I enjoyed Mansfield Park which was last night's Masterpiece classic.  It's one of the Jane Austen's I've never read.  Well actually I've only read two (P&P and Northanger Abbey) so it's not difficult to be one I've never read.  One of my great secrets is that I don't like the way Jane Austen writes.  The plots I love, but the actual sentence structure and word choices I find yawn-inducing.   That's why Northanger Abbey is my favorite. I find the writing style fundamentally different from, and in my taste superior to, the other novels. 

   Anyway, some thoughts on this production: What was up with Edmund's emo hair? Very off putting.  Also, the waltz at the end.  I was under the impression that the waltz was only just starting to come into fashion in mainland Europe during the regency era and would have still been horribly scandalizing in England, what with the excessive amounts of touching and pressing of bodies against each other.  

    Georgia is a lot further away from Louisiana than it looks.  I always forget that until I'm in the car; usually around the fourth hour or so it hits me.  We left at 10:00 am central and arrived at 9:00 pm eastern, which gave me time to work on the  Little Devil Pants  for my cousins and listen to Little Women  courtesy of LibriVox.  It will, however, make it slightly more difficult to wake up for work tomorrow. 

    Also, I finished  The Gun Seller, which I enjoyed, but not nearly as much as I was expecting to enjoy it.  It was very funny.  But I felt like I spent the whole novel going "that's funny, I should laugh at that" instead of actually laughing.  I can't decide whether this was a case of me over-hyping the  book to myself before starting based on other people's hype, or whether I just couldn't fully appreciate a spy novel satire because I don't read that many spy novels. 

So, I'm going to own up to a guilty pleasure.  I love cheesy christmas stories.  I like to read emotionally-manipulative, trashy romance novellas set at christmas time, despite the fact that I'm not a romance novel fan the  rest of the year.  Christmas: It's the time for manipulating emotions.

Also, I love made for tv christmas movies.  Right now I watching  one called Chasing Christmas.  It's a modern retelling of A Christmas Carol.  Right now the main character has returned to  1958 and the entire movie has gone black and  white, because in 1958 the whole world was in black and  white is wasn't just reflective of television technology.  So Cheesy!

    One of the pipeline  guys came out to the site today to inform us that we are no longer allowed to use the  road that leads to the field we are  in because  it is not in the right-of-way.  Instead we have to take our SUV's (which don't have four wheel drive) through the ditch along the side of the main road.  At different  times, both of the back tires lifted completely off the ground.  And I'm talking a foot off the ground.  So. Not. Cool.  In fact, possibly the most dangerous thing I've ever been told to do.  Really just  waiting for the entire car to tip over. 

    On a more fan-girly front, a letter:

Dear Jerry Bruckhiemer,

    Forcing me to watch a second of your shows by having continuing story-lines from one to the other is not going to work.  You've had your warning.  Do it again and I leave completely. 

Disappointedly,
Allison

    And finally, does anyone else have an unnatural fondness for trashy-romance novellas  that have to do with Christmas?  No? Just me? Oh well. 

I never actually joined 50bookchallenge last year, but I did keep track of my books read, so I thought that I would post them here. Should you want to know about any one book, feel free to ask. I'm not sure how articulate I'll be, but it's worth a try. ( My 50+ Books )

As were coming up on the due dates for all those lovely end of the year papers, children's literature has been my saving grace. It's short, so I don't feel like I'm taking too much time away from my work. It's soothing in a chicken soup sort of way and i don't have to concentrate on it overly much, which is a relief after all the text books and extremely wordy academics.

Also went to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind yesterday while I was letting my paper settle before revising.  Not exactly the mindless entertainment that the situation would normally call for, but I knew that going in.  I had been wanting to see this movie, but it came to our local theater while my parents were visiting, so I didn't get a chance to see it.  Anyway, much to my ultimate delight (yes there was a happy dance involved) it came back! It was definiately worth the wait, and since I generally dislike Jim Carrey movies that's saying a lot.  I now need to see all of Charlie Kauffman's other work, or well, I'll see it as soon as I return to some place where I have access to a tv.