Happy Birthday Pride and Prejudice!

As today is the 200^th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice, I want to write a blog post wholly devoted to that lovely subject. No, really. This has been something I’ve been looking forward to for days. Two hundred years. It’s rather amazing when you think about it. First published January 28, 1813, a book, that two hundred years later is so universally beloved and appreciated. Let’s just talk about the amount of film adaptations that have been created from this book, shall we? They come out every few years.

 There is the black and white version that came out in 1940, starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier. I actually haven’t seen the entirety of this version, but I have seen several clips from throughout the film. What I did see I found enjoyable, even though this was partly because I found it amusing. What with the dresses that seemed more reminiscent of Gone With the Wind than the regency era and the exaggerated accents. Not to mention it beginning with a race between the Bennet family and the Lucas one, as they wildly try to get home first (and thus send out husbands/fathers to meet the newly arrived Mr. Bingley). Their mad disarray as they galloped homewards was amusing to say the least. It reminded me of the scene in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, where they’re racing their wagon after kidnapping the girls. I thought Greer Garson made a lovely Elizabeth Bennet however, even if quite a lot of it verged on the ridiculous. It was the sort of thing that was amusingly ridiculous, and enjoyable because of that.

 Next we have the BBC mini-series with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, perhaps the most beloved of all the versions; it has Colin Firth after all. Everyone knows that he is Mr. Darcy. We really can’t accept any other actor as Mr. Darcy after him! We have been spoiled forever! After once having been introduced to Colin Firth, there was no going back. I love this version of course, how could I not? But I can’t say I think it absolutely perfect. I think the problem I have with this version is that everything’s a bit too exaggerated. Mrs. Bennet will of course always grate a bit on the nerves, but she’s almost unbearable in this. Mr. Collins, Lydia, etc are just the same. My other thing is I just feel that Wickham’s a little bit…obvious. He’s obviously the “bad guy,” and everything points to that. Now, when I read Pride and Prejudice I remember being truly surprised. Wickham is supposed to take us in; we are supposed to be entirely fooled by his good looks and his charm. Now, I usually wouldn’t make comment about an actor’s looks for a part, since that’s superficial and stupid, but it does sort of bug me when the “bad guy” is cast as looking definitely less handsome than the “hero” (unless of course, that’s they’re supposed to look like that.) Same with when the leading lady is cast as being especially beautiful in contrast to a lesser character (Jane) who is in the book supposed to be much prettier than leading lady. It just bothers me. Like “all our favorite characters must be beautiful and gorgeous but all the bad guys and less characters get to be plain and unattractive.” (That turned into a bit of a rant, didn’t it? But Wickham is supposed to fool us! He isn’t supposed to seem sleazy till Mr. Darcy reveals his true nature!) This might all seem a bit harsh considering it’s probably my favorite version, but you see if I didn’t talk about the things I don’t like I wouldn’t have quite as much to talk about. I can’t just babble “I love it. I love it. I love it,” for a blog post, when I very well might if I were just talking about it. It’s the most near to the book, and thus the most near to my heart. I’ve watched it so many times, and I never get tired of it.

I think the most recent movie version is the one that came out with Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen. What I always say about this version is that I like it as a movie but don’t like it when comparing it to the book. As a movie it’s the sort of thing I watch over and over because it’s nice and relaxing and the music is my favorite. That’s the best thing about that movie, the music. The music is beautiful.

 Now I want to talk about The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, which is a series I’ve been watching recently. I don’t know if it could strictly be called a “film adaption.” It’s actually a series of vlogs (video blogs) of about four or five minutes each, and they’ve been coming out for a couple months now (I think there’s a total of about eighty videos now). It’s a modern adaption filmed as if Lizzie Bennet is filming these videos herself and blogging about her life. I think it’s a really interesting take on the story, and I think the actors have done such a good job in bringing to life characters from a different century into this one without losing too much of their essence in the translation. It’s actually made me think a lot about what has and what hasn’t changed over the years. What has remained the same while the entire world around us has changed. I’ve gone back and looked up particular sections of Pride and Prejudice and compared them to seeing it brought out in a modern day and age. 

 Anyhow, happy 200^th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice! I hope everyone has a lovely day, and I wish to send you tea and many regency dresses!

