Halloween

Last night I dressed as Frog Mario from Super Mario Brothers 3 for regular Nintendo.  I was originally going to dress as Clara Bow, silent film star, but this just came to me and it felt perfect.

At Home

I finished Anne of the Island, which was actually quite a bit more interesting than Anne of Avonlea, and then started Bill Bryson's new book At Home.  He uses the Victorian house he and his family live in as a framework for explaining the history of why we live in houses and how different aspects of them that we think of as common (kitchens, living rooms, etc.) came about.  It's similar to his A Brief History of Everything, though smaller in scope.

I've already learned tons of interesting things, and I've barely made a dent in the 400+ page book.  Did you know in the 1850s a complete village over 5000 years old was discovered in Britain?  That's older than Stonehenge and the pyramids.  It's called Skara Brae, and it has surprisingly modern aspects - locking doors, dressers, a drainage system, even elementary plumbing.  I had no idea.

Anne of Avonlea

It was a little bit boring.  That's about all I have to say.  Anne is almost a little too perfect, even though she's still said to have a temper and get into ridiculous situations.  There were still some outrageous moments, like when she accidentally sold her neighbor's cow, or got stuck in someone's roof, but there were far fewer.  More often, Anne was a bemused participant in a crazy situation created by someone else.

I still love her creative mind, her zest for imagining things.  Over the weekend, a friend and I were wondering what had become of an ex of hers, someone who hadn't given her his new phone number or contact info.  I thought of Anne, and suggested we imagine what he might be up to, since we couldn't know.  We decided he's working at Walmart but has realized his true passion for the opera.

Anne Shirley

I finished Anne of Green Gables.  It is such a delight.  I really recommend reading it, if you haven't.  I'm not sure how I feel about the conclusion, though. (Spoiler alert here, I suppose.)  Anne gets accepted to college but turns it down after Matthew, her guardian, dies, so she can keep Marilla, his sister, company in Avonlea.  She takes a job teaching at the Avonlea school.  Also, she matures a bit, whatever that means - the story club she formed with her friends (where they make up dramatic, romantic, scary tales and share them with each other) has faded out of existence, and her hair and freckles have softened so that she's now quite objectively attractive. 

I'm not sure how I feel about all this for Anne.  First of all, it's pretty entertaining to see her accidentally getting her 12-year-old best friend drunk on what she thought was a non-alcoholic drink, or getting stuck clinging to a tree branch in the middle of a river, or cracking a blackboard slate over a boy's head.  When she's more level-headed, there's less of this.  Is this supposed to be a moral of how things should proceed for a young woman? 

To argue with myself, she's not giving up college for no reason - staying with Marilla is caring and admirable.  But I feel bad for her nonetheless.  I feel less bad, of course, knowing that she goes away to school in the third book, Anne of the Island. 

I've begun Anne of Avonlea, the second book, and Anne is still spirited and imaginative - but there's a lessening of her crazy ideas and schemes and scrapes, and I wish this didn't have to be the case.

A neutral note: there is much emphasis on being good, doing good, being a truly good person, which I feel isn't there in contemporary young adult literature.  I don't know if that's a difference in the time periods or something particular to the Anne books.

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I'm also still reading The Turn of the Screw.  I didn't think it was scaring me until I had to walk across my living room in the dark to get to the lamp, and scurried, afraid, the whole way.

Two New Books To Read, Parallels

Okay, really only one new book to read, one very very old re-read.  I've been meaning to re-read Anne of Green Gables since the 100th anniversary of its publishing in 2008.  It was a favorite of mine when I was a kid.  I read all the books in the Anne series, and spent a lot of time pretending to be her (there are pictures of me and a friend all dressed up labeled "Anne Shirley and Diana Barry").  But I didn't remember much about the books except that Anne is raised by a stern but kind woman, and a couple isolated events.  Understandably - it's been maybe 17 years since I last read the series.

I picked it up the other night.  It was in the big collection of books I brought back from my mom's house.  It's so great! I couldn't put it down.  There's a reason it's classic children's literature!  Anne is so hilarious and imaginative.  She's adopted by Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, an "old maid" and "old bachelor" brother and sister.  They'd asked someone to send them a boy to help out with the farm, but got her instead.  Were adoptions really that easy in those days? Like asking someone to pick you up a particular shelving unit next time they drive to IKEA?  Anyway, I've only just begun it, but I'm enthralled by Anne all over again. 

Tomorrow The Turn of the Screw by Henry James should arrive for me from Amazon.  A friend and I are going to read it at the same time, and discuss it with each other.  We wanted something spooky for October, and I understand it's a classic ghost story.  I'm pretty excited. 

Since it was published so long ago, it's available to read online for free.  (Check it out here if you're interested.)  I started reading it yesterday.  Two children whose parents have died are left in the care of a bachelor.  "Just like Anne Shirley!" I thought as soon as I read it.  We'll see if I notice anything else in two presumably very dissimilar books... 

Announcement! I'm published (and not just here)!

Today Issue 20 of Tryst Literary Magazine went online, which contains a short story I wrote!  It's called "Immortality" and is the first story I've ever had published.  I'm quite excited.  Check it out here - on the main page, I'm listed on the right side under "fiction."  Yay!

Photos!

I found my camera cord! It was in a box full of other black cords - who would've guessed?  Here are some things I've wanted to post:

This is the 1930s blouse I made!

This is a shirt I embellished as a gift for a friend.  It was originally just a plain green tank (on clearance at Target) and I added the lace.  

Finally, this is another photo of the tank top I made:

Another David Mitchell

A quick note: I just re-read Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, and it really is great.  It's a completely straight-forward story, not experimental like Cloud Atlas, but it's very true and genuine and just terrific.  It's about a thirteen-year-old English boy named Jason Taylor.  It takes place in the 1982, during the Falkland Islands War, and covers the whole year from January to December in twelve linked short stories.  I recommend it highly.