NYRB Reading Week is here!

Just another reminder that NYRB Reading Week started yesterday. I've got another book I really need to finish because it was due at the library last Saturday (oops!), so I may or may not get a chance to participate. I have the day off on Thursday for Veteran's Day though, so I'm  hoping that in addition to getting a bunch of homework done, I'll get a chance to do a bunch of reading.

In lieu of talking about new-to-me NYRB's, I'll talk about ones I've already read. Though I did not read them in the NYRB editions, they have now published lovely copies of both Elizabeth von Arnim's The Enchanted April and Tove Jansson's The Summer Book. I'd apparently just finished The Summer Book when I started this blog, and The Enchanted April was read the summer after that.

Though apparently I was not overly impressed with The Enchanted April at the time, it's one I remember very fondly. I rather think the fact that it's stuck with me says more for it than whatever quibbles I had at the time. It's colourful and full of lovely characters, and in being escapism for the characters it becomes escapism for the reader.

The Summer Book, by the creator of the Moomins, is a wonderful story about a little girl and her grandmother living on an island. I don't know quite how to describe it, but it's full of childlike philosophy and magic, and it's lovely.

I've just paged through 31 pages of NYRB's on their website to figure out which I own and which I've read, and now I want to read them all.

NYRB Reading Week

November 7-13 is NYRB Reading Week, hosted here by The Literary Stew and Coffeespoons. I discovered NYRB a couple of years ago when my father bought me a couple of their books, and I've become quite a convert. I've read The Dud Avocado, The Slaves of Solitude, and The Post-Office Girl. All of them have been clever, unpredictable, and (in very different ways) lovely. I own several more and I've been meaning to read them, so this event is perfect.

The book I'm most eager to read is Indian Summer, by William Dean Howells. I don't know much about it, but I gather it's sort of a romance--possibly a little similar in tone to The Season of Second Chances. Hopefully I'll have time during that week to start it, at least.

Spirit

Whether or not you're already dressed, put on something purple today. In honor of all the people who have recently (or ever) committed suicide because of homophobia (whether or not they were in the news), all us cool kids are wearing purple. It may not have any concrete effect, but it's good to know that there's a bunch of other people out there wearing the same color for the same reason.

Have a look at some links:

Change.org

GLAAD

Facebook

Happy Birthday Mrs. Gaskell!

I first discovered Elizabeth Gaskell via the miniseries adaptation of Wives and Daughters. Having now read Wives and Daughters, North and South, and Cranford, I think Elizabeth Gaskell stands as my favourite Victorian writer. There is some indefinable, wonderful quality about her writing. Her stories are told lovingly and humourously. Wives and Daughters, my first love, remains my favourite, though I think I'm nearly due for a reread--it's been four years since I read it. And I find on looking at my Elizabeth Gaskell tag, that I had just finished North and South when I first began this blog, over two years ago.

Today is Mrs. Gaskell's 200th birthday. To celebrate, I may have to venture into new territory and read one of her three novels or numerous shorter works that I have yet to encounter. Or perhaps a biography. The internet in general is celebrating with a blog tour. You can find an introduction to the tour over at Austenprose.

It's also my first day of classes. Wish me luck!

I read banned books

Today begins Banned Books Week, which runs through October 2nd. Out of the 10 most-challenged titles of 2009, I've only read To Kill a Mockingbird, but I know there are many other wonderful books that have been banned. I should read more of them.

The American Library Association sells a bunch of Banned Books Week things. Those banned books bracelets are awesome.

Links

A Man, a Plan, and a Sharpie. Two guys travel across the country correcting the spelling and grammar of signs, and then they write a book about it, which is called The Great Typo Hunt. Might be an interesting book. This is just the kind of thing my grammar-loving self would want to do.

Absolutely incredible pencil lead sculptures by Dalton Ghetti. There's a whole world in your pencil you never knew was possible. Link via Say Yes to Hoboken.

Pea plant grows inside man's lung. This is everything your parents ever told you would happen if you ate watermelon seeds.

Last weekend in California was Costume College, a convention of people who make historical costumes and dress up in them. I'd love to go to this some day. Photos can be found at flickr here, here, and here.

I happened to encounter two fabulous Seattle-based milliners/haberdashers last week. Bad Dog Hats does hats for people and their dogs, especially top hats. Tuzzie Muzzie makes lovely party hats and masks.

Here is a list of 260 websites that offer free, legal e-books. My opinions on books and the internet being what they are, I'm glad to see there are so many such sites.

