Book hoarding is the new...something.

I just had a moment of panic for my desk/vanity. I've had this large, cumbersome piece of furniture since I was a teenager and wanted to decorate my room in the style of the 1940s (yeah, I was one of those cool kids who did that sort of thing). So I begged my parents for this desk, which we saw at an antique store, and they bought it for me, and I carted it off to Chicago when I moved up here. But my room is appx 8 x 9, and in that I have my tiny bed, a keyboard and its stand, a floor lamp, and my giant desk/chair.

So for Christmas I requested a much lighter desk. My dad informed me today they got it, and I have to pick it up downtown. Which means I have to get rid of my giant heavy wooden desk, which is causing me anxiety because the PICTURES shoved in the mirror during high school, and the endless packs of hair ties in its drawers (those I'm probably less attached to, but still). What's going to happen to it after it leaves my apartment? MEMORIES.

...everything's going to be fine

I'm a low-level hoarder, meaning I hate getting rid of almost anything (what if you NEED it later), but I'm not in danger of being crushed by my own belongings, plus I guarantee there are no dead cats in my apartment. Aside from the desk, this is also why I brought things like Sideways Stories from Wayside School to Chicago, despite having a billion other books I need to read, and not being nine-years-old.

I've had John Adams by David McCullough on my shelf for eleven years. John Adams is the guy I had a picture of in my high school locker (ok, it was William Daniels playing John Adams in the musical 1776, but whatever). Since purchasing this book and never finishing it, I have watched multiple miniseries about the man, traveled to his hometown of Quincy (pronounced 'Quinzy'), Massachusetts, and done the following with a cardboard cutout of him about fifteen feet from where he and his wife Abigail are buried (the basement of a Unitarian church):

But I still haven't finished that damn book. Maybe I never will. But I'm never getting rid of it. Because there is always the HOPE that I will finish it.

I'm not positive what's behind book hoarding. Libraries exist. I use them frequently. They are free. But then you have to cotton to their schedule and can't just own a book and look at it fondly as you go to work and not actually open it for four years. I'm trying to cut my books down to sentimental copies (lookin' at you, shitty Bantam edition of Jane Eyre) and awesome/pretty editions of things. Like Intestinal Ills, printed in 1919? I'm not lettin' that go. There's a chapter about the origin and use of the enema. That book will be cherished.

The Harry Potter Readalong info post is coming. Oh, it's coming. You all better be collecting GIFs, because they will be NEEDED. I'm not reacting to fricking "Nice to be with friends" without approximately fifty crying GIFs.

people might like calling themselves perfectionists, but perfectionists get nothing done

I've been taking piano for a few months now. My teacher is a girl about my age who goes to my church and mostly teaches six-year-olds. This is particularly evident when I do a shitty job on something like Yankee Doodle and she claps and says "You hit almost all the right notes!" She's very encouraging is what I'm saying. This is especially helpful when I sit in front of The Little Drummer Boy and my brain panics and won't hit the keys because WHAT IF I HIT THE WRONG ONE.

 My mother really likes telling a story related to this about when I was five and she came into my room, and rather than being in bed, I was sitting on the ground with those giant dotted sheets of paper they give you in grade school for learning to write your letters strewn about me, and an intense look of concentration on my face. "Alice, why aren't you asleep?" my mom asked. In a furious tone, I responded "I HAVE TO GET MY T's RIGHT."

 This carries into reading for me. If I don't read absolutely every word of a book, I feel like I haven't truly read it. It's also something I'm trying to conquer, because DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG THAT TAKES. Forever. It takes forever.



And my attention span, thanks to the internet, is close to zero. So I start a book and I NEVER FINISH IT. Do you know what I did yesterday? Started a new book. Do you know how many I'm technically supposed to be reading right now? Like nine. That is UNACCEPTABLE.
I need a brain strategy for convincing myself I don't need to mull over every word in every book. Surely one can grasp the essence of a thing without thinking after every sentence 'Do I completely understand this?' Because that way produces posts like these. And they're only good for amazing Sandlot gifs.

