FuschiaReads.

....and sometimes watches.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

very silly meme

Meme’d by the ever charming and erudite Fyodor. Thanks for not forgetting me.

I don’t know who still reads for me to tag. Where has Brownie’s site gone – is she picked? Coz? Random visitor by conincidental use of the ‘Next Blog’ Button??

So - In no particular order - we have

7 things I want to do before I die

1. See my granddaughter as a Star Ship Captain (although I am quite happy for Alien Intervention to bring this forward a generation – or two)
2. Travel…….and then travel some more
3. Hear someone quote Pablo Neruda to me in Spanish – and mean it
4. See my children grow up healthy and happy – and Star Ship Captains
5. Learn to Swim – I’d accept cyberpunkian gills on this one
6. Sell a Doll I have made
7. Have enough bookshelves so no book need ever live in a box again

7 things I can't do

1. Accept that there can ever be a choice between shareholder return and a human life
2. Eat Brussel Sprouts – despite their legendary anti-carcinogenic properties
3. Not love Hello Kitty
4. Get enough Sleep
5. Walk past an Op Shop or a Second Hand Book Shop
6. Get over my severe disappointment that it is 2005 (forgodsake!) and we are not all wearing cool black leather in a post apocalyptic wasteland or atleast ‘jacking’ in to cyberspace ala’ Gibson. Ahh those heady dreams of 1982 – where are you now
7. Keep up with Coz where red wine (or anything with the word ‘daiquiri’ in the title) is concerned

7 things that attract me to the opposite sex

1. Hands and strong fingers. Wrists. A good Back
2. Sense of Humour
3. Enjoyment of Shopping – the fine art of the Casual Browse
4. A Good Library
5. Competence
6. Russian/Foreign Accent
7. Washing up/Household Chores – just because it needs to be done not because you’ve had to be asked. A man putting laundry in the linen-hamper – sooooo very sexy!!!

7 things I say most often

1. Both Hands!!
2. Coz darling, can I borrow $20?
3. Next Pay!
4. I’m putting that on a T-Shirt!
5. One more chocolate can’t hurt
6. Does that come in pink?
7. Just 5 more minutes – and then I’ll get up

7 Celebrity Crushes

1. Richard Armitage – in ‘North and South’
2. Vin Diesel – I WILL never believe the internet is a cesspit of corruption while there remain NO nude photo’s of him ‘out there’
3. Paul Darrow as Avon
4. Takeshi Kaneshiro
5. Humphrey Bogart – I’ll whistle for ya baby!
6. Robbie Williams - no really I could make you soo happy - ignore the conservative camoflage in which I have so successfully hidden in - I could so easily revert to the bad girl days of my youth - soooo happy Robbie, so very happy
7. Patrick Stewart


- posted by FuschiaReads @ 8:38 PM 18 comments

NORTH AND SOUTH


Elizabath Gaskell
Penguin 1855 This Ed-2003 PB 450pp with lots of notes

“ ’Edith!’ said Margaret gently, ‘Edith!’ “

I read this book a few weeks ago but have been slack and full of real life and spending a lot of work computer time which makes play computer time less appealing. Maybe I was just sulking because I cannot play ‘World of Warcraft’ online. That’s it – all apologies done. And I’ve read more books that I thought I did in the last month. Sorry again

I read this book last year and loved it – when the series was the AB C I discovered my own copy was in a box (a fate too familiar for so many of my books) and that I was unable to reread it. I had the most amazing run of people ringing me on Sunday evenings and so was able to only SEE not Hear the vast majority of the series. Luckily Penguin have done a re-release and despite a rather aggressively critical introduction - I can say that the story is very close to the TV show and Well Worth The Read. Besides Richard Armitage as John Thornton was To Die For and gives ol’ Darcy a serious run for his money.

