'tis no problem. We talk closer to time, oui?

And speaking food, we're off to dinner.

This might seem like it's better suited to the book thread, but I don't think so.

One of my favorite authors when a teenager was Jane Aiken Hodge. Gothic-type romances, set particuarly in Napoleonic Europe, but her characters have intelligence and humor. I just found out there are several books from her that I haven't read! (I was at the library today). The woman was born in 1917, and a new book of hers--the one I just finished reading--came out in 2000. God bless the long lived.

Anyway, in the dedication, she says she first started the story in 1950 and doesn't remember now why she put it aside, either busy with her family or she got into a plot corner or something. In 1998 she found it again and decided to finish it. So what she did, she left the first part of the story set in 1950, with all the assumptions and attitudes in place. There's a lovely young thing, a murder, an attentive and clever Scotland Yard man to save her from charges.

Fast forward a few decades. We discover that she married the policeman, who immediately quit his job to live off the money she inherited from the murdered woman to try and go into politics, which he fails miserably at. And he had an illegitimate daughter, who meets up with our heroine.

My point? How fascinating to have a book that shows a writer's intentions from both ends of her career, to see how she expresses the vast differences in the world at the two wildly disparate times. The teenager even says Fuck--though she apologizes profusely for the language. I nearly dropped the book in shock, because Jane Aiken Hodge always wrote these safe, proper books. I re-read one from when I was a teenager, afraid that it would have deteriorated under the changes in my reading tastes. But there are so many things I missed when I was a kid, like the fact that the young heroine listened to a housemaid get raped and murdered in the stables below her hiding place when soldiers broke into the estate. I'm sure I didn't get the significance of that scene when I read it the first time.

I'm thrilled to discover JAH's books are still good reading for me. I tried Dorothy Cannell, a criticlly acclaimed mystery writer, and I couldn't finish either of the ones I checked out because the characters were so self-consciously eccentric or stereotypically English-diffident. Not one normal person in the lot. New books by a favorite author, it's a happy thing.

It bears repeating, because it's so often taken for granted, that the book you write at twenty is going to be radically different than the book you write at eighty.

I'm amazed she's still alive and working. Good on her.

Am, the limit's 50K? Much easier.

Which explains why I managed it last year.

On the notebooks vs. computers thing: I keep a paper diary which records predominately real life stuff and a livejournal which records mostly fandom stuff; a reporter's shorthand pad in which I write (longhand) first drafts of almost anything whenever I can't reach the computer and notes about on almost everything; a poetry notebook (one that's actually labelled that, with nice paper and inspirational quotes from poets in); a pad of A4 lined paper for longer pieces; and several folders on the harddrive, of poetry, original fiction, fanfic, and suchlike. I like the speed and ease of sharing which comes with the computer, and the feel of creating something which comes with pen and paper. Also, I have a bit of a stationary fetish-- I can't walk past somewhere selling paper without at least stopping to look, and sometimes to touch-- and I find I write in subletly different styles on different types of paper, so I like to have a variety around.

New books by a favorite author, it's a happy thing.

I've only read a couple of her books (what was translated into Hebrew - I could never find anything by her in English around here, not even the ones that were translated), so I'm just glad that I have so much more waiting for me, when I do get to find it. I really loved the few that I got to read.

Also, Teppy, I had an idea for a subject for a drabble (and it even has a "something you may like" side to it, I don't mind admitting that): hands.

I thought about it as a possible topic while washing the floor at my apartment on Friday. I was squeezing (I'm not sure that's the word) the mop (I'm sure that's not the word, but I can't think of a better one), to take the water out of it so that I can wipe the floor with a clean dry one, and remembered how my grandmother used to do that, with her long beautiful damaged-from-decades of hard work hands, which were stronger than mine even when she was in her seventies and I a healthy teenager. And then I thought about how, after my grandmother passed away, my mom started to pick up a few hands gestures of hers, gestures that she never used before.

So, anyway, at the moment that I thought "if I could write¹, that's what I'd write about", I thought to offer it up here as a subject. Of course, I didn't think I'll force you to read so many words in order to get to that idea.

¹ Yeah, in that Hebrew sense of 'write' as I explained before!

connie -- what was the book?

Nilly, I love that idea. Hell, for those of us who "talk" with our hands, not using them is excruciating. I find that if I sit on my hands, or make a conscious effort to not use them, my speech slows down and I develop a tiny stammer. Odd.

Thanks, deb.

I've said it more than once - if my hands were tied, I'd be unable to shout for help. That's how much I use my hands when I talk.

(slightly off-topic) Nilly, any idea when you're coming out? (edit: to the West Coast, I mean. Heh.)

t Natter

any idea when you're coming out?

Nothing specific yet. The dates of the exams are still not final, and I'm still not sure of people's schedules, so I don't know anything final yet. If there are dates that are bad for you, and I know that there's pretty much a plan to kidnap me and load me on a car to SF (not that I have any objections to that!), then that's the time to let me know - Allyson and Kristen have dates when they won't be in LA, and I already know I should plan around those, in order to make sure we'll get to meet and hang out.

t /Natter