*yawn* I haven't had a snow day since I was in school. Of course, my car had to go into a ditch and then slip & slide for a mile before I gave myself a snow day.

So being an obsessive list-maker I made myself a list of things to do today. Among them include doing my reading for the course I'm taking so I can start building a bibliography for the first paper, cleaning up on at least one short story I've put aside and working on other tales involving virgins getting a happy surprise in their trousers, and trying to wipe my mind clean of the failure I came up against with Atonement by reading Steven Brust's To Reign in Hell.

It all sounds like a good plan, but I know better. I'm going to get some flaky idea that will ultimately lead me to Deviantart and 5 hours of my life will be lost clicking and gawking at the artwork.

If you're unfamiliar with Deviantart, it's pretty much a showcase for artists of all rank and station, and those artists have produced some amazing stuff. It's a fangirl's paradise, especially if you fangirl over books and such.

Take Outlander for example. Ah, Outlander. Jamie Fraser has been absent from my bookshelves for years now but he'll always remain my first love, that fictional character who broke my book-fangirl cherry all those years ago. While you wait for Gabaldon to unveil Jamie as she did Claire, you can always find him on Deviantart (and not an incarnation of Gerard Butler):

Le Sigh ...

My favourite has to be Erik aka The Phantom of the Opera. There are, of course, dozens of variations out there. Michael Crawford Phantom, Lon Chaney Phantom, Gerard Butler Phantom, Scary-No-Face Phantom (Erik in his original form.) You'll find them all on Deviantart. My favourite incarnation, though, is Susan Kay's Phantom, and I was squealing in fangirl delight to discover him in the flesh.

I was tempted to print up this faux-cover and glue it to the hideously photoshopped cover on the recent reprint. This is the the kind of cover that will make you stop dead in your tracks while browsing your local big-box bookstore.

My favourite Kay's Phantom artist has to be Opergeist. I happened upon her gallery while searched for images of highwaymen and found this (*gasp* period Phantoms. More! More more more! Medieval Monk Phantom!) Browsing her gallery I was amazed. She captured the so-heartbreaking-you-want-to-pull-your-eyeballs-out oppression of Phantom with pieces like this one, of Erik when he first sees himself in the mirror. She also did an illustration for a fanfic that's out there somewhere (but where?!?!?) in which Erik is a part of the Nazi regime. In one image Erik is seen in an SS uniform (and all the Phans scream Noooooooooooooooooo) and later with an emblem of his own. Nazi's scare the shit out of me so my initial reaction was to join the chorus and scream Nooooooooooooooooooo but I find the idea really interesting. If Erik had been born 50 years later, wouldn't it make sense that he'd be a Nazi? He sure as hell wouldn't be selling victory bonds. There's even a costume that would make a Fetishist Phan cream his/her panties.

Other great Phantom incarnations include Vihma's red-headed Erik, Fooray's full-color comic style Erik, and a really nice Butler Phantom by Jackie Sullivan. If you can avoid the bad manipulations of pictures of Butler & Emmy Rossum you'll find a few gems.

I've lost more hours just flicking from page to page on Deviantart I shudder to think of all the things I could have done instead that would make my life move so much smoother. Then I remember that yummy, blue-eyed pirate and all my troubles disappear.

Labels: inspiration, teh internets

I feel so ashamed of myself. When I took a break from Udolpho I decided that I would read Atonement, since everyone's talking about the movie and being a complete freak I'm unable to see a buzzed-about movie if I know there's a buzzed-about book attached to it.

I was so looking forward to it. The cover is so pretty, with perfectly air-brushed Keira Knightly on the cover with her dark hair and rosy cheeks, and James McAvoy who is just yummy. Plus there's a character named Robbie. I can't explain it but that name makes me go girly and giggle all over myself. Not Bobby, Robert, or Rob. Robbie. Like Naughty Highland Stable Boy Robbie. I expected to be blown to bits by epic romance from page one.

