Great Expectations -- It Lives Up to Mine!

Just finished Great Expectations. I can't believe I didn't read it before now. Unforgivable, that's what that is! It's definitely in my top 50 best books of all time. I can't commit to a ranking higher than that, but top 50 is dang good. The Victorian period is just a little too... I don't know... contrived? But it had incredible (iconic) characters, fabulous dialogue, romance, intrigue, criminals, and -- Dr. McBratney would tell you -- a bit of cosmopolitanism. (I'll link to his paper once it's published.) I prefer Dickens' original ending to the rewrite his publisher forced upon him. It's more real. And, I think, consistent with the rest of the book. The rewrite gets long and is a little over-the-top. (NOTE: Don't read further if you don't want to know the ending!!) More than a decade since they last spoke, Pip and Estella happen to return to Satis House (the house now gone) on the same day, at the exact same time. They walk out out of the garden holding hands, Pip sure they'll be together. I don't think so. The original ending was coincidence enough -- that they see each other on a city street after two years. He doesn't correct her likely assumption that Pip (Joe and Biddy's boy) is his child, because it simply doesn't matter. Their time has passed. Ouch.

The last graph is killer:

I was very glad afterwards to have had the interview; for, in her face and in her voice, and in her touch, she gave me the assurance, that suffering had been stronger than Miss Haversham's teaching, and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be.

I'm reading criticism today -- hope it doesn't ruin it for me. :)

Final recommendation: Buy the Norton Critical Edition. Incredible footnotes and critical essays!

Red Wine Scores Again -- on 60 Minutes!

60 Minutes just did a segment saying scientists have found a substance called resveratrol in red wine that slows down the aging process in mice -- and probably men. (And women.) I didn't catch the whole thing and it's not yet posted on the web site. But the gist was that the guy/company that discovered this just made a gazillion dollars selling it to a major pharmaceutical co. Unfortunately, to have the great effect that they talked about, you'd need to consume several cases a day or something. They're making a pill. Now that takes all the fun out of it! More to come on this topic. But I think we can conclude once again, red wine rocks!

Ace Gets Me Over Book Club Coup

Forgot to mention.... The book club I started with so much passion and hope performed a coup d'etat and I seem to be a casualty. I had to miss November book club; that's when it started. We'd all agreed to read Eliot's Middlemarch. Because it was a large undertaking, we decided to skip book club in December and discuss Middlemarch in January. But certain members of bookclub (now called Book Babes under the new regime) scheduled a meeting in December when I was in Florida. Rhonda also was out of town. So, at that meeting they decided on another "mission" and chose other books to read. I'm still licking my wounds. (Thank God for Roxy, my dog. She's licking them with me. "People, let me tell ya about my best friend...") The ironic -- or, more accurately, aggravating -- thing, is that we'd had a candid discussion about format and book choice just a month or so before. But I guess no one had the balls to tell me what they really thought. "Balls, balls," cried the queen. "If I had two, I'd be king."

Speaking of queens, I aced my paper on Elizabeth and aced 16th century lit. A silver lining to every cloud. God is good.

Fabulous, affordable gift ideas for the wine lover

Son-in-law Mark made us a wreath out of wine corks for Christmas. Very cool. And most thoughtful. I took it down so I could remove the Christmas ribbon and think about a bow for "everyday" use. When I got it down, I noticed it needs some patching here and there. The white Styrofoam mold was showing through. Fortunately, we have plenty of corks. The corks seem pretty easy to glue on. Just takes time and patience -- two things I don't seem to have a lot of. Patching is more fun, cuz I can pick some of my favorite wines and place them strategically on the wreath -- and it takes minutes instead of hours, days or weeks! Mark made Tom (my husband) a really nice, heavy duty bulletin board out of cork a year ago. I love that, too! Great gift idea.

But my advice is:
If you decide to make one of these wine cork items for a family member or friend, be sure to include wine corks that are meaningful to him or her. If you want to keep the gift a surprise, save a few choice spots and tell your loved one that you'll fill in with corks from some of his/her favorite wineries. This way, it really has a personal touch and will bring back memories everytime he or she sees it. Mark knows the wine we like so he did a great job -- and the patching up I'm doing will allow me to customize that much more.

Shakespeare's Sonnets (and why I stopped blogging)

Shakespeare Sonnets (154 of them published "officially" in 1640) -- enjoy!

You know Sonnet 18.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date...