Our Heroine – Margaret (who is very lovely and brave)– having a father who undergoes one of those religious crises that are so hard for me to understand – moves from the long standing and most beloved rectory in the South (Cue light saturation and lots of roses) to the North (Cue cold grey light and TB). She finds herself out of her ‘class’ and out of her depth socially and emotionally as there is much injustice, many Dickensian deaths and new political ideas to face. And the very Lovely John (sigh) Thornton to be so confusing what with his dark good looks and ardent longings.

It is very interesting to see that while some things have changed in 150 years – the standing of women (maybe) – there is much conversation about workers vs employers that is soo very relevant today. The power of money, the abuse of those who create the wealth but do not own the machinery, the rights of the worker to safety and security etc, the responsibility of the factory owner to his shareholder over his employee – these are all questions that are examined in great detail in this book – and that no answer is provided should not be so surprising – as we have no answer to this day. Better political bloggers that I have raised these issues, and it seems we have made no head way at all in finding solutions even part way – the poverty and pain have just moved continents.

Its great. Read It.

- posted by FuschiaReads @ 8:14 PM 1 comments

Marrow



Robert Reed
Orbit Books 2001 PB 502pp

“…a sleep, sweet as Death…time traversed, and an incalculable distance…and then a splash of light emerged from the dark and the cold, its warming touch slowly explaining itself to me, showing suns and little worlds and great swirls of colored gas and angry, roaring dust…”

My delightful sister – the other delighful sister – lent this to me – as a book she bought on spec from an auther she knew nothing about.

Well, near distant future and a huge, huge, like really really big spaceship is found and Earthlings (yay) find it and colonise it and kill off every one else who wants it and turn it into a merchant passenger vessel. Humans with long, long like really really long life spans and lots of genetic enhancement so that if you die as long as your head is okay you can be rebuilt. This secret at the core of the spaceship is found and theres betrayal and lots of time passes and then theres a war and its all okay. These people live for 10’s and 10’s of thousands of years with these time frames and without pace and jeopardy a plot can quickly lag. And this plot quickly lags – not that the story is badly written or anything, but the plot suffers from being too linear and events drag out when they should be short and snappy and other interesting things are glossed over.

Read it when travelling, or sick or hung over

- posted by FuschiaReads @ 6:02 PM 1 comments

Going Postal


Terry Pratchett
Doubleday 2004 HC 352pp

“The flotillas of the dead sailed around the world on underwater rivers”

What can I say – it’s a Cack. Read it. If you have never read Pratchett then trust me as I can make your life a better place with this recommendation (I can also make you really well dressed but so few people take me up on that offer). If you have read Pratchett then you are a fan and you will read this book.

More of the Same. So Wonderful!

Read it.

- posted by FuschiaReads @ 5:49 PM 4 comments

Orlando




Virginia Woolf
Penguin 1928 This Ed-1993 272pp with lots of notes, PB

“He – for there could be no doubt of his sex – though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it – was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters.”

This book – directed by Sally Potter – stars my favoritist actor Tilda Swinton and while I have watched the movie hundreds of times I have only just now read the book. It is lovely and subtley and although I often felt as though I was intruding on a private conversation between close friends, I enjoyed every minute of it. So full of sly observant wit and comments on the place of women in the world – and the world of the previous 500 years.

Queen Elizabeth 1 ordered the delightful young Orlando (he of the spunkiest legs in Christendom) to never age, never grow old. And he obeys – through revolution, poetry, broken hearts and lawsuits and a change of gender, parenthood and marriage – Orlando remains his/her beautiful ageless self. But not without some hard won truths along the way

She remembered how, as a young man, she had insisted that women must be obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely apparelled. ‘Now I shall have to pay in my own person for those desires,’ she reflected; ‘for woman are not (judging by my own short experience of the sex) obedient, chase, scented, and exquisitely apparelled by nature, They can only attain these graces, without which they may enjoy none of the delights of life, by the most tedious discipline. There’s the hairdressing…that alone will take an hour of my morning…

Full of quotable quotes. Read it.

- posted by FuschiaReads @ 5:27 PM 0 comments

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