How good how kind how pure how lovely
How dead how very very dead
Monday, July 6, 2015
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Jane by April Lindner
Read in early May. *Heavy spoilers*
This book is a modern-day retelling of Jane Eyre, which is one of my favorite books. I'd read about it on some YA blog a while back and made a mental note of it, but I didn't actually get this book until I came across it almost by accident in my favorite thrift store. While it is updated, it stays really close to the book. Recently orphaned Jane drops out of college to work as the nanny for a rock star's daughter. She's hired because she doesn't care about celebrities, but of course she falls in love with Nico the rock star blah blah wife in the attic, you know how it goes. The setting is the US East coast, and everyone who was English is now American, while the 'foreigners' are still p. much the same nationalities. The author said that she was struggling to figure out how to update the class differences (huge in the 19th century, not so much now) until she hit on the fame/celebrity thing.
I initially thought it was weird that this Jane was recently orphaned and had siblings she was estranged from (so she couldn't rely on them when her parents died), but Lindner actually combined Jane's dead parents with her abusive aunt's family, which really makes sense. Jane's brother is the abusive boy cousin, and her sister steps in for the prettier and cossetted yet selfish girl cousins. Her cold and neglectful mother who definitely favors her older two siblings over her and lets her know it all the time is basically the same person as the aunt (like if Lucille Bluth weren't funny at all), while her kind but emotionally distant and always steamrolled by his wife father is the dead uncle. It makes sense to combine the two families in this way, and it kind of makes it more heartrending since it is her own immediate family and not some semi-distant relatives who are obsessed with class and look down on her for living on their charity like in the original. It's worse, and her parents dying kind of keep Jane from being able to resolve these issues with them. The part of the book where Jane goes back to nurse her dying aunt and forgives her is turned into Jane going to visit her sister since her brother's crashing at her place after his ex-girlfriend (whom he also abused) kicks him out, and the sister wants him gone. Jane is able to get some closure re: his being a total psychopathic abuser, but it's not this touching "I forgive you!" stuff, but it makes sense that it wouldn't be. I wish he'd died in a bar brawl or whatever like the cousin in the original too; I didn't really feel like he got a comeuppance or what he deserved. We just saw that he's a pathetic awful mess and will always be that way since all his problems are his own fault and he refuses to see that.
Helen Burns is sidelined as her college roommate and former best friend that moves to Idaho or some such and doesn't really talk to her anymore, which kinda makes sense since pretty much everyone sees the meat of the story being in the Jane x Rochester dynamic, which it is, but her relationship with Helen is one of the most important in her life because it's pretty much the first person to show her real, unconditional love she didn't have to earn. No mention of the favorite teacher, either, from what I remembered. Adele is p. much the same as well. Her mom was a French pop star who took her toddler daughter to nightclubs all the time. Poor thing. I wish they'd let Adele keep her French; as a bilingual kid, keeping my native tongue is so important to me. There's like no French in this book.
The Rivers siblings become the St. John siblings (heh), and they are all pretty much the same. The boy is written like he might have like Aspergers or at least be intensely focused on things like Sherlock from the BBC show, and the sibling dynamic between them all is the same as well ("our brother's a genius with a heart for the poor!!" stop enabling him, sisters). The thing where St. John is attracted to a rich nice girl but refuses to consider dating her because mission work is there too; the only twist is that he doesn't want to get together with her and go with him not because she's so frail she'll probably die of tropical diseases, but because her dad owns some pharmaceutical company and he distrusts where her real loyalties lie. The ridiculously illogical pragmatism is the same. The mission field is in Haiti instead of India, which makes sense, and Jane practices French with him. The "Jane study Hindi with me instead of German" thing is replaced by volunteering at a soup kitchen. The creepy "Jane come be a missionary with me but we have to get married" thing is still there too but it makes even less sense than in the original since no one raises an eyebrow at girls and boys traveling together anymore; St. John's just like "we may as well be a couple since we have the same passions and we'll be working together all the time so it will probably happen anyway, who cares about attraction or chemistry" and it's somehow creepier in modernity.