Romeo and Juliet

I saw Greenstage's outdoor production of Romeo and Juliet last Thursday. Greenstage is one of the truer outdoor theatre companies, having no set or microphones, and I think they always use the advantages of the outdoors well. They also use the audience well, often coming on stage through the audience. You'll suddenly hear someone speaking behind you, and turn around and there will be Romeo. Plus, I was sitting in the very front row (as, knowing the stage manager, we knew the front row was actually several feet in front of where people had started sitting), and when Benvolio was telling Romeo to "examine other beauties" to forget Rosaline, I got to be the beauty they were examining.

It was a good production. They had a bunch of big greyish cloaks, which were used to great effect. For example, people in cloaks kneeling in a semicircle made Juliet's balcony, and people in cloaks managed to block the audience's view enough to get a dead Juliet off stage invisibly. I particularly liked the actors playing Romeo (who was Orsino in the Twelfth Night I saw two years ago), Juliet (Ophelia in my favourite Hamlet), Benvolio, Nurse, and Friar Laurence. I thought Lady Montague was very strange, rather melodramatic, and badly costumed, though I don't know how much of that is her fault.

The story of Romeo and Juliet has never quite managed to win me over. They're so young, and if it were modern times their romance would be of the brief high school variety. If Juliet is to marry Romeo she has to give up her family, who she loves, for this guy in a mask she met at a party who winds up killing her favourite cousin. But everybody always seems to talk about this as one of the greatest romances ever. This production, however, seemed to treat Romeo and Juliet's relationship in what I think is a much more realistic way. They showed Juliet doubting more than I'm used to seeing, and her monologue about the husband who killed her cousin vs. the cousin who would have killed her husband was well-played. Once Romeo leaves for Mantua, there was obvious conflict between Juliet's duty to her husband (despite him being a husband she hardly knows) and her duty to her parents. Maybe my memory of this part of the play is just vague, but I do think not all productions emphasize it so much. It's easy to fall before the idea of Romeo and Juliet as a simple romance, but Greenstage didn't, and they made me like the play better because of this.

Can I just say, if you're going to have all the actors running around in leggings, have them be serious opaque leggings, and not semi-transparent tights, please. It was distracting.

The show is playing through August in parks around Seattle, and I totally recommend seeing it. Maybe by the time you do they'll have got less see-through tights!

Much Ado About Nothing (well, about some plays)

I saw four plays last weekend. One student show at the Bathhouse (Seattle Public Theatre), Fuddy Meers, which was very funny and surreal. As noted earlier, last weekend was the Seattle Outdoor Theatre Festival, which I went to on Sunday. I made it to three plays (despite having intentions of seeing way more)--Greetings from Styx, An Inconvenient Squirrel, and Much Ado About Nothing.

Greetings from Styx was a collection of short plays adapted from Ovid's Metamorphoses, produced by Balagan Theatre. It was quite funny and clever. An Inconvenient Squirrel, by Theater Schmeater, was rather a children's or family play, but Theater Schmeater always does a good job of adding some jokes just for the adults. It was kind of pointedly moralistic (about being who you are), but cute all the same.
I was thoroughly looking forward to Wooden O's Much Ado About Nothing. It's a play I've read, and seen a film adaptation of, but never seen on stage, and it's one of my favourites. I liked the costumes, which I thought looked sort of 1910s, especially the soldiers' uniforms. They were very monochrome, all the men in white and khaki, all the women in white, but somehow that worked extremely well. I think it made all the actors stand out well against all the green of outdoor theatre. The set was lovely, especially given travelling outdoor theatre. I was pleased with nearly all the casting--none of the women too whiny or screechy, none of the men too exaggerated. I was surprised to find Beatrice and Benedick's storyline played mostly on the sides as comic relief. I think of them as the main romance (probably because theirs is one of my favourite romantic plots), though I suppose they're not the characters directly involved in the main plot. The actors playing them, though, actually are married, which is a bit funny. Benedick especially was played as a comic character. The whole thing was very much comic, actually. The audience laughed at sections I always considered rather serious, like Beatrice's "if I were a man" monologue. It was really a great audience, clapping between scenes a lot. I was certainly not disappointed with my first Much Ado, even if parts of it were not as I expected.

Next weekend, hopefully, I'm going to see As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet.

Bookfest!

Last minute, but apparently Seattle Bookfest is this weekend. It's got lots of interesting-looking panels and workshops, and a bookswap. There seems to be a focus on writing, including a panel on NaNoWriMo (which I may or may not be doing this year), rather than on simply books, but I'm sure there's lots of that, too. In any case, anybody who lives in Seattle should go to it, because I can't. I've got a birthday party, a ball, and a lot of homework this weekend.