After Night and Before Morning

I’m thinking:

This morning I got up quite early, lit a candle on the table and set the coffee pot a brewing, and started upon blank notebook paper with my sharpened pencils. I was determined to make some progress before the world woke up, and I hope that I can say I have made some at least. The funny thing about getting up so early is that it feels for a bit as if you’ve been transported to another world without time. A continuous dark has settled upon the world, a dark that does not seem to lift and stays pressed against the windowpanes. It is neither night, nor is it morning, but a time (or timelessness) in between. At times it feels like somebody has pasted blackened paper on the other side of the windows and if you could only get past it you would see a different world, but instead you continue to travel through a timeless space.  Perhaps it is what it feels like to be traveling about in a spaceship with no day or night by which to gage the passage of days. I can imagine those hours between night and morning as being somewhat similar to what it must feel like drifting about in a weightless, timeless orbit. I keep repeating the word “timeless,” don’t I? If I were listening to my inner editor I should immediately go back and erase the numberless usages, or quickly think of some other word that would be better fitting for my sentences, but at the moment I simply don’t mind. I don’t mind if I use the word “timeless” once or a dozen times in this paragraph, for I belong to a timeless word where time is too precious to be wasted fretting about silly things such as that- for time is so precious as there is no time at all.

 I’m reading:

 Actually, I’m in-between books. This of course shan’t last beyond a couple hours more before I go digging into my stacks and fishing up a new one to read. I just finished reading “Daddy-Long-Legs” and also “The Lioness and Her Knight” the second a book I read fully over a couple days worth of breaks at the library. It was an easy (yet really quite enjoyable) read, in which I could finish a full fifty pages over a break, so it didn’t take me long at all to finish.

I’m creating:

Well, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before or not but next Monday is the 200^th anniversary of the publishing of Pride and Prejudice, so I rather thought I’d write up a series of blog posts about various screen adaptations, but we’ll see how far I get. I have a couple starts to them, a few sentences at the top of the great many word documents I have open at this moment. The problem never is the beginning though, it’s what comes after that is tricky. I’m also at work on another knitted hat, exactly like the one I just finished, because that one turned out so nice.

 Outside my window:

It seems impossible that morning’s are ever stormy (of course they are and that statement’s simply ridiculous, but at the moment it seems impossible) for the pond is so glassy still, the trees all standing still and motionless as well, not a single breeze to be seen. Everything is still, as it seems like it ought to be in the morning time. Night and darkness is the time for wild winds and rattling of windows as raindrops hit them in a fury, but morning is a time of stillness, of awakening. You never see a thing wild with any great emotion just as it first wakes, would it make sense for the world to be so? For the morning to come roaring to life? To my mind it makes far more sense for it to wake gradually, coming more and more to life as the minutes pass, but very still just at first. Very still.

 I’m listening to:

 Celtic music. I’ve had it playing just about as long as the coffee pot has been brewing, so rather a  long time indeed.

 From the kitchen:

 On the topic of coffee, it won’t be long before I shall be needing to make another pot. The other one has grown quite cold by now, and Mom still needs to have her coffee so another pot I shall make.

 I’m hoping and praying:

 For snow. I really want it to snow. Well, perhaps I’m not exactly praying about snow, but I’m most certainly hoping. Other than that I am praying that I can stop fretting so much about things and trust that things will turn out exactly as they were meant to. It’s no help fretting and worrying, and I shouldn’t, and I know that, but the problem is I still do. So I need to stop.

 A few plans for the rest of the week:

 

Well, I suppose just continuing doing what I'm doing. Starting with finishing up this journaling page and getting back to work on Algebra. I'm planning on going to see Les Miserables again on Thursday though! Which will be a lot of fun! Oh and I'm also quite excited about Cabin Pressure on Wednesday, yay!

 

 

Beauty and the Beast and Knitted Hats

I'm thinking:

It was rather funny this morning. I wrote something up for my journaling page and then went to preview it and see how it would look formatted on the blog and it turns out I had been writing on my other blog. I hadn't been on that blog in a while and it made me laugh because it felt like I was going back in time somehow. Slipping back into last year. It's funny how that can happen sometimes. You open a book, or a blog that you frequented almost every day in years before, and it feels like you are simply stepping back in time.

I'm reading:

So, it's January. I want to start keeping better track of the books I read in the next few months (hopefully all year, but we'll see how I do). I just finished reading my second book for the month (reading book number three and four at the same time right now). Beauty is the book I just finished (it was a Christmas present) and I have to say, it was one of the best retellings of fairytales that I've ever read. You never can tell with retellings of fairytales. Some turn out to be rather good, others not so good. The trick is, I think, keeping the strain of the original fairytale and not losing the essence of the story. Sometimes the author gets so caught up in creating their own idea of the character that they lose who that character really was, because it is all there to begin with. Even though fairytales are often written without an over abundance of words, there is still a strain of a character that needs to be caught onto if the retelling is going to succeed. I think Beauty was so well done because it felt like it was simply adding more to the story in descriptions and such, but never straying for long from the story's real beginning. Not to mention that the Beast actually seemed rather frightening to begin with, which I liked quite a lot. Nomally he isn't, and he's supposed to be. Beauty and the Beast is probably my favorite fairytale, actually. I just love it so much. After finishing Beauty I went and found my CD from the Broadway musical, and listened to some of the songs from that. I shall probably be obsessed with Beauty and the Beast for a little while now.