"You know what I reeeeeally think of you, Sand?" she slurred

I know. It's been almost a week. But the Americans will understand there was NO TIME. Because you have Wednesday when you get drunk, Thursday when you travel and eat a lot, Friday when you go shopping, and you don't update on the weekend.

Which brings us to today. Also to the fact that CAN I SAY, my headcanon of Charlotte Bronte loving Whitney Houston has become so real to me that when I eventually time travel and bring 16-year-old her to this time and play 'The Greatest Love of All' for her, if she doesn't like it, my world will fall apart. And not just because bringing her forward in time might create some weirdo paradox thingy.

I need coffee. Saturday I did a spin class for the first time, which bruised me in some unfortunate places, and yesterday I ran three blocks for the bus which almost killed me.

Haven't unslumped myself. Still barely reading. It's reeeeeal sad.

me in tortoise form

You know who should get drunk together? George Eliot and George Sand. Because they've already got the lady writer, male pseudonym, roughly contemporaries thing. But then George Sand is 15 years older, FRENCH (you know how they are), and probably had all sorts of shit to talk about with Eliot regarding ethics and women's rights. 

 I don't think Eliot was necessarily as gung ho about women's rights as Sand was, but she didn't have as much of a reason to be. France was still under the early version of the Napoleonic code (made by the dude who apparently said "Nature has made women our slaves," so it wasn't super-nice to them), and Sand wrote a book discussing the way women suffered because of it (Indiana). Eliot was pretty much 'Hey hey, let's not be mean to each other.' Which is nice in its own way.

Anyway. They should get drunk together.

I think I'll just leave this here

Stalled reading plus shipping and do we know what that is?

People seem to be in a reading rut right now (I cite Meg's post "Reading Rut, I am in you"), and I am the biggest no-exception. I've started a truly extraordinary number of books and finished none. And then I had that whole watch-too-many-episodes-of-that-unnamed-show thing. 

SO. Just to explain why this hasn't been too updatey. But I'm sure you all have just been in a veritable WHIRLWIND of holiday activity, and are barely even reading blogs, so I could really post or not post whatever and it would all just zoom down into the blogging void. I don't need to explain what the blogging void is, because this is already in it and NO CAN READ THINGS THERE.

...my tumblr's been like this lately as well.

here're some puppies

If I can go in a fiction-related but not necessarily solely book-related direction, do we all know what shipping is?

When I use this


do you all think I'm talking about an actual boat? Hopefully not. Okay, so "shipping" is short for "relationshipping" which means you want certain people to end up together in a romantic way. The term was originally used for Mulder and Scully; people who wanted them to end up together were called Relationshippers (as opposed to the No-Romos).
Do you feel like it's ok to ship non-canon things? Our generally liberal societal feeling makes me think the kneejerk response for a non-guilty conscience would be "Sure, people can do whatever they want," but shipping non-canon couples can make people VERY VERY ANGRY. Like "There is no EVIDENCE; why would you DO that." I'm going to assume most of the people feeling this way are 12, because that's what I did when I was 12.
But you've got authorial intent, right? The author puts two people together. Like Ron and Hermione in Harry Potter. But then you've got all these Harry/Hermione shippers who are like "I don't know what book YOU'RE reading, but H/Hr forever, yo." And J.K's like "That's...kind of delusional." And then the internet EXPLODES.
I should note that JKR specifically avoided saying they were delusional, because she didn't want the internet to explode, but it did anyway, because she shot H/Hr down. So. I guess we're looking at shipping rights. 1) Can you ship non-canon? (pretty much definitely yes) 2) Are you allowed to badger the author for validation? Well. That seems odd since it's not canon, i.e. not what the author chose to do, but I've done exactly that with Once Upon a Time and Swan Queen, the Emma Swan/Evil Queen pairing. 

oh sure, I'M the crazy one

I don't know. I guess people should suck it up if it's a book and it's done and the author obviously put people with someone other than you wanted, but since I've been a part of the shipping world for 14 years, I've kind of got a huge amount of sympathy with people and their ships. And if you can get an author to say "Well, it didn't end up that way, but sure, there was that potential," then that is awesome. 

