Safety Blanket Books

I was reminded this week of part of why I'm keeping my list of current readings on my blog: not only do I want to see what I read in a year, I want to see how many of the books are ones that I've reread. I'm rereading Til We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, which I haven't read since sophomore year of college. Even some new readings are inspired by old ones. For example, I read all four books in The Song of the Lioness Quartet (YA fiction, easy read, all 4 in one weekend) because it's by Tamora Pierce who wrote The Immortals Series which I read in jr. high and high school and which is still one of my favorites and what I would call some of my Safety Blankt Books. These are books I read probably once every two or three years (if not every year). I'm so familiar with some of them that I can sometimes just read selections or skim them and it still satisfies me. I have to have them with me wherever I live or I feel sad and lonely; they're mentally snuggly. I actually felt kind of depressed in my new apartment until I was able to put them on a bookcase and could SEE them. Hey! LET'S WRITE ANOTHER LIST!

Safety Blanket Books
The Immortals Series by Tamora Pierce
The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper
The Stand, The Shining & Desperation by Stephen King ("You call those mentally snuggly?" Shug up.)
Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Do other people have Safety Blanket Books?

My Waterloo (Some Assembly Required)

Ikea says that you can't assemble their beds alone. I beg to differ. But hooooly crap did my back hurt afterwards. So maybe you CAN assemble their beds yourself, but you shouldn't.

What this means is that Liz and I moved into our new apartment last weekend--HOORAY!!!! Of course, it's still a horrible mess--BOOO!!! When I moved to Carpinteria two years ago I bought a $40 Target bookcase. It took me maybe 30 minutes to assemble and lasted the whole two years I lived there. I bought the exact same bookcase at a Targe in Seattle. Took me maybe an hour to assemble, then the last piece didn't fit in and when we tried to stand it up it was so wobbly we didn't even let go of it, just lowered it back to the floor again. And there it lay, taking up my entire floor all week. Today I tore it apart, literally. They said you could disassemble it, but they were liars. Of course, I think I gained much more satisfaction breaking it ("DAMN YOU, YOU INFERNAL PIECE OF CRAP!" CRACK!!) than I would have if it had disassembled nicely. I got my money back and went looking for a new bookcase. Surprisingly hard to find a bookcase under $100. I might order one online that looks decent, even if it won't come until at least next weekend. I had such high hopes of getting a bookcase and actually being able to put stuff away this weekend. Alas, I will live in squalor for another 7 days or more. I could scout out Goodwills, etc, but I don't have a truck or van with which to move fully assembled furniture, nor does anyone else I know, except Caitlin up in Anacortes. Hmmm...am I just making this more difficult than it needs to be?

ACCIO, BOOKCASE!!

Ah, crap.

Behold the Ravages of Age!

Next Tuesday I will be OLD. And by "old" I mean out of the 18-24 age bracket which I think is where the "youths" reside. What do you call someone who is 25? "Young woman"? Boo, that's so dull. Can you call at 25 year old a "girl"? I like being a girl--the same way I still call guys "boys" ("men" sounds odd, somehow when in reference to people under 30). Maybe I can be a "gal". Ooh! Ooh! Could I be a "dame" now or a "broad"!? Or is that the 30-40 age range? I don't know. And can you do anything exciting when you turn 25 other than rent a car from anyone and without having to pay an outrageous price?

Unrelated to age other than in an "I can do vaguely grown up things" way, I'm also moving into a new apartment this weekend--HUZZAH!!!! I've been waiting for so long! I'll have pictures eventually if I ever find the danged cable that hooks my camera to my computer...consarnit.

And to Live By the Girl Scout Law

Oh my God.

I just ate way too many Thin Mints.

Curse you, Girl Scouts!!!!

Maybe I'll Just Read Practical Magic. Again.

I just finished reading The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker and let's just get this out of the way right now: I sincerely wish that Alice Hoffman had written it. That's all, I might have really enjoyed it then. There was a feeling about this novel that the story and the characters should either have been weightier and rougher, or more magical and lyrical. I just couldn't grab hold of anything she'd written. The characters seemed distant in a way I can't explain. She did a good job of giving her main character some human flaws in with her strengths and she also had an interesting, sometimes beautiful turn of phrase. I can't personally complain about the way she fit together her sentences, but the story and the characters who populated it just didn't...stick. Err, I wish I had words for how slightly disappointing and mystifying the whole thing was when it was over. It was a pleasant read, I never considered giving up on it, but when I had finished, it was as if I internally frowned and blinked in surprise, thinking, "Really?". Here is the closest I can come to summing up the feeling: it is as if someone implanted a false memory in me of having read the story--in my mind all the facts are there, but it feels thin and unreal and I'm beginning to doubt it happened at all.

See The Amazing Hermit Girl!

Why am I so good at being bad at socializing? And by that I mean, why am I so impossibly intimidated by pretty much everyone who is not me? My housemate's girlfriend had a birthday party last night--dinner and out for drinks and dancing after. And it was my strongest urge all day before anyone arrived --and even the first little while when everyone was over-- to hide in my room. It wasn't even a large group of people, and almost all faces I at least recognized. I even ended up having a pretty good time and went out with them after dinner and talked to some nice people and had fun. And yet...

