Panic at Pemberley is right!

Remember that time I told you I was listening to Death Comes to Pemberley on audiobook? It was awful. I would never, ever recommend it to anyone. I wanted to like it, because look at that pretty cover. But really, it was probably the worst book I've ever entered into Goodreads.

Now, I just stumbled across this article "Now panic comes to Pemberley: Pride and Prejudice director fears backlash from fans." First of all, well-done with the catchy article title related to the book. Secondly, you're damn straight there should be some concerns. Janeites did not like the book, do you think they'd like the movie? No. But do I think the movie will be better than the book? It has to be.

Let's Talk About James Bond

I'm disappointed in Barnes and Noble. Their recent post "The Most (In)Famous Mary Sues in Fiction" has garnered a lot of scorn from me.

First of all, Mary Sue is basically an idealized character, often one representing the author. Prime example by the author:

Fanfic Mary Sue saves Dumbledore’s life with the world’s greatest healing charm, is proposed to by Mr. Darcy AND Captain Wentworth at the same garden party, and possesses striking green eyes that Peeta Mellark can’t stop staring into.

Good topic! Great example! I love this idea. There are definitely plenty of appalling MarySues around. The blogger mentions the following list is comprised of MarySues in published fiction (not fan fiction). Okay, still on board.

The blogger leads off with James Bond. A fairly legitimate choice, since he's definitely perfect in every way.

If Casanova mated with a particularly ruthless robot, their child would be James Bond. He’s refined, clever, mad successful with the ladies, and able to keep a cool head in any situation. Just once we want to see Bond getting hit in the nuts with a football, or yelling at a Starbucks barista about soy milk.

No. No. No. I'm disgusted by this synopsis.

Casanova? Sure. ROBOT? Hardly. He keeps a cool head, as she says, because that's what he's trained to do. That is his job. So what if he's mad successful with the ladies - he's hardly the only character in fiction to do that (uh, helloooo, you just named Casanova. And what about Don Juan? eh eh?). Also: BOND'S WIFE GETS KILLED. Yeah, so, he can't always get what he wants.

Bond doesn't play football, so he can't get hit in the nuts. However, did you read or see Casino Royale? The man's balls were beaten to a pulp, to the point that he really believed he would never get an erection again. I think that counts. Plus, he gets violently, physically abused in almost every book/movie. He's not running around, saving the world without a scratch. Now, if you wanted to critique how he knows how to operate any kind of vehicle ever, I could see why that's a bit of a stretch...

He won't shout at a barista because he would never lower himself to drink coffee from Starbucks, he has his own coffeemaker at home, and he eats/drinks at the work cafeteria when in the office, and I'm fairly certain his coffee order wasn't complicated to begin with. Finally, he's a true gentleman that doesn't shout at someone serving him. Let's be real, here, people. Bond doesn't squash the little people (they hardly exist in his world) - his secretary is a perfect example.

I feel like this was written based on faint (very faint) idea of the film version of Bond and absolutely no clue as to the true fictional nature of the man - and that's coming from someone who has only read three or four of the books.

I'm also really annoyed that, if the idea of the Mary Sue is based on the AUTHOR becoming the perfect character, the author is missing from this particular writeup. There has been so much speculation (and so much published) about the life of Fleming (womanizing and secret wartime spy) and the spies he worked with and/or wrote about, the whole "Mary Sue" part of the argument is lost. Sure, sure, that might be guessing at authorial intent and assuming so many of the things about the author, but, in theory, the Mary Sue involves the author. So, instead of a well-thought argument, this blogger is just basically picking on the characters.

I briefly glanced at the rest of the list, disagreeing that Charles Wallace is at all a Mary Sue, because he clearly isn't perfect, otherwise they wouldn't have to save him. Not to mention, if you're going to pick on Charles Wallace, you should probably pick on Old Father Time from Jude the Obscure, too.

Penguin 100 Classics to Read Before You Die / Penguin 10 Essentials

I found a list online called "Penguin's 100 Classic Books You Must Read Before You Die." I found it online in lots of places and in lots of blogs, but not on Penguin's site. It seems old, so maybe that's why. But I thought the list was worth repeating, like so many lit lovers, because it's an interesting assortment. I'm really glad to see Wilkie Collins on here, that's for sure. Plus, I get all stoked when I can highlight books I've read off of major lists--like the 27 I've already tackled below. {Sorry for all the weird highlighting, there are two colors and yet I only selected one...} The ones in blue type are on my definitely-to-read list, meaning at the end of my life I'll have at least tried to tackle 50%--the only books I care about, anyhow. 