Nico/Rochester's nonsense is unsurprisingly way creepier and controlling than in the original; what kind of grown-ass fortysomething man playing all these games to manipulate an inexperienced nineteen year old girl, as I kept yelling throughout the book. The playful banter/we're arguing because\but we're in love thing where Jane really just has him in the palm of her hand (I think Mallory referred to this as "topping from the bottom" [sorry, direct quote] but she may have been talking about Pamela instead) is really sadly lost. Apart from her quietly but firmly not letting herself be showered with gifts and jetsetted around the world like a typical rockstar's girlfriend, there's none of that dynamic that makes their relationship be swoony or aspirational at all (not that you should aspire to this kind of relationship omfg please don't). You know what I mean? She has like 1/4th the power she has in the original, so it loses a lot of the fun. The awed gratitude is still there, but the exultation "finally somebody loves me" is not. The "we are mental and spiritual equals, solemates" thing is mostly gone.
The Blanche Ingram character is the same, except she is an Annie Leibovitz type. I don't have much to say about her. That weird racist brownface g*psy thing that Rochester does just turns into a girlfriend of Nico's bandmate's reading Jane's tarot cards, which is less exciting and it's not like Nico had her rig their results. Nico's bandmates (he's a rock star, remember) all have girlfriends who are like models and stuff, and they are nice to and befriend Jane, which I liked.
Bertha is like a Brazilian socialite/model/Nico's wife that Nico got hooked on drugs and he feels guilty since it triggered her schizophrenia which keeps her murderous and violent and she refuses/will only pretend to take her medication and that's why he keeps her locked up in the attic. Nico's "DO YOU KNOW HOW AWFUL THOSE PLACES ARE, JANE???" when she reasonably asks him why he doesn't put Bertha in a mental institution where they actually have the facilities and teams of trained mental health professionals to deal with murderous schizophrenics instead of a perpetually drunk caregiver since this is unnecessarily endangering him, his staff, and HIS FIVE-YEAR OLD DAUGHTER, SERIOUSLY, loses a ton of weight since they don't chain crazies to the wall in damp, rat-infested basements or see mental illness as paramount to being a criminal (much) anymore. The mental illness thing isn't treated much better in the modern version than it is in the nineteenth century version; it's just updated with drugs and modern names.
Jane leaves Nico because he constantly lied to her when she gave him ample chances to tell her the truth, not because she's afraid she'll throw away her morals and live with him in sin as his mistress. This change makes sense since that's not the immoral, life-ruining thing it used to be seen as. I would have been interested to see how Jane's faith was updated and handled. I've always found it interesting that Jane, despite being religiously bullied by fundamentalist extremists at a girls' home, still developed a spiritual life that was important to her, in large part due to the important relationships she built up with her best friend and favorite teacher, both spiritual, loving people. Since both of those relationships were excised from the modern retelling, it makes sense that Jane's spirituality was too.
Here is the thing that bothered me most: you know after Thornfield Hall being set on fire and Rochester being maimed/blinded trying to save Bertha who jumps off the building and dies, then when Jane learns about this she immediately goes back to him? Well, instead of being penitent and repenting of his asshattish behavior, Nico is all "YOU LEFT ME JANE!!! HOW COULD YOU!!! I WAS IN AGONY WORRYING ABOUT YOU!!!" and Jane is all ":((( that was so wrong of me I'm so sorry my love!" PUKE. F that S. SHE LEFT HIM BECAUSE HE LIED TO AND MANIPULATED HER! THAT'S ON HIM! As Peggy says in Agent Carter, "You don't get to use my reaction to your behaviour as an excuse for your behaviour!" Nico/Rochester does not see the error of his ways or realize that what happened was because of him and his behavior and repent. He does not become humbled, only embittered. He doesn't go through this mental and behavioral change and develop a character and becomes the kind of man Jane deserves. This is the book/relationship's main redeeming quality. I am disappointed in this book because it's the most important part and it did not happen.