I'm so good at being by myself. I usually don't feel lonely, I like spending time by myself. I like reading and knitting and watching TV and drawing and doing crossword puzzles and going to the library and walking around by myself. But when I have to be around people I don't know...that's what I don't like. Which is silly. No one's mean to me, they try to be nice, I'm just nervous all the time and feel like I'm better at keeping my mouth shut.

So in a way I hate that my roommates are social and have people over and kindly invite me to do things with them. And in a way I'm really grateful. I have the capacity to have a good time, I do. And sometimes I'm actually really amusing and good at talking to people and carrying on conversations and I have fun doing it. But more often than not I forget that fact and am just filled with terror and a really strong urge to hide in my room. The housemates are out for round 2 of birthday -- playing flag football. I sort of hope they bring some people home afterward...

Jane Eyre: The Musical!

Last night I took myself to see the musical version of Jane Eyre put on by Seattle Musical Theatre. I'd heard of it before, but a few weeks ago I was struck with another bout of insomnia and what else do you do when you can't sleep at 1am but buy musicals off Amazon.com? I was actually hoping to find something in a similar vein with The Secret Garden and I guess I hoped that another musical based on a book set in England way back when would do. The first time I listened to it, I was alternately bored and deeply annoyed. A few more listens and it started to grow on me. In my opinion there's plenty of room for improvement in both musical/lyrical execution (sorry, that sounded snobby, but I promise I'm not smart enough to be a real snob). You can hear in the music when they were trying to hard and it gets a little clumsy. I think it would have benefited from a more delicate touch? They definitely edited down the story but didn't seem to want to do that with some of the music, particularly lyrics. It's a very wordy book, I'll grant you, and even though the story of Jane Eyre can be quite melodramatic, it seems that certain musical moments could have done with some restraint. I will say I really enjoyed playing "Guess the Musical" and finding which portions sounded just like other plays. There were snippets of Into the Woods, Wicked, The Secret Garden, and an incredibly hilarious parallel -- we'll say "parallel" rather than "rip-off" -- with Anastasia the animated musical at the end of the number "Sweet Liberty" ("at laaaaaaast!"). Even that just made me more fond of it, oddly. So I finally decided, "What the heck, I'll give it a whirl."

It was an admirable production in many ways, and definitely a fun way to spend my evening. I quite enjoyed it and I'd be interested to see how it would go with a full orchestra and more resources. It must be hard to condense such a long book, and one that is from Jane's perspective and so includes much inner thought and observation versus action. They did a decent job of hitting the high and low points: school for orphaned girls, Thornfield, scowly yet charismatic leading man, crazy lady in the attic, etc etc. And while I know they needed to detail Jane's growth towards strength, forgiveness and faith and her relationship with Rochester, it seems like they skimmed over the harshness of her childhood and her distress while wandering alone after she leaves Thornfield. I mean, those are major traumas! But her childhood was just her cousin tearing a few pages out of a book and her aunt scolding her once and that's about it. And her desolate wandering lasted about a minute and a half and consisted of her kneeling on the ground while the chorus of spirits (hey there, Secret Garden, how ya doin'?) who act as the spokespeople of her inner thoughts said "I cried a lot and I was hungry and it SUCKED" (I'm just a fan of show, not tell, especially in a play, which by its nature is largely about showing). It seems to me that her turmoil and sadness and, consequently her eventual happiness, would have had a lot more meaning if she actually appeared to suffer deeply in her life. Oh well--again, it's a damn long book and they needed time to sing, I guess.

Song-wise, I was pleased by the addition of a number of in-between, move-it-along songs. The cast album I have is a single disc and one thing that bothered me about it was how uneven it seemed--in terms of plot timing they'd have a number of songs crammed together, then skip important story lines and then have a song that seemed overly long for how small it's plot point was. The full show evened it out nicely. And seeing it performed live made me reconsider and even enjoy songs that bug me on the CD--that's why I love going to musicals, you may know the music backwards and forwards, but when you see it performed by actors in character on a stage it takes on an utterly new life.

Casting-wise they did a pretty decent job. Jane Eyre had a wonderful voice, youthful but strong and very clear--I was thoroughly blown away by her opening number in act two, it was the first time her acting really moved me. The little girls who played Jane and Helen were excellent, I wanted to hug them both and I was quite impressed with Helen, who had her own song and managed it nicely. A few cast members were a little shaky on their pitches, particularly the man who was a chorus member/Mr. Mason, he was consistently under pitch and I think he might be the reason that when the chorus performed segments of harmony it was naggingly off. And they seemed to agree amongst themselves that belting it out was always the right way to go, no matter what the mood was supposed to be, bless their hearts.

But lets get down to the important part: Mr. Rochester. He was definitely the best part of the show. He seems to be from the fist-making school of passion. I don't know, maybe it's a 19th century man thing, but I've never really made a fist to display my distress and high emotion. He was actually quite charismatic; and while he could have stood to be a bit more scowly and mercurial at times, I give him a solid and enthusiastic thumbs up. I want to see him in more plays. And what of his voice? Let's just say that I want to have his voice's babies. Sing to me Edward, sing loud.