1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey  

2. Diary of a Madman and Other Stories - Nikolai Gogol  

3. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys 

4. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 

5. Notes From Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 

6. Story of the Eye - Georges Bataille 

7. Spy In House Of Love - Anais Nin 

8. Lady Chatterly's Lover - D.H.Lawrence 

9. Venus in Furs - Leopold von Sacher-Masoch 

10. The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer 

11. The Karamazov Brothers - Fyodor Dostoevsky 

12. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad 

13. Diamonds Are Forever - Ian Fleming 

14. The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov 

15. The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad16. A Room With a View - E. M. Forster 

17. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 

18. Don Juan - Lord George Gordon Byron 

19. Love in a Cold Climate- Nancy Mitford 

20. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams 

21. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens 

22. Middlemarch - George Eliot 

23. She: A History of Adventure - H. Rider Haggard 

24. The Fight - by Norman Mailer 

25. No Easy Walk to Freedom - Nelson Mandela 

26. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 

27. The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton 

28. Notre-Dame of Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) - Victor Hugo 

29. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy 

30. The Old Curiosity Shop - Charles Dickens 

31. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson 

32. Bram Stoker's Dracula - Bram Stoker33. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 

34. The Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole 

35. The Turn of the Screw - Henry James 

36. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray 

37. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov 

38. Baby doll - Tennessee Williams 

39. Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote 

40. Emma - Jane Austen 

41. On the Road - Jack Kerouac 

42. The Odyssey - Homer 

43. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck 

44. Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome 

45. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 

46. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald 

47. Vile Bodies - Evelyn Waugh 

48. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde 

49. The Beautiful and Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald 

50. Against Nature - Joris-Karl Huysmans 

51. The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X 

52. The Outsider - Albert Camus 

53. Animal Farm - George Orwell 

54. The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx 

55. Les Misérables - Victor Hugo 

56. The Time Machine - H. G. Wells 

57. The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick 

58. The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells 

59. The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham 

60. We - Yevgeny Zamyatin 

61. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess 

62. Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga - Hunter S. Thompson 

63. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 

64. Another Country - James Baldwin 

65. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote 

66. Junky: The Definitive Text of Junk - William S. Burroughs 

67. The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins 

68. Confessions of an English Opium Eater - Thomas De Quincey 

69. Subterraneans - Jack Kerouac 

70. Monsieur Monde Vanishes - Georges Simenon 

71. Nineteen Eighty-four - George Orwell 

72. The Monkey Wrench Gang - Edward Abbey 

73. The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli 

74. Bound for Glory - Arthur Miller 

75. Death of a Salesman - Georges Simenon 

76. Maigret and the Ghost - Georges Simenon 

77. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins 

78. The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler 

79. A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan, Sir Doyle 

80. The Thirty-Nine Steps - John Buchan 

81. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert 

82. Therese Raquin - Ãmile Zola 

83. Les Liaisons dangereuses - Pierre Choderlos de Laclos 

84. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne 

85. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 

86. I, Claudius : From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius, Born 10 B.C., Murdered and Deified A.D. 54 - Robert Graves 

87. Hangover Square - Patrick Hamilton 

88. The Beggar's Opera - John Gay 

89. The Twelve Caesars - Suetonius 

90. Guys and Dolls - Hal Leonard Corporation 

91. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson 

92. The Iliad of Homer - Homer 

93. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas94. From Russia with Love - Ian Fleming 

95. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 

96. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons 

97. The Diary of a Nobody - George Grossmith 

98. Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens 

99. Scoop - Evelyn Waugh100. Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis

Interestingly, while searching for the official origin of this list, I came across Penguin's 10 Essential Classics. Like, if you only read 10 classics, read these. I've tackled 70% of that list. Of note: Only two of these ten are on the 100 list. Hmmp. And there's no Dickens or Mark Twain. Hmmm....

Penguin’s 10 Essential Classics:

1. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

2. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

3. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

4. The Odyssey – Homer

5. Hamlet – William Shakespeare

6. Moby Dick – Herman Melville

7. Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka

8. Oedipus Rex – Sophocles

9. Walden – Henry David Thoreau

10. Inferno – Dante 

Caught Fire

All right, I get it, finally: the obsession with The Hunger Games trilogy. I've listened to two of the three books, and I'm eager to start the third--although not for some time, because I just started the audiobook Death Comes to Pemberley. I can't say I'm as enthralled as everyone who was reading it during its heyday, but I'm very much enjoying it. It's sick and twisted at its core (awesome) and laden with stupid teenage indecisive love (lame. C'mon, Peeta, have some emotion other than heartsick-sacrificla-lamb), but it works.

