My sister has this magical ability to get people to do things for her. It is amazing. Everyone in my family does stuff for her even when we have just said, “No! Lazy! Do it yourself! My God you are so lazy!” Like, we’ll both be at my parents’ house, and I’ll be curled up comfortably on the couch reading something, and she’ll be all, “Why are you reading that? It looks stupid. What’s it about? Sounds stupid. You should be reading something with quality like Whatever Happened to Janie. Will you get me a bowl of ice cream? Please? …
13 CommentsTag: diaries
A book I acquired in spite of my firm and as-yet-unbroken book-buying ban. My lovely grandmother (my mum’s mum) sent it to me, all shiny and beautiful and hardback, along with an equally shiny and beautiful and hardback book about Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots not liking each other (I am excited about this as it has been quite some time since I read anything about the Tudors). My grandmother loves to read. She inherited booklust from her father, my great-grandfather, who loved Rafael Sabatini and who gave a copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to my grandmother…
5 CommentsStolen Voices: Young People’s War Diaries, from World War I to Iraq, Zlata Filipovic and Melanie Challenger We had to read Zlata’s Diary in ninth grade, and I remember thinking, Sheesh, if I were Zlata as a grown-up, I would really wish these diaries weren’t out there. They are just like the diaries I kept at that age, lots of Oh why is this happening to me, and How can these trivial things make me happy when there is so much darkness in my life? – the difference being, of course, that she actually had bad stuff happening to me;…
2 CommentsSo my thoughts on the film version of Children of Men sort of went like this: Mmmm, Clive Owen. And then, Ah yes, apocalypse, issues being dealt with – I feel like this is a perfect time for Clive Owen to strangle someone with his bare hands. This is shallow, I know, but I just have this reaction to Clive Owen every time I see him. Even in Gosford Park when there was absolutely no chance of his strangling someone with his bare hands, because it was all proper and British up in that movie. My thoughts on the book…
6 CommentsI read about Baltimore on Jenclair’s blog untold ages ago, and I put it on my list, but I didn’t leave myself a little note explaining what it was about. This is something I do now, but I didn’t always, and so when I would be at the library looking at my list of books, I never checked out Baltimore because I had forgotten anything I ever read about its plot. Fortunately I was incredibly bored recently and took the time to go back through my book list, look up the reviews, and leave myself teeny little plot synopses. Baltimore…
5 CommentsHoly God, how have I lived my life without Joan Wyndham? I’m reading the first volume of her diaries that she kept during World War II, Love Lessons, and I am seriously thinking about stealing this book from the library and keeping it forever. (I won’t though of course.) She charms me. Poor darling Jo, I don’t love him a bit but I am divinely happy playing the fool with him. I know I shouldn’t, because he keeps saying, ‘Oh what an absolute bugger, oh you little bitch!’ We do sometimes reach the farthest point of passion after which coition…
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