Friday odds and ends.
05 February 2010
It's Friday, and I'm ready for the week to be over. I never, ever get cabin fever, and I think I've got cabin fever. All week I wandered around grumpy, started about twenty books, and couldn't get through any of them. My need to develop some other hobby that isn't reading is becoming more apparent--but the sad fact remains that when I don't feel like reading, I don't feel like doing anything.
But that is neither here nor there. There were some high points during the week. When my New York magazine arrived (a gift from my sister--thanks Sis; I LOVE it!) I was pleased to find that they had noted on their final-page "approval matrix" that "Jonny Lee Miller as a hubba-hubba Mr. Knightley in Masterpiece Theatre's Emma" falls in the region of both highbrow and brilliant. Hubba hubba, indeed; can't wait for Sunday night's final installment.
In keeping with that theme, one of the books I didn't finish this week was the collection A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen. Some of the essays were intros that people had previously written for Austen's novels (which aren't real fun to read, separated from the novels) and some were just a bit scholarly. But I did enjoy a line from Martin Amis's essay:
"The first challenge you face when writing about Pride and Prejudice is to get through your first sentence without saying, 'it is a truty universally acknowledged...' With that accomplished (with that out of the way), you can move on to more testing questions." (p. 83.)
In other news, I read a kids' book titled Olivia Kidney, by Ellen Potter, that I had read about somewhere and thought my niece might like. I started out liking it, but then it got kind of weird. Like scary weird. I don't know that I'll want to pass this on to her. So I wondered...have any of you read this book? Even though it weirded me out, would a kid like it? Reading this book just reminded me why I was always vaguely nervous in the kids' half of the library: I have no idea what kids like, or why.
And that's all she wrote. Have a good weekend, everyone. My plans? Well, they're exciting. I'm thinking about trying to make an artichoke dip to have while watching the Super Bowl. I have never made anything with artichokes, but I am hungry for artichoke dip. Wish me luck!