Not quite. I'm past page 100 and I'm wondering what in the hell all the fuss is about. The characters are irritating as hell and I really don't give a crap about Briony's outlook of the world around her and inside her head. And I have a feeling I know where this is going: creepy house guest is going to molest some kids, and this will somehow lead to Robbie getting fucked over.

But worst is the wordiness. Oh. My. God. The scene I finished with was Robbie in writing a letter to Cecelia and I'm ashamed to say that three pages into it I had forgotten that he was actually writing the letter.

What is wrong with me? How can I dislike this book? I feel like a freak. It's like that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine is ostracized for disliking The English Patient. Shouldn't I be as moved by this as everyone else?

I can't even say it's because I'm too into genre fiction. I've read and been moved by some serious stuff. Immediately coming to mind is Ann Marie MacDonald's Fall On Your Knees - I went into a week-long depression after reading this. And anything by Margaret Laurence has me wanting to write something as amazing as The Diviners.

Atonement? FAIL. The characters don't so much feel as they suppress their emotions and then think about it at length later on. Creepy (soon-to-be) molester guy has been more intriguing than Robbie, Cecelia and Briony put together because we don't have to hear about how he feels about his actions for pages and pages afterwards.

Maybe this is a case of "The movie is better than the book." Thank God for Wikipedia. I'm going to try and finish the book just in case I'm wrong and it sucks me in sometime before page 200, but if it doesn't I'll just read the online summary and be done with it.

Edit: Caved and went to Wikipedia. That's IT?!? Good God. I'm going back to Udolpho and putting Atonement in the giveaway bag.

Labels: atonement, reading

I'm getting used to the idea that in classic literature, if you're a woman and you're good and kind and innocent, you're doomed. At least that seems to be the case with the ones I’ve read in the last few years.

It typically goes like this: young woman, usually orphaned or surrounded by assholes, falls on hard times and becomes the prey of a man who wants nothing more than to get between her legs. The man goes to ridiculous lengths to get her but she fends him off with a sickening amount of virginal resolve, and so she’s raped, killed, or raped and killed.

The Castle of Otranto (1764) – Matilda’s attachment to Theodore gets in the way of her father’s evil plan and is killed off

The Monk (1796) – Antonia attracts the attention of Ambrosio, is buried alive, raped, and then stabbed to death by him.

Clarissa (1748) – Clarissa falls in love with Lovelace and is disowned by her family. She runs off with him and is eventually raped. She’s thrown in jail for running away from a whorehouse and dies. (and to be clear, I’ve never read Clarissa, only seen the mini series with Sean Bean. Given the size of Clarissa I doubt I’ll ever read it.)

Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) – Tess, coming from a poor family, is raped by d’Urberville, loses her baby by him, is rejected by Angel, ends up back with d’Urberville and then kills him, is hung for his murder.

Variations on this involve a secondary female character, who finds happiness only after the primary female character is killed: In Otranto, Isabella gets Theodore after Matilda is killed. In The Monk, Agnes is spared death (though she deserves it, having been shut up and starved beyond recognition with her dead baby). But in the end the good girl is killed off and she’s happy to go, either looking forward to salvation or dying in the arms of a man she wasn’t sure loved her.

So, 150 pages into Udolpho I’m pretty sure that Emily isn’t going to make it to the end of the novel. She’s perfect. She’s pious, she's beautiful, she's a loving daughter now orphan, she’s found true love and now comes the pain.

I’m resisting the urge to sneak a peek at the novel’s Wikipedia entry and just going with it, but I’m 99% sure that she’s going to be subjected to 500 pages of misery and then be reunited with Valancourt on her deathbed.

I think maybe this is why Emily and Charlotte Bronte are so popular in the genre. Sure, Cathy dies in Wuthering Heights but she didn’t exactly fit the mould (if the story belonged to Isabella Linton she’d be right on track with her predecessors.) and besides, the story was Heathcliff’s and man oh man, he was awesome as a miserable, long-suffering bastard. Jane Eyre not only makes it to the end of the novel but her true love is a guy who locked his first wife in the attic. Plus, remember when she threw a hissy fit at the beginning of the novel? That’s probably what saved her life.

