Picture of Dorian Gray

Kat, you'll love this-- Nate, at the bookstore the other day, comes up to me and says, "Mom, what's the deal with The Picture of Dorian Gray?"

"Why, Nate?"

"Well, because in the graphic novel section I saw a copy of it and then in the tower section, they have a novel."

"It's pretty well known."

Gives me the patented twelve-year-old boy look. "Well, yeah, I figured that, but is it good?"

"I think so."

"Can I get it?"

"Which one--the graphic novel or the regular novel."

"Can I have both?"

Hee!

Sure, sj.

Hrm, senior year. AP English. King Lear, Pride and Prejudice, Jude the Obscure...um...

It's possible that I wasn't paying huge amounts of attention in senior year English. Especially the second half.

p&p&z might be good for readings... actually I wonder if I can get DH to read it to me.

Amy, I did! I was going to write back and say you absolutely MUST read 13 Reasons Why, which is fantastic!

Oh, awesome! When I was working at the bookstore, I had girls sitting in the aisle reading it all the time, and we sold out all of our copies a couple of times. Yay!

My junior year was American Lit and British Lit. I can't remember much of what we read for either quite frankly but I know I did a paper on Frankenstein for Brit Lit.

Then my senior year we had a different English class each grading period (this was not your normal high school). So I had Western Lit (where we read Lonesome Dove and that's about it, I remember I read it in about 3 days and fellow students were shocked), we did World Lit (Things Fall Apart and I believe that was when I discovered The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende), then there was Plays -- mostly Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Young Adult Lit. And Senior Thesis. Everyone had to spend a whole grading period writing our Senior Thesis and since we had priveleages at the University Library we were expected to do real research. I wrote a paper on the use of myth in Eudora Welty's The Golden Apples. My teacher was rather hard core and one thing we had to do was make notecards of all our sources we were using. I think there had to be 20 or something.

One girl padded hers with a few French books, and Dr. S threw out all her notecards and made her find all new sources and write new ones because Dr. S knew she couldn't have read the book in French. And we were a small school so it wasn't hard for the teachers to know those kinds of things.

It was actually very useful to do that, I ended up with a B on my paper and consider I put it off until the last minute that was really good. I ended up in an college history class with kids who'd never written a paper with footnotes or citations and had no idea what to do and ended up failing their paper because they couldn't write properly.

What we did our Junior year was pick the courses we wanted to take off a list, I missed getting into Lyrics as Poetry and a few other popular classes.

stands next to JZ in the Austen-loving corner.

...actually, just stands next to JZ in general, and holds up "What She Said" sign.

Austen's pretty much my favourite writer, if I have a favourite writer. Which I don't, actually, because I'm not very hierarchically minded, but she's definitely one of my most beloved ones.

I do remember in my teens that Sense and Sensibility was the one that I would periodically reread, because I couldn't remember what the hell happened, so I guess I can sympathise a little with the 'meh, all the same' mindset. But that was a good while ago.

I think Persuasion is my favourite, with P&P a close second. I love that it's Austen doing Cinderella, and doing it painfully well. I don't love Emma so much, because the heroine makes me cringe a little, but it's a cracking book. I find Mansfield Park a little hardgoing because, sheesh, Fanny Price! But the storytelling is great, and the other characters are great, and it's not that I mind Fanny so much as she doesn't own a piece of my heart. But Northanger Abbey is hilarious as a pisstake of the Twilight- fangirls of the day.

I still haven't read the juvenilia or the unfinished novels, but her letters to Cassandra are pretty fabulous.

I'm thoroughly looking forward to reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Oh, fanfic, how I love thee.

Things Fall Apart and I believe that was when I discovered The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

Beautiful novels! I particularly love Things Fall Apart.

Persuasion seems to be the suggestion for re-discovering Austen. I'll give it a go.

It's basically Cinderella, if she'd made a bad call and been obliged to live with it.

::hugs Persuasion::

So, Seska - belated Welcome Aboard! How did you come to find us, mate?