Tonight I went and saw an amateur production of A Midsummer Nights Dream. I love that play.
Fortune - I love it too!
I finally finished Word Freak.
Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul by Tony Hendra
I just finished Laura Jacobs' Women about Town, a small book in more ways than one. I was both fascinated and repelled by the detailed descriptions of the mesh of the women's lives: repelled by a motif of interest in clothing and home furnishing details recurring through the progressions of events and fascinated to watch how all this piffle did help carve out a sense not only of place but character. With all the richness the descriptions are somewhat spare... I have to add somewhat because the word spare by itself is not true. They approach spare from the extravagant side. Spare may not be the word I am after, let me edit to say 'honed'.
There are glimpses of the new york world of the arts that are snapshots of
the scene glossed but not really mocking.
The book is small in its intimacy of focus and small in its lack of effort to take on great matters of the day as underlying themes. The portraits in it have some psychological perspicacity and that combo of apparent style euphoria and emotional passage kept my interest.
Sounds quite repellent though possibly fascinating. I'm sure it's true of so many women world wide.
I'm reading A Round-Heeled Woman by Jane Juska which has had a lot of publicity here. It tickles the imagination of us older women, I suppose. So far OK - more of an autobiography than a salacious account of the 60 men who replied to her advertisement.
Also just starting Almost French by - rats, I've forgotten - an Australian woman who found herself living in Paris almost by mistake good, well written, flowing and funny so far.
That's my kinda book, Almost French, I need to check it out.
On the Women about Town, the two leads weren't really shallow. I was as interested in my own reactions as I was in the book, because I do work with "style" in my own life, landscape design involving various choices in spatial arrangement.
Ah..but it's good to see things as through a telescope inverted, isn't it?
I just read "Under the Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer. Some may know him as the author of "Into Thin Air"; well, this book is quite different. Focuses on a horrible murder by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers. More generally, it's about the origins and growth of the Mormon faith.
Fascinating stuff, though hard to read at times...
Some interesting books that you've been reading. What do you find hard to read about the mormon-murderers' book? Was it written with plot in mind, rather than style and plot?
I heard about that 'Round-heeled woman' book; it sounded rather cold; but maybe that was my perception of it alone. 'Almost French' sounds interesting.
It does sound like an unusual and probably repelling read, Osso. Who was shallow? -- the people around them?
As for me, I'm uncharacteristically reading something modern; I'm reading a book of short stories called 'True Believers,' written by Joseph O' Connor, the guy who wrote 'Cowboys and Indians,' 'desperados,' and the play 'Red roses and petrol,' amongst other things. They're strangely compelling, these stories mostly in the eyes of modern Irish émigrés, hugely varied in character but somehow connected. They paint, often humorously, sometimes heart-wrenchingly a view of London rather like what Joyce would come up with, were he transplanted there in 1990.
(Of course, I'm reading this alongside 'Othello,' which was one of the Shakespeare texts that I did for my A-level Literature some time ago. I still know all of Iago's lines... amazingly frightening evil. )
Quote:Did any character in particular shine in 'A Midsummer Night's dream?'
Yes actually. Puck was fantastic and the young lady who played Hermia showed quite a lot of talent (especially when crying over Lysander and trying to scratch out Helena's eyes). The real star though was Bottom, he had the audience in stitches.
Oh, and the 'wall' was funny as hell too!
Osso, I think I read an interview in the paper with Laura Jacobs a while ago. I understand the book is loosely autobiographical (If it's the same book I'm thinking of).
It does explain that some of it is autobiographical in the back of the book, which is put out by Penguin. Laura Jacobs is or was a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.
As to shallow, it might be myself, for so quickly writing off characters who liked to shop so keenly.
Yes, that's the same author I read about. From what I understand, she plays on being more fashionably Pommie than Pommie. I think the journalist who conducted the interview described her shallowness as so complete and developed as to almost qualify as depth.
Hmmm. I kept reading, but perhaps was fortified by the fact that the book was short. Both lead women turned out to have strong interest in non-superficial artistic concerns, and had made some un-shallow decisions in the rest of their lives. This is not to say that I thought the book has a lot of depth either... just that my initial repulsion-yet-interest in it reflects something about me as well as the book. If I regard an interest in design as useful, why am I so repulsed by these ladies who shop?
Y'don't have to answer that, I am just expressing my thoughts to self as I finished the book.
I remember a boss of mine in the medical world, a fellow who was not a shallow person, saying definitively, "Style is everything." <me frowning>
He meant it fairly encompassingly, I think, re getting ahead in life.
I believe that a good sense of aesthetics is an invaluable source of creativity and a joy for those impacted by it.
But to devote ones life to shopping...? Seems a frivolous focus for one's energies (this from one who just loves to shop, but not as a career).
Well, it wasn't what they devoted their lives to. But it was a common interest among the four or five women characters. I look to myself to wonder why I put it off as more shallow, say, than an interest in car models or whatever other enthusiasms people find.
Interesting. Perhaps it has something to do with the idea of personal adornment?
I'm busy reading Children of Dune. Third book in the dune series by Frank Herbert.