OH, ALSO, some mysterious relative does not die and leave Jane with a fortune of her own, which is the most important thing, relationships aside, that happens to Jane in the book. This is undoubtedly because then she'd have to share it with her awful siblings, but at the very least the worthless stocks her parents left her could have suddenly started increasing in value. I mean in the modern retelling Jane sleeps with Nico/Rochester, but she doesn't become rich and she doesn't discover she has nice family relations and no one gets the comeuppance/character change they deserve/need, so what's the point?
Pros/things I liked about this book, Jane the modern Jane Eyre:
faithful adaptation that dealt with the different factors in interesting ways
Jane is befriended by Nico's bandmates' model/actress girlfriends, which is nice
Jane and Nico sleep together, if you're into that. I guess it is realistic for our time but I was just like meh
Cons/things I did not like about this adaptation
lol everything outlined above
no comeuppance for those who deserved it
Jane didn't feel as Jane-ish as she should have
relationship dynamic not the same
Jane's spiritual life/outlook, which is an important part of her and the way she sees things, is excised from the book
3.5 out of 5 stars
This book is a modern-day retelling of Jane Eyre, which is one of my favorite books. I'd read about it on some YA blog a while back and made a mental note of it, but I didn't actually get this book until I came across it almost by accident in my favorite thrift store. While it is updated, it stays really close to the book. Recently orphaned Jane drops out of college to work as the nanny for a rock star's daughter. She's hired because she doesn't care about celebrities, but of course she falls in love with Nico the rock star blah blah wife in the attic, you know how it goes. The setting is the US East coast, and everyone who was English is now American, while the 'foreigners' are still p. much the same nationalities. The author said that she was struggling to figure out how to update the class differences (huge in the 19th century, not so much now) until she hit on the fame/celebrity thing.
I initially thought it was weird that this Jane was recently orphaned and had siblings she was estranged from (so she couldn't rely on them when her parents died), but Lindner actually combined Jane's dead parents with her abusive aunt's family, which really makes sense. Jane's brother is the abusive boy cousin, and her sister steps in for the prettier and cossetted yet selfish girl cousins. Her cold and neglectful mother who definitely favors her older two siblings over her and lets her know it all the time is basically the same person as the aunt (like if Lucille Bluth weren't funny at all), while her kind but emotionally distant and always steamrolled by his wife father is the dead uncle. It makes sense to combine the two families in this way, and it kind of makes it more heartrending since it is her own immediate family and not some semi-distant relatives who are obsessed with class and look down on her for living on their charity like in the original. It's worse, and her parents dying kind of keep Jane from being able to resolve these issues with them. The part of the book where Jane goes back to nurse her dying aunt and forgives her is turned into Jane going to visit her sister since her brother's crashing at her place after his ex-girlfriend (whom he also abused) kicks him out, and the sister wants him gone. Jane is able to get some closure re: his being a total psychopathic abuser, but it's not this touching "I forgive you!" stuff, but it makes sense that it wouldn't be. I wish he'd died in a bar brawl or whatever like the cousin in the original too; I didn't really feel like he got a comeuppance or what he deserved. We just saw that he's a pathetic awful mess and will always be that way since all his problems are his own fault and he refuses to see that.
Helen Burns is sidelined as her college roommate and former best friend that moves to Idaho or some such and doesn't really talk to her anymore, which kinda makes sense since pretty much everyone sees the meat of the story being in the Jane x Rochester dynamic, which it is, but her relationship with Helen is one of the most important in her life because it's pretty much the first person to show her real, unconditional love she didn't have to earn. No mention of the favorite teacher, either, from what I remembered. Adele is p. much the same as well. Her mom was a French pop star who took her toddler daughter to nightclubs all the time. Poor thing. I wish they'd let Adele keep her French; as a bilingual kid, keeping my native tongue is so important to me. There's like no French in this book.