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Heart be still. Are his ending couplets amazing or what? I read these aloud on the eliptical. Had to get some exercise but I didn't want to stop my school work. The final exam for 16th c. lit. is a week from Monday. Yikes! I've never spent so much time reading, studying and writing for a class in my life. This was a tough one. That's the reason for the big gap in my blog writing.

These sonnets were fun to read again. Shakespeare is truly amazing. I think you appreciate him more when you read the work of his contemporaries. I mean, they're all good -- I'm a big fan of Marlowe and I really liked Sidney -- but Will is heads and tails above the rest. His words could turn granite into butter. What a crappy metaphor. Oh well, I tried, in honor of The Man.

So, I guess Shakespeare may have been homosexual, but more likely, he was a heterosexual with homosexual lapses, or maybe the other way around. Why literary scholars focus so much on the sexuality of writers is beyond me. But then, as now, sex sells, I guess. I didn't read all the sonnets; we were assigned certain ones. So I can't comment with confidence on whether he was writing about a woman or man. Seems more often to be a woman. One of the sonnets (135) uses the word "Will" over and over again in different contexts. One interpretation is that "Will" is Will's dick. Apparently it was quite large. That's all I'm saying about that.

Astrophil and Stella

Note: Astrophil and Stella (the complete sonnets are provided here) was written by the romantic courtier, knight, soldier and realist Sir Philip Sidney. It was first printed in 1591.

Looking for a little romance on a snowy Saturday night? Start a fire or fill the tub, light some candles, open a little bubbly or a nice Zin and read some of Sidney's sonnets aloud. Maybe even sing the songs. That was my suggestion. Yeah, right. We're going to the Iggy-Heights game. Almost as romantic. Patriarchy lives on.

I gotta tell ya, Sidney, aka Astrophil, sure had it bad for Lady Penelope (Devereux) Rich, aka Stella. (Most scholars agree this sonnet series was autobiographical.) Ol' Sid didn't seem to have a problem letting the world know he was hot for her either, despite the fact Penelope was married. (For the record, some say he wrote them before she was married. I don't buy it.) He wrote 108 14-line rhyming verses about his love for her, the rejection, the reciprocation, the kiss, and then refusal to submit. Here's how it starts...

Louing in trueth, and fayne in verse my loue to show,

That she, deare Shee, might take som pleasure of my paine,

Pleasure might cause her reade, reading might make her know,

Knowledge might pittie winee, and pity grace obtaine...

Biting my trewand pen, beating myselfe for spite,

Fool, said my Muse to me, looke in they heart, and write.

Then off he goes. Talk about pining! You probably noticed, he doesn't mention Stella by name at first. But he ultimately caves and spills all. Want some more enlightenment? "The three central conceits (ideas) in any collection of Petrarchan love sonnets," according to literary scholar A.C. Hamilton, "is beauty, love and virtue in that order." Sidney was certainly a student of Petrarch. Astrophil is attracted by Stella's beauty, which leads to him falling in love with her but then her virtue, while admirable, sends him packing. Sidney uses a lot of poetic devices, like oxymorons, mythology and personification. The language is beautiful and the rhythm is, well, musical. Critic Janet MacArthur says Sidney's Astrophil and Stella is "true to the facts." Sidney takes a Protestant approach (integrating nature and mankind) and draws from real life (as opposed to the more allegorical technique used by his contemporary, Spenser. It's an "expressive realist text, expressive of the personal rather than the universal, however." MacArthur goes on to explain, "the poem is viewed not only as an intermediate stage in the evolution of literary forms, but also plays a part of the rejection of the idealogy of Catholic Europe."

I just like reading them and imagining that I'm in QEI's court with my knight in shining armor whispering sweet iambic pantameter in my ear.

Book Club at Rhonda's

We had book club at Rhonda's on Thursday night -- Rhonda always has the best wine. This week she served an array of delicacies. We discussed Why I am a Catholic by Garry Wills. I'm too busy and not interested enough to write much about it (it's way after the fact; I've just been too busy!) -- but I must say the book did generate some interesting discussion about religion and some of our personal beliefs. It was a very good bookclub meeting. I originally got the book because I was struggling with the hierarchy and decision-making in the Roman Catholic church and with the egos at my own local church. But I let it sit on my shelf for a long time. Then Linda was asking about the Catholic church when her granddaughter was being baptized. So I mentioned this book and agreed to do the discussion guide. I got kudos for the guide. I'll plug it in later if I remember. It did get me thinking and a little more educated about the papacy. Can't say I'd enthusiastically recommend, but I'm happy I read it.