All this is like the reverse of those stock characters of old school horror movies: the virgin is the hero, the slut is the first to die, and the horny teenaged boys usually end up holding their intestines while blank-staring at the killer. It’s a tad disenchanting—I was a terrible English major because I never gave a crap about the deeper meaning, I just wanted to be entertained by a good story, and so expecting Emily to die after months/years of misery deflates my anticipation.

Labels: mysteries of udolpho, reading

*fans out arms and then does a happy dance*

suckmylolly.com rocks my socks. Too bad she doesn't do LJ layouts.

Labels: prattle

(This post rambles on and on about books and has no real point but to show what a complete dork I am. You've been warned.)

I'm a horribly book snob to myself. In mid-September following a very drastic I want to quit my job and be a bohemian! outburst I began to look at my once flourishing bookshelves and sighed. It was very pitiful compared to its former glory:

• Books 1-12 of the Stephanie Plum mysteries - not that there's anything wrong with these. Stephanie Plum rules and Morelli me tingle in all my special places. But any book that doesn't make me suffer makes me feel guilty.
• Jane Eyre & Wuthering Heights - Seriously, I cannot read these again. I'll never have another relationship again because deep down I'll be wondering, "Hrmm ... if he loved me as much as Heathcliff loved Cathy he'd make my life more miserable, wouldn't he?"
• A few random romances, some read, some not, some I'd rather kill myself than part with (Jane Feather, for one.)
• Mary Stewart's Merlin series - So good it put me off Arthurian adaptations forever.
• Daphne DuMaurier - Goddess of Contemporary Gothic Literature, I bow to thee. I love DuMaurier so much I once stole one of her books from a hotel I was staying at.
• Porn - Again, some read, some not. Emma Holly's Prince of Ice holds a special place on the shelf. I haven't read it yet, but I bought it at Walmart and walked around telling everyone I bought porn in Walmart for about month.
• Coleen Gleason's The Rest Falls Away - I don't know why I did it, but I glanced at the back of the book and ruined the experience for myself. Now I have to wait ten years in order to get over the trauma my actions caused.

And a few other odds and ends I keep for sentimental reasons but probably will never read again.

So, moving on. I went on this whole book-geek quest in mid-November/early-December when Rhett Butler's People was released. I decided to go with the spend-$40-get-free-shipping deal at Amazon and ordered Susan Kay's Phantom at the same time (phenomenal, btw--I now have fan art from Deviantart adorning my walls), but with a few bucks left to get me over the $40 mark I started browsing the cheap Dover editions.

And there it was. Matthew Gregory Lewis's The Monk. I added it to the list and when it came I put it aside, only to pick it up just before Christmas. It has since become my obsession.

If you've never read (which you probably haven't, who reads this stuff after graduation but me?) it centers primarily around Ambrosio the monk. He was left anonymously at a monastery or abbey when he was a small child and raised by the churchfolk. He's the epitome of piousness, kindhearted and cruel all at once.

And of course it all turns to shit for him. He discovers one of the nuns with a love letter and lets the cruel abbess have a crack at her, and the poor girl disappears. Meanwhile her brother is in love with Antonia, who is incapable of believing anyone could be deliberately sinful. While all this is happening Ambrosio discovers that one of the young men living in the abbey is actually a woman, Mathilda, and she professes her love for him. There's much angst to follow, and ultimately Ambrosio gives in and he and Mathilda fuck for days on end.

Once he has her, though, he doesn't want her. He's really conflicted by that virgin/slut thing that deeply religious boys are prone to suffer from. He starts to perv over the women in his church but he's so scared of being found out for a fraud he keeps his hands to himself, until he meets Antonia, and he gets a woody that would have killed a lesser man.

Not Ambrosio, though. He goes to ridiculously elaborate lengths to get into her panties, and almost succeeds before her mother walks in and busts him. And so Mathilda helps him along (she also cuts him off, which turns him into a sex-starved madman.) As it turns out Mathilda is a devil worshiper and convinces him to make a deal with Satan to get his hands on Antonia.