I'm wearing:

I rather look like a ragamuffin today. A tear in the knee of my jeans (put there by myself, thank you very much), a shirt that really was a dress but I wear it as a shirt because it's much too short to wear as a dress, and a ruffled shirt beneath that. Ah well, it's home I stay today, so I can enjoy looking like a ragamuffin and dance about the room in bare feet.

I'm listening to:

Songs from Les Miserables on youtube. I want to buy the soundtrack eventually. I'm just not getting tired of all these songs. They are perfect. Really, really perfect.

I'm creating:

I've almost finished knitting a slouchy hat with my Christmas yarn. I'm excited about it because the colour will just match the red scarf I have and the red mittens my grandparents brought back from Canada for me. So now I have a full set. Or almost. I just have to finish knitting this hat.

On the topic of creating I really need to start working on my NaNoWriMo story again. I haven't made much progress since November ended and I would still like to finish it. So there's another project waiting for me.

A few plans for the rest of the week:

Did I mention I ordered a Latin book? That's what I'm most excited about this week. I read the introduction yesterday and I'm going to start on chapter one today. Yes.

" I really do enjoy you blog. Thank you Emily!!

I have been wondering exactly how you put your hair up in a bun ever since you first blogged about it. My hair is very thick and I cannot find a way to put it into a bun at all. Maybe you could post a picture of how it looks when it is finished, or write out a few instructions. I know it's silly, but I'm kind of at a lost of things to do with my hair!

*sigh* I did hope that my first comment to this blog would be a bit more interesting, but I suppose this has been the only thing to get past my procrastinating nature.

Oh well, I think you understand.

Thank you! :)"

Comment on It's Monday Again

Dear Reagan,

Sorry it's taken me so long to respond. You see, I've always meant to respond in a post (like I'm doing now) but I was going to take pictures and things for you and I keep forgetting. So I thought I would write this up even if I don't have the pictures, as I suppose it's better to respond in the first place rather than never responding because you're trying to make it better.

I actually taught myself how to do it from this youtube video:

(I teach myself all sorts of things from youtube videos. Whenever I need to learn a new knitting technique or something you can always find a video and I just pause it and replay it as long as I need to. Very helpful.)

(I normally gather up my hair much lower than she does)

I hope this is helpful! And thank you so much for the comment. I love comments and I always get so excited to get them. Sorry I've been slow to respond!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

From the Kitchen:

For the past two days I've been busily baking. Really, yesterday I was in the kitchen from as soon as I hopped out of bed, till nearly two in the afternoon. I made pizza dough, and at least three different batches of cookies. I wish I had taken a picture, I had four huge plates piled with cookies. Sadly, I handed off about half of them before even thinking of it. This morning I got up and made banana bread (which I just pulled out of the oven. Perfect for a yummy afternoon snack, along with coffee, before going off to work.)

I'm listening to:

Cold December Night. I love this song. Really I do.

I'm thinking:

The other day I was thinking on words. Actually, this is something I think on quite a lot. If you know me you will know that words are something I love, and consequently they are something I talk a lot about. (Goodness, I even named my last blog Meaningful Words, and my first post was on how we should choose our words carefully, because each word means something.) I was thinking about this program which you can use to see what your say ten, fifteen, twenty most frequently used words were on various websites. It's interesting you know, seeing what words you use the most often. Are they nice words? Words that give you a nice happy feeling, even as they are, disconnected from each other and any sentence that they might have been put into. I was thinking about if you could gather all those words that you spoke as well as wrote, what words would they be? I know the sort of words I would want my vocabulary to be summed up with, the question is, whether I live up to that. I certainly hope my words are ones that are kind and meant to bring joy to those with whom I'm talking, and those words that I have spoken that do not live up to this goal, I hope that I might eliminate in future.

Anyhow, this is a word cloud of a collection of words on this blog.

One of my favorite things:

The week before Christmas. I just want it to last forever. I just want to stretch out these days in which we get to finish up on Christmas presents, baking Christmas cookies and making Christmas crafts. On which topic, here's a picture of my favorite Christmas craft of this year

 

Isn't it just lovely?

 

 

I'm creating:

 

A couple days ago I embroidered the facial features on my knit doll, and I'm just finishing up the red dress I made for her. I'll post a picture after I sew on the arms, as the arms really are necessary. I am a little nervous to actually sew them, because I've worked so hard on her and I don't want to mess her up. I've also named her Lorna, after Lorna Doone, so I'm trying to figure out a way to incorporate her name onto a tag of some sort.

