(no subject)

Whether or not anyone cares, I, too, have watched the Some Girls video, and like it. I half expected it would turn out the sleaziest thing that ever sleazed, but I don't think I was figuring in the creature that is JC well enough: he emotes with such clueless innocence all through that the potential for sleaze is all miraculously negated.

I'm making slow progress with The Edible Woman - it's my commute book, so I'm only allowed to read it aboard public transportation, and even then only if I'm sitting down. Right now, I rather wish I hadn't read the introduction, or just that I somehow hadn't realized how early in Atwood's career it was written; then I might not be so obsessed with trying to find hints of immaturity in it. Yesterday and the day before, I couldn't stop mulling over the sentence "Marian was further confused by the fact that she didn't exactly know whether an early Christian was being thrown to the lions, or an early lion to the Christians." It's a delightful little sentence, it made me laugh out loud on the tram, but now I want to decide whether it's an easy joke, whether Atwood would still use a sentence like that, and what else one can make of it. A larger structure under the strictest consideration is the character of Duncan: is he any good, is he just the shallow plot device of a writer-in-training. But then, of course, well-rounded supporting characters aren't exactly Atwood's trademark in the later novels, either.

I wish Sylvia Plath had lived long enough to write a second novel. The Bell Jar is really such an obvious My First Novel. I don't mean to say that I think that it's no good, nor that Plath was in any way an inexperienced writer when she produced it – only that it reeks of first-novelness, and I would have liked to see what she might have done next.

Aannndd if fishes were horses, they could ride their bicycles underwater, too.

It seems that everything I read these days is about young successful women falling apart in great detail. The downward spiral is made to sound so tempting that sometimes I forget that I'm not supposed to relate to it. I have to tell myself, this is not the '60s, and certainly not the '50s, their concerns are not mine, and there's really no sense in getting overly focused on food. Still, every now and then it might be interesting to say, why, yes, I was driven into madness by a novel. Culture-critically appropriate. Children! Do not read books!

melymbrosia wrote a lovely entry about her axioms of reading a while ago; I nodded my way through most of it, although, one bit I'll quote -

When I read, I want to immerse myself in another world. I want to submerge myself. That illusion of reality -- that depth of worldbuilding, that continuity of event and consequence, that richness of character -- that is necessary to my pleasure [snip].

- I think this is really one of those things you can't ever say "oh? I don't" to without sounding pretentious or insincere. (But I honestly believe that I don't, and I haven't, and don't strive to (or aren't able to?) "submerge" myself while reading, and that consequently, any "illusion of reality" as such is of secondary interest to me. I'm pretty sure I care more about the words than the worlds, and that that makes me happy enough.

I wonder if my mind operates differently in this respect when it comes to fanfic, though.)

Popslash has restored my faith in AUs, the "characters set in a different world altogether" kind of AUs. I suppose my frothing at the mouth whenever the Austen fandom is brought up must appear completely ridiculous to outsiders, but you, man, you weren't there (tufftaffaty excluded; she's allowed to point and laugh all she wants) – and the Austen fandom was the fandom for this sort of AUs and, I thought, put me off them forever. They were teh EVOL. But popslash has

The Haircuts by k8
The bitchy barista JC AU by Cappuccino
blood a necklace by Sandy the Younger
and Under Glass by Calico (the reason I can't say "all highschool AUs must die" even though it sometimes occurs to me that I'd like to)

to name just a few, randomly, and they're better than candy, and I'd take them with me on that proverbial island, too, so the genre must logically be of the good, at heart.

Seriously, I'm so exhausted these days that the only thing I'm truly interested in is smoking. Smoking, smoking. So I smoke much too much, and think about it all the rest of the time.

But give me something to siiing about...