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Mar. 28th, 2008 01:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsMy school English department has just instituted a wonderful program wherein they give those who sign up free books to read over spring break, and then set up a discussion about them with a professor over the next quarter. The professor picks the book, you pick the book+professor (or plural, if you are so inclined) and then go collect the loot!
As you all will be shocked to hear, I heard about this and went FREE BOOKS? *GRABBYHANDS!!!!* which is how I came to read E.M. Forster's A Room With a View during my five-hour wait for the bus to Bowdoin on Monday. (How I came to miss the first bus to Bowdoin is a long and not terribly interesting story involving much panic-stricken running with luggage that I will spare you all at this time.) My Jacobean Tragedy professor, who is leading the Room With a View discussion, had described it as a.) very much in the romantic-comedy vein but b.) better in his opinion than Forster's Howard's End, which I read this summer and loved. Having now read the book, I agree with a.) but respectfully disagree with b.). A Room With a View was entertaining, but it also frustrated me a great deal, a large part of the reason for which can be boiled down to I didn't care at all enough about the Inappropriate, Kind of Ridiculously Emo Love Interest to make it seem worthwhile for Lucy to give up her family's respect for him, especially since I did like her family. They were sensible and, unlike Emo Love Interest, in possession of a sense of humor, and I sympathized with them greatly when they wanted to smack her. Therefore possibly Howard's All For Love message was a bit wasted on me. However, I am all the same looking forward to the discussion. Also, the book gets points for naming a tennis ball after Vittoria Corombona, Adulteress of Badass Awesome, from The White Devil.
In other news, I made the mistake of getting the filmed version of the Notre-Dame de Paris musical from Netflix to watch while I was home. This is a mistake because now that I have it my ridiculous and unreasonable love for the music has been rekindled, I cannot resist the urge to watch it over and over and over again, so if I suddenly break out into streams of dramatic French song, that is why! It is not my fault! And now I am going to go bake, because if I cannot stop singing loudly in French, at least I can fulfill the image of wacky domestic bliss and be productive while I do it.
As you all will be shocked to hear, I heard about this and went FREE BOOKS? *GRABBYHANDS!!!!* which is how I came to read E.M. Forster's A Room With a View during my five-hour wait for the bus to Bowdoin on Monday. (How I came to miss the first bus to Bowdoin is a long and not terribly interesting story involving much panic-stricken running with luggage that I will spare you all at this time.) My Jacobean Tragedy professor, who is leading the Room With a View discussion, had described it as a.) very much in the romantic-comedy vein but b.) better in his opinion than Forster's Howard's End, which I read this summer and loved. Having now read the book, I agree with a.) but respectfully disagree with b.). A Room With a View was entertaining, but it also frustrated me a great deal, a large part of the reason for which can be boiled down to I didn't care at all enough about the Inappropriate, Kind of Ridiculously Emo Love Interest to make it seem worthwhile for Lucy to give up her family's respect for him, especially since I did like her family. They were sensible and, unlike Emo Love Interest, in possession of a sense of humor, and I sympathized with them greatly when they wanted to smack her. Therefore possibly Howard's All For Love message was a bit wasted on me. However, I am all the same looking forward to the discussion. Also, the book gets points for naming a tennis ball after Vittoria Corombona, Adulteress of Badass Awesome, from The White Devil.
In other news, I made the mistake of getting the filmed version of the Notre-Dame de Paris musical from Netflix to watch while I was home. This is a mistake because now that I have it my ridiculous and unreasonable love for the music has been rekindled, I cannot resist the urge to watch it over and over and over again, so if I suddenly break out into streams of dramatic French song, that is why! It is not my fault! And now I am going to go bake, because if I cannot stop singing loudly in French, at least I can fulfill the image of wacky domestic bliss and be productive while I do it.
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Date: 2008-03-28 10:11 pm (UTC)And yay drabbles and reading! There are far worse places to be stuck than South Station with a notebook or laptop and a lot of reading material, really.
Oooh. That sounds interesting! (I will look at the video later tonight. :D)
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Date: 2008-03-28 10:28 pm (UTC)It is! The choreography is kind of wacky at times, and there is sadly no goat, but it keeps the most important elements that are too often left out, which are that a.) Phoebus is a total ass and b.) Esmerelda has a fake husband named Gringoire who is ridiculous, poetic, and of no use whatsoever. And the music, oh my god. The singers are incredible - the guy who first played Quasimodo was basically launched into a huge singing career on the strength of this performance, I am totally in love with the singer in the clip I gave you, and I have no words for how gorgeous the voice of the other girl in the cast is.
Um. Not that I can babble about this at ridiculous length or anything.