If a work of fiction is 'out there' can people do what they want with it/interpret it how they want? Can you tell an author "I'm sorry, but the way you've written it clearly indicates these two characters love each other," and have validation for that EVEN if the author says "OMG NO STOP IT"?

I'm particularly interested in this BECAUSE of Swan Queen. There are basically a hundred good arguments for it, but the likelihood of it actually happening is close to zero (which is crazy-stupid, btw). People have pretty much said "I know what I've seen and I refuse to put Emma with whichever Guy of the Week She Has No Chemistry With that you try to force in." Sigh. Oh, fiction.

I'd totally get murdered in the woods

I got Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. It's pretty spiffy so far, but he hasn't actually set out into the woods yet. He's kinda just talking about all the ridiculous equipment you need to not be eaten alive by raccoons. Something that's on page one hooked me:

"Who could say the words 'Great Smoky Mountains' or 'Shenandoah Valley' and not feel an urge, as the naturalist John Muir once put it, to 'throw a loaf of bread and a pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence'?"

Yes. That thing right there. Because HIKING. I love it so much. Some weird combination of my hatred of staying still, my liking of nature and general love of being in a location where contemporary civilization isn't obnoxiously present and I can say 'I AM LEWIS AND CLARK'S UNMENTIONED THIRD PERSON.'

So yes, kind of a cliche, but hiking is the greatest. The day I get actual hiking boots will be a banner one for the Alice/Shaan household (my roommate is named Shaan and he is the awesomest). 

The only downside is I'm also really into true crime, and so I'm convinced if I go into the woods on my own, I will be murdered. So I always need to recruit someone, and that is not the easiest. "You want to go walk around trees for five hours while carrying a backpack and living off nothing but our wits, these fancy water bottles and this Trader Joe's trail mix? I know, right, like that's even a question."



I like Bryson. I like his writing style. And he distracts me from Bette's ridiculously terrible downward spiral. TURN IT AROUND, BETTE. So thanks, people, for recommending awesome things. I'm still really near the beginning of Cloud Atlas and it is SO GOOD I CANNOT. Really looking forward to getting to the next section where the style changes. He is ROCKING the 18th century form of writing. Color me multiple shades of impressed.

happy books are my only hope

Four hours of The L Word last night, mostly involving me wrapped in a blanket weeping on my couch.

THIS GIF EXISTS 

Bette? Half of the couple I love with an all-consuming-since-Sunday devotion? Yeah, so there's a character named Alice on the show, and half of the couple I love and who made me cry like four times last night ACTUALLY SAID: "Fuck you, Alice."

THANKS SHOW.

*cries for the happy
days of season one*

What are some hilarious books, guys? Because I'm currently reading The Book Thief and Cloud Atlas, and neither is imbuing me with merriment. And I will need this, because I'm only on season two out of six of this demonspawn show, and determined to finish before I go to New York in early December (Alley, you better not back out on me for lunch/dinner/coffeetimes when I visit).

I can handle only so much sadness at one time. Mostly because I'm the most impressionable ever, so if I'm surrounded by sadness, I get totally pulled down into it. This is also a problem when I hear debates, because each side goes and I keep thinking 'Oh, [whichever side is speaking] has a good point.'

Hilarious essay collections are my favorite. Mostly because they can be so easily broken up due to the fact they are full of ESSAYS. Auntie Mame, that book I most frequently cite as My Favorite Book of All the Books and I've Read a Decent Number of Books, is funny, episodic and has moments of social justice/character insight. So it's basically everything I've ever wanted. The movie is also excellent. But not the movie musical. Stay away from Mame. Go towards Auntie Mame.

I still haven't read Mindy Kaling's book, despite owning it since it came out. I'm just worried it won't be funny enough, and I'll still be sitting in a ball on my couch, crying softly for the sadistic plot twists on a two-years-defunct television show.