 

I'm hoping:

 

For snow. I hope it will snow. Please? Please let it snow?

 

I'm reading:

 

The Book Thief. I'm actually really impressed by this book so far. It's one of the best written books of a recent publishing date that I've read.

 

I'm wearing:

 

Sweat pants, a green t-shirt and a jacket of my Dad's that is immensely to large for me. Yes, it is noon. Yes, I do have to work soon. No, I shan't be dressed in such a manner very shortly. However, too large jackets are really warm and cozy. Jackets that fit just aren't this cozy. They're really not.

 

 



Muddy Roads and Books

Outside my window

Today is a day that verges along the edge of a boundary, a line, that separates Fall and Winter. Perhaps if I lived somewhere else I would definitely describe it as Fall weather; cloudy skies, green grass tipped with frost, muddy roads, but for us, it has a hinting of Winter. Not that Winter is even supposed to begin until the end of the month (doesn’t that seem rather silly to you? December seems such a wintery month to me, and yet Winter doesn’t even begin till the last few days.) When I look out my window what I really want to describe most is mud. Dark, chocolaty brown mud. I like mud. That is, I like mud when I slip on my extra tall boots (courtesy of last Christmas and my increasing need for boots) and trump about in a road of mud. Mud that squishes, squelches, and sticks to the bottom of the old boots.

 I’m reading

The Book Thief (so far I’m really enjoying it. I’m about ten chapters in I think, and it’s really well written and absorbing. I dislike how the book is broken up with these bolded sections between paragraphs, it’s rather jolting, but so far that’s my only complaint. Then again I’m still near the beginning)

Skipping Christmas (This is a reread. I recommend. It always makes me laugh.)

A Wodehouse story from my Just enough Jeeves story collection.

I’m  finding my list of books increasing by dozen as I’ve been going through Sarah’s book blogs, and really, I want to read anything she suggests. I have a great big long list of books to find now.

From the Kitchen

Cold coffee sitting on the tabletop.

A few plans for the rest of the week

I’ve been filling out a new address book, slowly but surely. Who knew it could take such a long time? I’m about half way through. I also need to finish filling out Christmas cards, but extra envelopes are necessary. Also, I would like to create some Christmas ornaments and things. That’s always such fun.

I’m creating

Well, I believe I covered what I’m creating in the prompt above, but I do also need to finish up my doll. I want to have it all ready to give to Ella on Christmas.

I’m listening to

Squealing children running up and down the stairs, thump, thump, thump.

 

 

The Victorian Lady and Christmas Lights

I'm thinking...(I wrote this yesterday? but I'm posting anyhow)

There is a lady who lives in the town nearest to us who wears Victorian garb every day, and when I say Victorian garb I mean everything. You can see her walking down the street with trailing skirts and lacy blouses, her hair up in a large pompadour. She often carries a parasol and rides on a very old fashioned looking bicycle. Now, I’ll be honest and say that originally I thought this rather strange. You know, one of those odd quirks of people belonging to a little town (and this is coming from someone obsessed with historic dresses and hairstyles.)
I’ve been thinking about her a lot though lately, and found that I really admire her. If I found it strange, you can well imagine the looks she must get when she walks into a grocery store or something. I admire her because she really doesn’t care. She isn’t doing it to make a show, to go against society or anything of the like- she does it because she likes to. She feels comfortable in floor length skirts and heels that lace or button up past the ankle. She wears clothes like that because she loves them, and honestly doesn’t care about other people’s opinions.
Which I find really refreshing.
It is all too common for us to worry how we appear in other people’s minds. To worry about the impression we are making, or what is being said about us. When really the most important thing is to have a good opinion of yourself. Now I’m not saying that we should all live a Victorian lifestyle, indeed that would be most impractical, but I think we should care a little less about what other people think of us. I know that there are times when I feel like simply being happy and humming as I go about doing whatever task I’m at work with, and yet I stifle the hum because I’m afraid of the stranger walking past me.
It’s not that I hide who I am, and if someone asks me I’m happy enough to answer them honestly, but there’s still that part of me that wants to be invisible. That doesn’t want to stand out. I want to be less afraid of being noticed, because if you’re confident and happy with yourself that’s what is really important, and that’s a beautiful thing.

Outside my window...it's a lovely chilly day.

I'm wearing...A striped sweater and jeans and am wrapped up in a large blanket.

I'm reading...Jeeves and Wooster books by P. G. Wodehouse

I'm creating... Almost finished with my doll's dress.

I'm listening to...Christmas music, yay!

A picture thought I'm sharing...

 

 

My room all decorated with lights, doesn't it look lovely?