signs (Yield, Stop, Main Street, Route 66, Interstate 95 and one that says Road Trip)
- 3 blank road signs (Street and Interstate)
- 3 negative frames
- 1 stamp frame
- 1 Polaroid frame
- 3 journal papers
- 1 daily journal (date, location, and a few lines for journaling)
- 6 gel flowers
- 4 bows
- 2 curled ribbons
- 1 butterfly
- 4 bottle caps
- 6 post-its
- 12 thumbtacks
- 1 staple
- 1 paperclip
- 1 piece of Scotch tape
- 1 Phillip’s screw
- 1 flathead screw
- 1 alpha (uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and some symbols)
- 3 wordarts
Download: 4shared and mediafire.
Enjoy!
Okay, quit with the drama. It’s the flu. Not much different from regular flu, from everything I’ve heard. This is not Avian Flu or Spanish Flu (the strain that caused the horrific 1918 pandemic), but Swine Flu, which, by the way, has almost nothing to do with actual pigs. Therefore, going out and slaughtering all the pigs isn’t going to make any difference.
Out of a global population of 6 or 7 billion, only about a thousand have, or are suspected to have, Swine Flu. Around 35,000 thousand people die of ordinary strains of influenza every year in the United States alone. Swine Flu hasn’t killed that many people globally.
Sure, it could mutate into something that actually merits the media frenzy and melodrama, but so can any of the strains of influenza that pop up every year. This is why the elderly, the ill, and children are encouraged to get flu shots every year.
Instead of indulging in hysterics and succumbing to media sensationalism, we should focus on the all too deadly pandemic of HIV/AIDS, and the true tragedy and horror occurring in Darfur and the rest of Sudan.
- The Fourth Hand by John Irving – 4
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez – 5
- The Reader by Bernhard Schlink – 3.5
- Test of Time by Jayne Ann Krentz – 2.5
- A Dangerous Climate by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro – 3
- Mistress of the Monarchy by Alison Weir – 3
- More Than Memory by Dorothy Garlock – 3
- Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel García Márquez – 4
- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez – 4.5
- Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron – 4.5
- Suite 606 by J. D. Robb and Co. – 2.75
- Going Home by Nora Roberts – 3.25
- November of My Heart by LaVyrle Spencer – 3.75
- Bygones by LaVyrle Spencer – 4
- Diary of a Radical Mermaid by Deborah Smith – 4.75
I watched Love in the Time of Cholera today. It was pretty true to the book, and confirmed my opinion of it. If you ask me, Ariza should have been the one named Juvenal, not Dr. Urbino. Everything he did was so juvenile, from the stalking, to the letters, to his little diary. What I really want to see is The Reader, but there’s a long wait for it at Netflix. Oh, well.
::sigh::
A couple of weeks ago, I started playing around with a beach/summer themed kit, but I really haven’t had that much time to work on it. So, here is what there is of it. When I get the time, I’ll probably add more elements. Hopefully.
Down by the Sea contains:
- 16 papers
- 4 frames
- 5 clouds
- 1 kite
- 1 beach ball
- 1 wave
Also included is a CD Album QP.
Download: 4shared and mediafire.
Have fun, y’all.
I find that I like this book despite myself. The writing is beautiful and the tale absorbing in spite of its glaring flaw. Or, at least, what I see as a flaw.
When you are a teenager, it is natural to follow your sweetheart around, sighing over them with longing. This does not work, however, when you are an adult. With adults, this is called stalking. To me, it is not romantic, it is slightly creepy. And “stalker” is the word that flashed through my mind many times while reading Love in the Time of Cholera. What is charming and sweet at eighteen or nineteen is creepy at fifty or sixty.
This plot device did not work for me, and was made even worse by the “dirty-old man” relationship with América Vicuña.
Yet, as I said, I find that I liked this book, anyway, a tribute to the skill of Señor García Márquez.
By the way, am I the only one who thinks a bit about Hemingway while reading García Márquez? Something about the overt masculinity of the writing makes me think of Ernest Hemingway. The difference being, of course, that I actually like García Márquez while Hemingway bores me silly.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
First, I was rather surprised by how short this book is, especially as compared to One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Memories of My Melancholy Whores didn’t move me nearly as much as One Hundred Years Solitude. This is probably because I am thirty instead of ninety. I’m sure it has a far greater impact on people older, and definitely wiser, than I.
Or, maybe, it’s just a guy thing. I don’t know.
Also, it seemed more than a little ridiculous to go to a brothel, pay the madame for the services of a whore, and then, later on in the “relationship”, get angry with the person for being a whore. Even a bit hypocritical, given the narrator’s past.
I’m sorry to say that Memories of My Melancholy Whores just didn’t do it for me.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