I'm assuming others are made of stronger stuff than I. This could be why Laura genuinely loves Murakami and Grapes of Wrath, despite their intense depressingness. Is it more usual to be able to read sad books and not have them drag you down into the Sadness Abyss? (an abyss filled with knowing how chicken nuggets are made, the knowledge that you are mortal, and that puppies die)

This week's been a barrel of laughs on the ol' blog. IT WILL BE BETTER NEXT WEEK. Or whenever Tina and Bette are happy again. Until then:

Lesbian TV and the Holocaust? What are you doing, self.

So I spent yesterday watching 12 episodes of The L Word after resisting it for years because I thought it was going to be trashy, but have now discovered it is the BEST. From my hours and hours of watching I have culled the best scene, namely when Tina and Bette -- who are having a baby -- have an intervention done for them because they're becoming too boring.


The show reminds me of Alison Bechdel's long-running comic Dykes to Watch Out For, which I am a billion percent positive it's been compared to. That's the comic that created the Bechdel Test and was generally ahead of its time. Or maybe current with its time. But at any rate, Alison Bechdel was one of the first people to do something like it. She's also the author of Fun Home, which you should all read because it is awesome and one of the only graphic novels/memoirs I've ever cared about. My copy is currently absent from my home because all the ladies at church have been passing it around.
It's Monday, so let's talk about Holocaust literature! There was a debate on Twitter last Friday about The Book Thief, which I'm currently reading. I like it, but some hate it. Then there was an argument about whether it counts as Holocaust literature since it's mostly about a non-Jewish German girl who (as far as I know) doesn't go to a concentration camp.
Hmmmmmm. Ok, Wikipedia says the Holocaust was "the mass murder or genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II." But I'm gonna go ahead and say that pretty much anything set in Germany during WWII can be counted as Holocaust literature, if only to save us from being bogged down with sub-genre upon sub-genre.
I'm liking The Book Thief because Zusak paints very clear pictures, and through either repetition (which I know drives some people crazy) or weird word choice, has made me remember things from childhood and connected me to the book. And I like the narrative style. I find it clean and simple. But everyone approaches books differently, and things in our past influence how we approach authors. So I get why someone would hate or at least dislike it. But I do not.
I don't know when schools started assigning Holocaust lit, but that coupled with a morbid fascination, especially as a child, means everyone from whatever decade on has read a fair amount of it. Here're mine:
Night, Elie Wiesel Maus, Art Spiegelman Sophie's Choice, William Styron Diary of Anne Frank (ok look, I started this like twice and it was too boring and I never finished it. I am sorry.) The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom
I don't know, Holocaust lit is so sticky because you know going in it's going to be sad, and it can be hard to psych yourself up for something like that. Sophie's Choice was enormously sad, but it's so. well. written. So that kind of makes up for it.
This is too much Holocausting for a Monday. Go watch that clip. It is funny. And here y'go:

The Fire Chronicle has elves and you should read it

Since I basically slobbered all over The Emerald Atlas in my attempt to make out with it, I was pretty damn thrilled when I discovered book two in the Books of Beginning series was coming out. I pleaded with Random House Kids to let me review it, so be aware that I was pretty sure I was gonna want to marry this book PRE-reading. So I might be a little biased. And also be aware that the people at Random House Kids are wonderful and magical and probably smell really nice. 

Middle books always get the shaft. The beginning of the series is so exciting! The end has all the conclusiony bits! The middle--moves the story along kind of!

No one likes Catching Fire the most. No one loves Prince Caspian more than all the other Chronicles of Narnia. And I don't think anyone is super gung ho about The Two Towers. 

That being said, John Stephens continues in this book what I loved about The Emerald Atlas. Namely, it's funny, has magic and the main characters are appealing. THAT IS ALL I WANT. There weren't enough dwarves in Fire Chronicle, but I trust that that will be rectified in the third. Plus there were a LOT of them in the last one. And this one's more about the elves anyway. (by the way, dwarves/elves seem so canon in fantasy books nowadays, I've basically convinced myself they're real, just fyi)

So there are these Books of Beginning, and each one controls a different Thing (like Time, Life, etc) and there are three books and THREE ORPHANS and you know how that plays out. There's a prophecy, etc etc, and each kid is in charge of one of the books. So this one dealt with -- yes, the Fire Chronicle. There are misadventures and straight-up adventures and goblins and sieges and time travel and pretty dresses and wizards and hilarious elf princesses and basically I love this series.