The Rivers siblings become the St. John siblings (heh), and they are all pretty much the same. The boy is written like he might have like Aspergers or at least be intensely focused on things like Sherlock from the BBC show, and the sibling dynamic between them all is the same as well ("our brother's a genius with a heart for the poor!!" stop enabling him, sisters). The thing where St. John is attracted to a rich nice girl but refuses to consider dating her because mission work is there too; the only twist is that he doesn't want to get together with her and go with him not because she's so frail she'll probably die of tropical diseases, but because her dad owns some pharmaceutical company and he distrusts where her real loyalties lie. The ridiculously illogical pragmatism is the same. The mission field is in Haiti instead of India, which makes sense, and Jane practices French with him. The "Jane study Hindi with me instead of German" thing is replaced by volunteering at a soup kitchen. The creepy "Jane come be a missionary with me but we have to get married" thing is still there too but it makes even less sense than in the original since no one raises an eyebrow at girls and boys traveling together anymore; St. John's just like "we may as well be a couple since we have the same passions and we'll be working together all the time so it will probably happen anyway, who cares about attraction or chemistry" and it's somehow creepier in modernity.
Nico/Rochester's nonsense is unsurprisingly way creepier and controlling than in the original; what kind of grown-ass fortysomething man playing all these games to manipulate an inexperienced nineteen year old girl, as I kept yelling throughout the book. The playful banter/we're arguing because\but we're in love thing where Jane really just has him in the palm of her hand (I think Mallory referred to this as "topping from the bottom" [sorry, direct quote] but she may have been talking about Pamela instead) is really sadly lost. Apart from her quietly but firmly not letting herself be showered with gifts and jetsetted around the world like a typical rockstar's girlfriend, there's none of that dynamic that makes their relationship be swoony or aspirational at all (not that you should aspire to this kind of relationship omfg please don't). You know what I mean? She has like 1/4th the power she has in the original, so it loses a lot of the fun. The awed gratitude is still there, but the exultation "finally somebody loves me" is not. The "we are mental and spiritual equals, solemates" thing is mostly gone.
The Blanche Ingram character is the same, except she is an Annie Leibovitz type. I don't have much to say about her. That weird racist brownface g*psy thing that Rochester does just turns into a girlfriend of Nico's bandmate's reading Jane's tarot cards, which is less exciting and it's not like Nico had her rig their results. Nico's bandmates (he's a rock star, remember) all have girlfriends who are like models and stuff, and they are nice to and befriend Jane, which I liked.
Bertha is like a Brazilian socialite/model/Nico's wife that Nico got hooked on drugs and he feels guilty since it triggered her schizophrenia which keeps her murderous and violent and she refuses/will only pretend to take her medication and that's why he keeps her locked up in the attic. Nico's "DO YOU KNOW HOW AWFUL THOSE PLACES ARE, JANE???" when she reasonably asks him why he doesn't put Bertha in a mental institution where they actually have the facilities and teams of trained mental health professionals to deal with murderous schizophrenics instead of a perpetually drunk caregiver since this is unnecessarily endangering him, his staff, and HIS FIVE-YEAR OLD DAUGHTER, SERIOUSLY, loses a ton of weight since they don't chain crazies to the wall in damp, rat-infested basements or see mental illness as paramount to being a criminal (much) anymore. The mental illness thing isn't treated much better in the modern version than it is in the nineteenth century version; it's just updated with drugs and modern names.
Jane leaves Nico because he constantly lied to her when she gave him ample chances to tell her the truth, not because she's afraid she'll throw away her morals and live with him in sin as his mistress. This change makes sense since that's not the immoral, life-ruining thing it used to be seen as. I would have been interested to see how Jane's faith was updated and handled. I've always found it interesting that Jane, despite being religiously bullied by fundamentalist extremists at a girls' home, still developed a spiritual life that was important to her, in large part due to the important relationships she built up with her best friend and favorite teacher, both spiritual, loving people. Since both of those relationships were excised from the modern retelling, it makes sense that Jane's spirituality was too.
