Xander ,'Conversations with Dead People'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
I felt a bit blindsided by her poor self-image.
That was her from book one. Not so much in the TV mysteries, though.
How much angst can Lynley have without his head exploding? Barbara Havers is my favorite character, though.
Yeah. And Deb is my least favorite. I love Simon, though.
Not so much in the TV mysteries, though.
Yeah -- she's just normal looking, and a wee bit avoidant.
Is she ugly in the books, or is it in her head? I couldn't be sure from Deception, since she was battered the whole way through.
I don't think she's supposed to be ugly. Rather, frumpy, at least in her opinion. Wears hightop trainers all the time, her suits always have a hem coming undone, etc. And she wants to lose weight, I know.
And she wants to lose weight, I know.
Ah, the great literary shorthand for "woman with issues".
My favorite variant on that is Elizabeth Peter's Vicky Bliss, an art history (I think) Ph.D. who works in a museum, has a world-class thief as a lover, and thrilling adventures all the time. She's blonde, blue-eyed, six-foot with big tits, and she hates it. Her dream is to be petite and to not be stared at all the time.
I hated the new Elizabeth George. AmyLiz -- did you read the whole thing? Because I couldn't stand that she killed off Helen in that way.
A friend spoiled me for the thing you hated, sumi -- I told her to. And I doubt I'm going to get through it -- I'm only a third through now, and so frickin' bored I could scream. I can't make myself care about any of it.
Well, it just seemed so gratuitous.
Anybody here read Edith Wharton, much? I'm spoiling for a debate about the Gilded Age, feminism and Citizen Kane, and it is hard to debate myself. Anybody up for it?
I love Edith Wharton, but I haven't read the novels in a while, aside from The Age of Innocence.
I read The Custom of the Country recently, and 50 pages in I said to myself, This is just like Citizen Kane, if Charles Foster Kane had been a woman. (And, really, I think I was right -- the story of Undine Spragg is an exploration of the same myth, but her "pioneering" and "exploration" and "conquest" are all in the drawing-room.
I don't know whether Wharton uses the same language about others of her heroines, but it really struck me. Moreso, it struck me because we're meant to empathize with and pity Kane, and we're meant to worship Dan'l Boone, but even her author means us to despise and loathe Undine.