Despite the rather serious themes of the books (the world will be enslaved! nooooo!), Stephens puts in these random moments of humor that I greatly enjoy. Like so:

[T]hey walked through the falling snow eating their hot turnovers, with the boys before them each extolling the virtues of his own pasty while peering into the other's and pronouncing with great regret that his friend had been tricked and his pasty was filled with chopped-up rat butts.

Whatever, that's hilarious.

So yeah, I basically told the publisher I'd commit gross acts of PDA with their book if they sent me an ARC, but if it were bad, I'd tell you guys. I'd tell you. And it is not bad. It is very awesome. One of the things I love about these series for 12-year-olds is the huge emphasis you usually get on family and love and friendship. 

You get a bunch of other stuff too, because otherwise ugh, but it usually boils down to those things, and the decisions the characters make because of them. And that's something I don't usually see with teen lit, which is why I don't usually like teen lit. It's either all about how much a 15-year-old girl loves a guy with dreamy eyes, or....no wait, that might be it. And she fights with her best friend at some point, who's usually jealous, but then they patch it up. And that's supposed to be the friendship part of the book.

This book does not do that. At all. And I love it. This book says "Family is IMPORTANT and you can be scared but brave and you can think it's hard but still make sacrifices and you can be super-awesome by loving people." So read this series. It is great.

Top Almost 50, Because Why Not

People have been all over Book Riot's Top 50 List, and I could go through the same cliched books we've seen on every You Should Read This Before You Die list and say whether I've read them or not, but fuck that, so I made my own list which peters out in the 40s, because that's when I ceased to find books I SUPER-loved on Goodreads.

Basically these are all great.

Auntie Mame, Patrick Dennis
Around the World With Auntie Mame
Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
Maus, Art Spiegelman
Fun Home, Alison Bechdel
Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling
The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
Gone-Away Lake, Elizabeth Enright
Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin
The Lorax, Dr Seuss
How I Became a Famous Novelist, Steve Hely
Good Omens, Pratchett & Gaiman
Roald Dahl. All of Roald Dahl.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Will Grayson, Will Grayson, Green & Levithan
Gaudy Night, D.L. Sayers
The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
The Emerald Atlas, John Stephens
A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle
Bleak House, Dickens
Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Louis Sachar
East of Eden, Steinbeck
Possession, A.S. Byatt
Attachments, Rainbow Rowell
Ready Player One, Ernest Cline
Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
Sophie's Choice, William Styron
Emma, Austen
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters
Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Vanity Fair, WM Thackeray
The Mysterious Benedict Society, Trenton Lee Stewart
The Ersatz Elevator, Lemony Snicket
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Little Women, LM Alcott
The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Paterson
The Pickwick Papers, Dickens
Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt
The Great Brain, J.D. Fitzgerald

Gothness and Disneyfication

Whenever a person claims they have an overly morbid interest in things, it seems to instantly turn into a contest with those around them.

"Oh man, at least you're not as morbid as I am. I dunno; I'm just drawn to that stuff."

I'm not sure why this is a point of pride with people. Maybe it's the desire to seem different, or at the very least slightly odd -- especially since that's been praised by basically every movie ever over the past few decades. "Oh, you like dark, weird shit? You must be special."

When I was eleven years old, a decent number of people in my circle died within a short period of time. Couple that with a terrible English teacher who taught us that Disney endings were fake, and real stories did not end happily, and I was the kid who doodled pictures of stick figures dying in semi-creative ways and whose historical fiction stories for Social Studies all ended with everyone dying. Because that was "real."

I only noticed that this was a problem when our 6th grade teacher asked who wanted to read their story about the Pilgrims crossing to America in front of the class. I raised my hand, but another girl went up before I did. As she read her charming story about a young girl who, I don't know, lost her pet cat in the crossing, but then oh! the cat was hiding in a BARREL and all was well, I started to have a sense of foreboding.