Here is the thing that bothered me most: you know after Thornfield Hall being set on fire and Rochester being maimed/blinded trying to save Bertha who jumps off the building and dies, then when Jane learns about this she immediately goes back to him? Well, instead of being penitent and repenting of his asshattish behavior, Nico is all "YOU LEFT ME JANE!!! HOW COULD YOU!!! I WAS IN AGONY WORRYING ABOUT YOU!!!" and Jane is all ":((( that was so wrong of me I'm so sorry my love!" PUKE. F that S. SHE LEFT HIM BECAUSE HE LIED TO AND MANIPULATED HER! THAT'S ON HIM! As Peggy says in Agent Carter, "You don't get to use my reaction to your behaviour as an excuse for your behaviour!" Nico/Rochester does not see the error of his ways or realize that what happened was because of him and his behavior and repent. He does not become humbled, only embittered. He doesn't go through this mental and behavioral change and develop a character and becomes the kind of man Jane deserves. This is the book/relationship's main redeeming quality. I am disappointed in this book because it's the most important part and it did not happen.
OH, ALSO, some mysterious relative does not die and leave Jane with a fortune of her own, which is the most important thing, relationships aside, that happens to Jane in the book. This is undoubtedly because then she'd have to share it with her awful siblings, but at the very least the worthless stocks her parents left her could have suddenly started increasing in value. I mean in the modern retelling Jane sleeps with Nico/Rochester, but she doesn't become rich and she doesn't discover she has nice family relations and no one gets the comeuppance/character change they deserve/need, so what's the point?
Pros/things I liked about this book, Jane the modern Jane Eyre:
faithful adaptation that dealt with the different factors in interesting ways
Jane is befriended by Nico's bandmates' model/actress girlfriends, which is nice
Jane and Nico sleep together, if you're into that. I guess it is realistic for our time but I was just like meh
Cons/things I did not like about this adaptation
lol everything outlined above
no comeuppance for those who deserved it
Jane didn't feel as Jane-ish as she should have
relationship dynamic not the same
Jane's spiritual life/outlook, which is an important part of her and the way she sees things, is excised from the book
3.5 out of 5 stars
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Book Reviews
Yes Please by Amy Poehler (early March)
Loved this. Loved that she put old pictures in this. Love her. 4/5
Texts From Jane Eyre by Mallory Ortberg (late March)
Mallory is a genius and her website is one of my favorites on all the Internet. These are hilarious. 5/5
Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton (early April)
I'd seen most of the comics since I follow her blog religiously. Love them and her. 5/5
Lunatics by Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel (mid April)
I grew up reading Dave Barry and he shaped my sense of humor. This book (definitely for adults) was pretty funny but not the most memorable or recommended. If you like either of those authors and stories where every mistake and happenstance builds and intersects and the stakes keep getting higher and higher, then you will enjoy this. I found this at the dollar store and don't regret buying it, but I'm going to give it away since I just have so many books and limited shelf space. 3/5
Loved this. Loved that she put old pictures in this. Love her. 4/5
Texts From Jane Eyre by Mallory Ortberg (late March)
Mallory is a genius and her website is one of my favorites on all the Internet. These are hilarious. 5/5
Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton (early April)
I'd seen most of the comics since I follow her blog religiously. Love them and her. 5/5
Lunatics by Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel (mid April)
I grew up reading Dave Barry and he shaped my sense of humor. This book (definitely for adults) was pretty funny but not the most memorable or recommended. If you like either of those authors and stories where every mistake and happenstance builds and intersects and the stakes keep getting higher and higher, then you will enjoy this. I found this at the dollar store and don't regret buying it, but I'm going to give it away since I just have so many books and limited shelf space. 3/5
Thursday, June 4, 2015
Book reviews: mostly fantasy
I have so many books, you guys. I'm not keeping any of the books below (except for the ebook obvs).