The narrator, Carolyn McCormick, is my favorite audiobook personality so far. I might search out other books she's read, just because she read them.

Book Dealbreakers

Well thank you, interwebs, for inspiring two blog posts this week!

Today, Book Riot did a What Are Your Book Dealbreakers post. Here's the list:

1. Casual treatment of sexual assault or rape. (This is the one I encountered yesterday).

2. Books that ignore the existence of LGBTQ relationships.

3. Books that characterize any LGBTQ characters as inherently untrustworthy/up-to-no-good.

4. Books with female characters who cry at the drop of a hat, especially if the author is male.

5. Inappropriate treatment of the issue of suicide.

6. When a plotline fails to make logistical sense.

7. Minor but basic factual errors, especially in nonfiction.

8. Books that repeatedly substitute obscure words for standard ones (“orb” for “eye,” “tresses/locks/mane” for “hair,” “tome” for “book).

9. Sudden romance: when two characters who have no chemistry and who have not appeared to be developing feelings for each other suddenly announce that they are in love.

10. Excessively prolonged romantic tension: when you know two characters are meant to be together and they should know it too but they refuse to do anything about it.

11. When a book ignores basic known facts about the world for the sake of a plot.

12. Oversimplification of mental illness.

Interesting. I've never come across something as a standard dealbreaker. I've only given up on one book, ever, and that was Zelda by Nancy Milford. But I was young, and uninterested, and didn't understand the significance of the woman I was discovering. It wasn't because of any of these things.

Incest? Sure! Rape? It's probably part of the story, so I'm not going to stop reading because I don't like it. Plot logic fails? Happens all the time. Mental illness and LGBT issues? Good luck liking the way those issues are portrayed, if it happens. Obscure words? SIGN ME UP. Dickens makes up the best stuff.

I'm just going to say it: I think having a dealbreaker for books is weird.

Peanut Butter & Jelly Reads

This is an interesting idea, and one that I've never come across before. PB&J refers to two books that are better when read together. I found the concept here at the Barnes & Nobles blog.

Sure there are books that are better read together. Like, all of the Harry Potter books. And The Hobbit with the Lord of The Rings trilogy. But what about books that aren't written together?

Fascinating! I guess that's what higher-level college courses do, throwing books into a curriculum that are, indeed, better when read together. That's the beauty of higher studies in English--it's enlightening to read Marx before diving into the commodity culture of Our Mutual Friend. 

But this concept did inspire me to tell you, oh vast interweb of lit lovers, to read Dickens' Oliver Twist right before diving into Sarah Waters' Fingersmith. It's my absolute favorite pairing and the novels I used for my grad school application paper.

Next Lifetime

So, I'm listening to The Hunger Games series on audiobook. I'm 1/3 into Catching Fire and this Peeta-Gale-Katniss thing is getting old. Where's the action?

Listening to Pandora at work, Erykah Badu's "Next Lifetime" came on and I immediately thought of their endless love triangle. Pick one, please, or die, or something, so I can stop judging your stupid adolescent indecision. 

Lady Susan by Jane Austen

I downloaded Jane Austen's Lady Susan for audiobook. It's one that I don't own, and one that I knew nothing about, so I was excited to check it out. It is a short, epistolary novel, early in Austen's life. 

     The story focuses on the shenanigans surrounding one Lady Susan Vernon: a scandalously flirtatious recent widow who spends her time conniving men (married and single) into thinking her a good woman and mother (of which she is neither). She is older, beautiful, witty, and charming. The women see through her lies and deceits and flattery, while the men in her presence fall prey to it.  

     It's an interesting set up. As a female character in that time period she must be despised for her immoral nature, but yet she is a very commanding persona that triumphs over typically-considered-stronger males. She is both the namesake and the "villain" of the story--she truthfully has no redeeming qualities. But Lady Susan is not the one strong female, however, since the other women see through her character. It is a novel where female characters are more intelligent and sensible than males. For me, it's the dominance of female characters that is most interesting, particularly for the period. Or perhaps it's just an apparent dominance; are there men who, upon closer examination, are better characters? 

     While I don't dislike the epistolary format, for this novel I find it hard to get a true sense of the character I want to know best: Frederica, her daughter. I also don't like that I cannot see the moments of Lady Susan's seduction (however, I enjoy her recounts in letters to her dear friend). 

     The tale is dark for Austen--terrible parenting and a somewhat rushed conclusion to the work. It's a very different read than any of her other works I have encountered. Yet it shows her range and it does not feel out of place within her works. 

As a final note, if I had my way: Kim Cattrall would be playing Lady Susan in some adaptation of the book. She's divinely perfect for the role. Jane Seymour would be a far second.