I stood up in front the class. "Pa died today," I started, in somber tones. And thus went the approximately three pages I'd written, narrated by a young Pilgrim girl, all detailing the slow death of members of her family and ending with a postscript saying that the author died a day before reaching America. The class was silent when I ended, and I quietly sat back down at my desk and started rethinking my consistent use of plague and death in my school stories.

At some point in my teens, there was a total reversal of this, and I became very very invested in Disney and wanting to almost solely read hilarious things. I've found that that remains true to a large extent, but parts of my eleven year old self come forward when I do things like march in the Triangle Factory Fire remembrance ceremony or go to a musical about the Eastland disaster.

I'm not sure if I'm a cheerful person with a dash of morbidity, or a secret Goth who decided when she became a Christian that unpleasant things are best left in the Unpleasantness Drawer, and let's only pull that out when it feels necessary. I am, however, sure that I'm not invested enough to figure it out.

Basically, people like dark shit. It makes them feel cool. Everyone's interested in death. The only thing that matters is to what level you want to be a douchebag about it.

Get over yourself, Regina

The Tale of the Kidney Stone

Where have I been? ENDURING THE UNTOLD AGONY OF A KIDNEY STONE.

Let's back it up a sec and think back to Saturday morning. A carefree time, when one could walk down the streets of Hyde Park on the way back from a Gilbert & Sullivan audition, listening to Miley Cyrus's "Party in the USA" and think 'Hm, that's a strange feeling in my abdomen.'

Cut to eight hours later and there's me and my dad (my parents were up for the weekend) in the aisle of a CVS endeavoring to find something that'll stop the shrieking pain I'm in, and I'm crying and my dad doesn't know what to do because what do you do when your 27-year-old daughter cries in the aisle of a CVS?

We go back to the hotel, and I was trying to fight it out, because my parents are older and I didn't want to put them to too much trouble, but it finally got RIDICULOUSLY bad, so I told my dad I had to go to the emergency room. And he took me there at midnight. And he held my hand while the nurse checked my blood pressure and temperature and I cried some more. And basically he's my favorite dad of all the dads.

There was a whole lot of ER bullshit, like having to tell five people in a row the last time you had your period ('cause man, they're REAL interested in that answer, but not so interested in writing it down and passing it on to the next person), and getting a lady exam at 2:30 in the morning and having to drink an inordinate amount of something disgusting called barium for the CT scan before finally getting released at 5:30 a.m. with your pants, a prescription for painkillers and a few errant shreds of dignity.

But there were highlights! Like my nurse Darcy, who was amazing and allowed me to play Huey Lewis and the News's "Back in Time" on my iPhone at 1 a.m. and dance around in my bed when the time change occurred. And the faint camaraderie I felt with the other ER patients I smiled at as I padded down the hall to the communal bathroom with my disheveled hair and hospital gown.

Basically, having a kidney stone is like there's a small person taking a dull knife to your insides and grinding at them, and you're like "OW OW OW THIS PAIN IN MY FRONT" but then your lower back starts hurting too and you say "I AM BEING ATTACKED ON ALL FRONTS IF MY BACK COUNTS AS A FRONT." So you can stretch in any way to try to alleviate it and it just hurts one side or the other. THERE IS NO ESCAPING THE KIDNEY STONE.

Then you lie down on your couch for 48 hours, drinking water, vomiting up food and barely comprehending the succession of early '90s films you've decided to play via Netflix Instant. Then at some point you learn that a kidney stone is usually the size of a grain of sand and you start hating everything. But then you take some more painkillers and everything's dandy.

It's Friday, Friday, etc etc

It's Friday afternoon. This is my blog. I can type ANYTHING I WANT and the internet has to either deal with it or click away to an awesome gif of a sloth hugging something. Well GUESS WHAT INTERNET.