The Secret of Platform 13, by Eva Ibbotson (late February)
This was a cute fantasy story in the vein of Roald Dahl etc. If you've read other books by her then you'd know what to expect (I don't think I have, but the name is familiar to me). The title doesn't have much to do with the story, but I liked it and the characters. I gave it to my dad to give to our local thrift store, but I'm not sure that he has yet. 4 out of 5 stars
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (March 1. Yes, it took me less than one day to read)
AAAAAAAUUUGHGHHGHGHHHHHHHH
They need to teach this book in schools, alongside Brave New World and 1984. Are they??? Why aren't they??? This is like if the Quiverfull movement took over the US. Everything I'd read about it was like "It's still relevant for our times" but I WASN'T PREPARED FOR HOW RELEVANT IT IS. READ THIS BOOK. ATWOOD IS A GENIUS. 4/5 stars simply because it kind of f*cked me up
Briar Rose by Jane Yolen (March 1) *SOME SPOILERS*
This book is a fairytale retelling (my favorite genre) of Sleeping Beauty obviously, but in the Holocaust. The protagonist realizes that her late beloved grandmother's version of the Sleeping Beauty tale she told her growing up was actually a clue to her mysterious past. Lots of promise since I kind of like mysteries. JY is a giant in the fairytale retelling/fantasy genre so I knew it would be good as well as sad due to the setting, but in the end I didn't really like this. The protagonist is college-aged (19-21, I don't remember) but the way she and the book is written, she feels much younger. And there's a shoehorned romance kind of thing with her boss who is like 35? Nope. Plus, while we established that her grandma was Briar Rose in a concentration camp, we never found out who she really was (amnesia due to the gas from the chambers). 3/5 stars
Warriors #1: Into the Wild by Erin Hunter (first half of March)
This is the first in one of those multibook multiseries for elementary/middle school kids that are basically the only way to write/publish books nowadays. It was a free ebook and I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. It's your basic "everyman kid joins a new clan/army/order/fightclub/whatever and while there's suspicion about this outsider, he's accepted, both grudgingly and not. Then he discovers a political plot or The Truth about what they've been told all their lives or w/e and has to save his new home/people and he's The One" but with cats who live in clans in the forest. The political intrigue was actually pretty great, as was the worldbuilding (I can't believe I'm writing this about a book about wild cats). The made-up vocabulary (these books always have new words and dialects etc.) wasn't that corny at all, from what I remember. I actually want to read the rest of them to find out what happens. They're both familiar and refreshing. Recommended for yo' kids (and you obvs if you roll like me). 4/5 stars
The Secret of Platform 13, by Eva Ibbotson (late February)
This was a cute fantasy story in the vein of Roald Dahl etc. If you've read other books by her then you'd know what to expect (I don't think I have, but the name is familiar to me). The title doesn't have much to do with the story, but I liked it and the characters. I gave it to my dad to give to our local thrift store, but I'm not sure that he has yet. 4 out of 5 stars
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (March 1. Yes, it took me less than one day to read)
AAAAAAAUUUGHGHHGHGHHHHHHHH
They need to teach this book in schools, alongside Brave New World and 1984. Are they??? Why aren't they??? This is like if the Quiverfull movement took over the US. Everything I'd read about it was like "It's still relevant for our times" but I WASN'T PREPARED FOR HOW RELEVANT IT IS. READ THIS BOOK. ATWOOD IS A GENIUS. 4/5 stars simply because it kind of f*cked me up
Briar Rose by Jane Yolen (March 1) *SOME SPOILERS*
This book is a fairytale retelling (my favorite genre) of Sleeping Beauty obviously, but in the Holocaust. The protagonist realizes that her late beloved grandmother's version of the Sleeping Beauty tale she told her growing up was actually a clue to her mysterious past. Lots of promise since I kind of like mysteries. JY is a giant in the fairytale retelling/fantasy genre so I knew it would be good as well as sad due to the setting, but in the end I didn't really like this. The protagonist is college-aged (19-21, I don't remember) but the way she and the book is written, she feels much younger. And there's a shoehorned romance kind of thing with her boss who is like 35? Nope. Plus, while we established that her grandma was Briar Rose in a concentration camp, we never found out who she really was (amnesia due to the gas from the chambers). 3/5 stars
Warriors #1: Into the Wild by Erin Hunter (first half of March)
This is the first in one of those multibook multiseries for elementary/middle school kids that are basically the only way to write/publish books nowadays. It was a free ebook and I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. It's your basic "every
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Duolingo errors, part one
I use the Duolingo app for iPad and I love it a lot. In the video I made using the Educreations iPad app, I use some errors in quiz questions as a springboard for discussing Spanish and English, linguistics, grammar, definitions, dialects, vocabulary, and more.