"NoooooOOOOoooooo!" cries the monk, until he's shown a reflection in a magic mirror of Antonia taking a bath, at which point he makes a deal with the devil to have the power to fuck Antonia -- while she's sleeping.

In the creepiest sex scene ever he steals into her house using a magic branch of myrtle and makes for the virgin upstairs. While in the midst of getting her clothes off her mother walks in again (and in spite of the whole date-rape thing being abhorrent I was highly disappointed, as it seemed as though in her sleep Antonia was kind of into it.) To shut the mother up he wraps his hands around her neck and accidentally kills her off.

A ha! Antonia is his! (insert Muahahahahaha! here.) But Ambrosio gets wind that the nun's brother is about to propose. This calls for an even more elaborate and ridiculous plot! Once more with his trusty sidekick Mathilda he manages to make it appear as though Antonia has died. And how did he achieve this? Well, Antonia is pretty but not very smart. Remember how I mentioned that she can't imagine anyone doing something terrible? It appears as though while he was trying to molest her the first time she presumably mistook that thing sticking into her hip for his Bible or something, because she continues to let the horny monk into her house and chooses him as her confessor on her "death bed." And so poor Antonia "expires" and is buried.

Meanwhile, for reasons involving the missing nun that I won't get into, all hell has broken loose. Amidst the carnage above Ambrosio is in the tomb digging Mathilda out. He waits for her to wake up and as soon as she does *cue dramatic prairie dog music* her honour is ruined.

And this is where I stop with the spoilers because it's at this point they start leading up to THE BEST ENDING OF ANY BOOK EVER.

Or maybe it isn't. Who knows. I've always had a thing for evil monks/priests. Ever watch Most Haunted? I do a happy dance whenever Derek Acorah starts talking about evil monks and priests and the black arts and whatnot.

Suddenly my crappy Dover edition with the bad type-setting looked unclean to me. It has a horrible cover. What the hell is that supposed to be in the background? It looks like some sort of monster that's part tree, part ass coming on to that gaunt chick. Chapters has an Oxford edition on sale for $4.99 that I must have. Not only does the cover look like Ambrosio is off to deflower some virgins inside the chapel there, but it has a forward by Stephen King.

Dear Jesus, you can take me now.

Having been exposed to something so affective out of something I expected to be as exciting as watching paint dry I decided that I was going to read as much of the early Gothic literature as possible. I scoured online bibliographies and recommended reading lists and added a few things to my wishlist. For Christ's sake, what have I been depriving myself of? I've had a copy of Melmoth the Wanderer on the shelf for 5 years and I only read a little bit. I took a freaking course on Gothic literature and I read none of this shit.

Unfortunately I also discovered Cecelia Ahern when I was struck down by the sight of Gerard Butler (aka the only man who can make me ovulate just by existing) on the cover of P.S. I Love You. Loved loved LOVED it. Thus my passion for girly-lit was also renewed.

There is now a big stack of books at the foot of my bed. I've rediscovered my love of reading. I even have a bulletin board with a list of books I must read in 2008. Seriously, I do. It's blue and it has Tinkerbell on it. It's even divided in half - "smart" books and "fun" books. Inspired partially by the OMFGPONIES!!!! thrill of The Monk and partially by the Canon Fodder section of The Ampersand at The Globe and Mail (in which a blogger vows to read only classic works of western literature for a year) I'm going to be getting to know the Gothic masters. I made a deal with myself - read half of a "smart" book and I get to read a "fun" book. Thusfar it's a painful process.

Currently it's The Mysteries of Udolpho. The reason for this should be clear to anyone who's done any kind of research into the Gothic genre - Ann Radcliffe is the grandmother of it all, and I feel like a total poser for not reading it. Also on the list, in addition to Melmoth is The Italian, Ann Radcliffe's answer to the "obscene" The Monk. Once I get to the end of part one of I'll be giving myself a break to read something from the fun list and giving my opinion of Udolpho to this point.

Labels: reading, the monk