I've realized in years past that I read a lot of lady authors. I don't know if this was a conscious decision on my part, but probs a mixture of conscious and un-. Because lady authors, especially from the 19th century, were rare, and so if their stuff got famous you're kind of like "Oh yeah. They must've been pretty cool maybe probably." So we have the Brontes and George Eliot and George Sand (I HAVE GEORGE SAND FEELINGS) and Edith Wharton and Austen and...other people I'm not thinking of right now. And they're all swell. And then you've got like Dickens and Wilkie and Balzac and Hugo and Scott and Trollope, and I haven't read ANY Scott or Trollope and that's really terrible, but there it is.
I dunno, you want to read about women, and men sometimes suck at writing women (ditto about women writing men -- this is part of why Charlotte Bronte's The Professor sucks so hard). Whereas Edith Wharton's like "Here, let me give you an awesome/amazing portrayal of a lady who is Going Through Something." And I say "Okay!!" Then I go to NYC and visit Washington Square Park and get all Wharton moony-eyed until I see two hipsters sharing some tofu while reading to each other from Baudelaire and then my eyes narrow and I walk off to defiantly eat a hot dog and listen to Britney Spears.
In terms of lit today, I'm suspicious in different ways of female/male writing. Women I sometimes expect to be obnoxiously feminist (feminism is NOT obnoxious, but The Mists of Avalon is) and men I expect to be either overly pretentious or overly into their own emotions. Which is maybe why I like Westerns like The Sisters Brothers. More shooting things, please. Just not kids. Or animals. Just bad people. (one of my little brother's first phrases was "Shoo' ba'guys," apropos of nothing)
In conclusion, WE'RE VOTING ON TUESDAY OMG. Also turn your clocks back this weekend. And listen to Huey Lewis and the News' 'Back in Time' if you're awake Saturday night, BECAUSE IT WILL ACTUALLY BE TRUE.

Shakespeare and Austen are fine. Also, I'm scared of authors.

Halloween was swell. And by 'swell' I mean I sat on my couch and watched Agent Dana Scully kick the ass of a man who was sucking the fat out of women. WITH HIS INCREASED-IN-POTENCY STOMACH ACIDS. Man, that's a good episode. It was also made in like 1995, and warned people of the perils of internet dating. Because that guy you're chatting with could just be suffering from a condition where he has no way of producing fat and needs to absorb yours. THINK ABOUT IT.

It was kind of like watching that early episode of Law & Order: SVU (or as my friend likes to call it, "Pervert Stories") where Detective Benson is talking about the dangers of chat rooms, and you're like "Ahahahahahahaha." Only NOT because then someone probably dies.

You know who're two authors who get a lot of people in a flutter but I'm not really that into? Austen and Shakespeare. Like, ok. They're both great. Reeeeeeal great. And I like some of their stuff a whole lot. But I've never been a 'SHAKESPEARE/AUSTEN OMG let us journey to Bath and/or Stratford-upon-Avon and wear period costumes and HOW WE SHALL DANCE' person. I'm more a "Oooh that was a nice line in that play" person. I went through my thing where I was all over how romantic Persuasion is, but then when you re-read it, it's like "Oh, Captain Wentworth kind of sucks."

The only author I've ever been that insane over is Charlotte Bronte, but again, I was 16 and an idiot. Nowadays I'd probably pass out if I and my Cult of Wilkie group traveled back in time and met Wilkie Collins, but otherwise, eh. OH. Except for J.K. Rowling. But I think she's a universal exception.

J.K. Rowling and everyone

I tend to assume actual authors are socially awkward misanthropes who would make me hate their books if we ever met. I know enough musicians who produce beautiful music but are dicks that I'm totes good staying at arm's length from the people behind the words I love.

I should probably add that of the authors I HAVE met, almost all have been super-awesome and nice. So this is maybe an unwarranted opinion. BUT I CANNOT CHANCE IT. I mean, would you rather be assured that your favorite books wouldn't be ruined, or put yourself in a position where they could be? It is dangerous territory.

Also, totally unrelated, I super-shipped Titania/Oberon in high school. I'm just saying. And I have text-based theories on why Antipholus of Ephesus did NOT in fact cheat on Adriana in Comedy of Errors. THEIRS IS A PERFECT LOVE.