The volume is a bit soft and gets muffled by rustling noises in parts, but this is the first time I've used Educreations and the first time recording a whiteboard video with it. Also, where it sounds like I said "betting" or "bet", I'm actually saying "vetting" or "vet". (Ironically, Mexican Spanish confuses/interchanges the B and V sounds. I've lost my accent decades ago but I have a very soft voice.) My next video will be better.
The volume is a bit soft and gets muffled by rustling noises in parts, but this is the first time I've used Educreations and the first time recording a whiteboard video with it. Also, where it sounds like I said "betting" or "bet", I'm actually saying "vetting" or "vet". (Ironically, Mexican Spanish confuses/interchanges the B and V sounds. I've lost my accent decades ago but I have a very soft voice.) My next video will be better.
Monday, March 9, 2015
Book review: The Second Mrs. Giaconda by E.L. Konigsburg
[Spoilers throughout because this is an old story about an older event and I don't care]
E.L. Konigsburg is the author of From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler (I think that's the title; I'm not bothering to look up the spelling), which I love. I've read a couple of her other books and really like her voice/writing style. I was excited about this one because it's her take on why a thieving apprentice might have been important to Leonardo da Vinci and why LdV might have painted an unknown merchant's second wife when he had all the big names in Italy begging him for a portrait.
Clearly she loves the Italian Renaissance era and finds it fascinating, as this is the second (as far as I know) of her books that deals with a secret behind a beautiful artwork by ateenage mutant ninja turtle Master from that genre/era. However, I was disappointed in this book. The premise was interesting, and while I feel that the idea that Salai (the aforementioned apprentice) was Leonardo's foil and basically allowed him to be carefree and daring vicariously through him, as well as Salai being in love with the duchess, had a lot of promise, ELK basically did nothing with these ideas. There was a lot of description and scenebuilding, everything that ELK is good at, but there was no plot. No one really had anything to lose (although the duchess dies and it's sad because everyone liked her and she's the sole rounded female character). There were no stakes. No one really changed much at the end of the novel. It just was kind of dissatisfying.
Salai as the protagonist is almost entirely unlikeable. He has no moral scruples whatsoever and is completely baldfaced about it, with no negative repercussions to anything he does. The tone of the book didn't match with Salai's tone and vocabulary, which was weirdly slangy in a 20th century way. Despite the title, the subject of the Mona Lisa literally enters the book about three pages from the end. According to this book, Leonardo painted the portrait of this second wife of a nobody merchant because Salai saw that she was basically who the duchess would have been had she lived, and he talked Leonardo into doing it. Yep. Freaking Salai. I don't hate this book, but I feel annoyed that ELK didn't turn it into what it could have been. This could have been really something. It's like you had all the necessary ingredients to make a really good cake, but instead you have a weird flat boring doughy substance that is edible and not that bad but it makes you mad because you could've had delicious cake! 3/5 stars probably
E.L. Konigsburg is the author of From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler (I think that's the title; I'm not bothering to look up the spelling), which I love. I've read a couple of her other books and really like her voice/writing style. I was excited about this one because it's her take on why a thieving apprentice might have been important to Leonardo da Vinci and why LdV might have painted an unknown merchant's second wife when he had all the big names in Italy begging him for a portrait.
Clearly she loves the Italian Renaissance era and finds it fascinating, as this is the second (as far as I know) of her books that deals with a secret behind a beautiful artwork by a
Salai as the protagonist is almost entirely unlikeable. He has no moral scruples whatsoever and is completely baldfaced about it, with no negative repercussions to anything he does. The tone of the book didn't match with Salai's tone and vocabulary, which was weirdly slangy in a 20th century way. Despite the title, the subject of the Mona Lisa literally enters the book about three pages from the end. According to this book, Leonardo painted the portrait of this second wife of a nobody merchant because Salai saw that she was basically who the duchess would have been had she lived, and he talked Leonardo into doing it. Yep. Freaking Salai. I don't hate this book, but I feel annoyed that ELK didn't turn it into what it could have been. This could have been really something. It's like you had all the necessary ingredients to make a really good cake, but instead you have a weird flat boring doughy substance that is edible and not that bad but it makes you mad because you could've had delicious cake! 3/5 stars probably
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Makeup review: Maybelline Color Whisper lipstick in "Who Wore It Red-er"
A while back I tried a couple of my best friend's lipsticks, which were the same brand and type but different shades (an explanation if you are confused by these terms). Maybelline's Color Whisper lipsticks are glossy, sheerish shades that are very light and smooth and glide on easily. I tried a nude shade and a peach shade, both of which can look harsh or weird on my skin, but because they were so light and sheer they actually looked really good. I decided to buy my own tube, and opted for "Who Wore It Red-er" (um, Maybelline? The word "redder" exists. Use that. People are going to know you're punning "who wore it better".) since I'm always on the hunt for the perfect red lipstick (the makeup-wearing human condition). This shade was just as smooth and slide-on-y as the others, but it was otherwise disappointing. Who wore it redder? Everyone. Everyone wore it redder, because this lipstick is not red. It is a sort of ambiguous magenta (feel free to use this as a band name, just give me 10% of your band's earnings). The picture above does have an Instagram filter applied, but it was chosen for increased color accuracy since my cell phone camera is weird and makes things come out both darker and more washed-out than in real life, and it doesn't quite show the correct shade, which is quite vibrant. It's a magenta that looks kind of reddish if you look at it quickly. But it is decidedly not red. Because it is so smooth and slick, I feel like the color kind of slides around on your lips and possibly outside your mouth into Not Lip territory. It is also hard to apply it accurately from the tube; using a lip brush would probably correct that. Since it's so glossy, your lips don't really dry out the way they do with matte lipsticks, but the color kind of feels like it stains your lips, which is strange because initially it feels like you have to apply a lot in order for the color to look even. It takes a lot more wiping to get it all off than you'd think, for a lipstick that's practically a gloss in stick form. Anyway, I give this particular tube 3 out of 5 stars.
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Unsung Hero[in]es: In the Bible, What Did Women Do?
- Deborah: Here Comes the Judge! (sermon video) – Don't limit the way God chooses to work. Don't think that God can or should only work in one specific way.
- Huldah: Prophet to the King (video) – I think this one is something like, Listen to what God is saying regardless of who He's saying it through. God chooses to speak through whomever He wants. God's message is vital regardless of whoever is saying it, even if it's someone you wouldn't expect.
- Miriam: In the Leadership Circle (video) – "Unsung heroes can have feet of clay." God can speak or work through flawed people. Just because a person is flawed, doesn't mean that God can't work through them or choose them to be leaders. Moses also made mistakes and was flawed, but people don't point to him and say that men shouldn't be leaders because of him. (I almost fistpumped in church when he said this. I definitely made that "sips tea" face)
- Esther: Living with the If (video) – This sermon was given by a woman. The story of Esther should be sung and remembered because it shows us how to trust in God despite uncertainty and place our lives in His hands. We need to stand up for what's right despite our fear.
- Priscilla and Junia: The Apostles' Colleagues – Today's church should look like the early church, with both women and men in its leadership and playing important roles.
- Next week is Mary: A Woman's Place. Not sure yet which Mary it is.
I have loved this sermon series, not only because of the crumbs of representation for women that there is in the Bible and the way this shines a light on women leaders (even fewer crumbs for them), but because this is one of the ways my quiet, prefers-not-to-ruffle-feathers pastor shows support for women's ordination: by preaching from the Bible, the same place opponents of women's ordination turn to. This is simultaneously an ordinary sermon series on Bible characters and a Scriptures-supported feminist endorsement of women's ordination. I see you and I thank you.
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