Literature Network Forums - Blogs - Insights from a person of questionable sanity by optimisticnad https://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?14051-Insights-from-a-person-of-questionable-sanity The largest classic literature discussion forum on the Internet. Read Write Teach Share. en Sat, 06 Jun 2026 16:25:31 GMT vBulletin 10 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/images/misc/rss.jpg Literature Network Forums - Blogs - Insights from a person of questionable sanity by optimisticnad https://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?14051-Insights-from-a-person-of-questionable-sanity Solitude is the true destiny... https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?11735-Solitude-is-the-true-destiny Fri, 17 Jun 2011 21:35:13 GMT
'If you have the patience to go on counting, you discover that these pairs gradually become rarer. You encounter increasingly isolated primes, lost in that silent, measured space made only of ciphers, and you develop distressing presentiment that the pairs encountered up until that point were accidental, that solitude is true destiny [...] Mattia thought that he and Alice were like that, twin primes, alone and lost, close but not close enough to really touch each other'
Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano.

I'm glad I read this immediately after Stephanie Myer's leaked 'Midnight Sun: draft' as it restored my faith in both good literature and teenagers. Paolo Giordano, author of the Italian novel The Solitude of Prime Numbers, welcomes you back to the awkward and somewhat painful years of your teenage years but before you panic, please note, there are no vampires - even of the vegetarian kind.

Winner of the Italian Man Booker, this bildungsroman captures the angst and trauma of two teenagers, Mattia and Alice, and follows their development (if you can call it that) into adults. Both Mattia and Alice suffer a traumatic event in their childhood, of which the reverberations are felt even in adulthood. It serves as a small reminder in our much troubled climate that what we do today will inevitably affect what happens tomorrow.

Alice, under the pressure of her pushy father, nearly loses a leg in a ski accident; she is left crippled. Her subsequent obsession - or rather insecurity with her body - develops into an illness that is kept a secret even from the reader: anorexia. In her married life and contrary to the desires of her husband, she is unable to conceive children because of the way she'd damaged her body for years; thus the foundations of an unhappy marriage is set.

I found Mattia’s story of more interest: he is a genius but with a mentally ill twin sister. Under the cruelty of high school and out of embarrassment on his way to a birthday party, he ditches his twin sister in the park – with full intention of going back later to get her. As fate would have it, when he returns hours at night, she is not there. The family never really find out what happened to Michela, his twin. They all assume she drowned, although her body was never found. There is a glimmer of hope towards the end of the novel but like everything else that is left unsaid, so is this. Mattia, like Alice, copes through self-harm.

The idea behind the melancholy title becomes clear approximately half way into the novel : Mattia, who finds it easier to relate to numbers than others, believes that he and Alice are twin prime numbers: 11 and 13; 17 and 19 and so on; they are outcasts from society; they are forever close and connected but never quite able to touch. Beautiful notion right? If you put the book down, detesting the eternal melancholy manifested in the characters, you can at least go away with this poignant concept. As you’re reading the novel you expect them ‘to get it on’, waiting for one of them to declare their feelings explicitly, knowing all the while that they are made for each other. Pause. It dawns on you the full meaning of Mattia’s notion: they are twin prime numbers. It will never be. Solitude is their true destiny.Nevertheless, you deny this, especially when their paths cross again many years later. Surely, surely this time they can share their solitude together, that perhaps they can come together through the acknowledgement of their shared solitude within each other...

comments on: http://litarture.blogspot.com/2011/0...estiny_17.html

Thank you for reading. ]]> optimisticnad https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?11735-Solitude-is-the-true-destiny Update... https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?8293-Update Thu, 28 May 2009 11:06:31 GMT Just nod your head and pretend you care... :lol:

I've been really poorly the past two months, I've fully recovered but I get tired too easily now.

I miss being on here. This is the closest I will get to some kind of emotional declaration about you all. *Cue violins*

I am mentally exhuasted from playin facebook poker. I'm at 2.3 mil now. All in two days work. I wonder if I should try it for real, make my fortune then retire and live happily ever after. :D

I start my masters/pgce in September, it's going to be mad. I was excited, now I'm wondering if I can hack it and if I'm out of touch with academic writing. Sigh.

Moving houses and rooms. Mad. Mad. Mad. I suspect this has also tired me out.

Must finish on a good note....it's nearly lunchtime?

x x ]]> optimisticnad https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?8293-Update Audio Books https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?8021-Audio-Books Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:06:28 GMT http://www.learnoutloud.com/Downloads (lots of free stuff too) If anyone has other links/suggestions please share. http://www.learnoutloud.com/Downloads
(lots of free stuff too)

If anyone has other links/suggestions please share. ]]> optimisticnad https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?8021-Audio-Books Film list https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7965-Film-list Fri, 10 Apr 2009 18:54:35 GMT Ok, so we’ve established I love literature. Did you know I am also a movie addict? Yes I am! This is one addiction I won’t be seeking a cure for. On... Ok, so we’ve established I love literature. Did you know I am also a movie addict? Yes I am! This is one addiction I won’t be seeking a cure for. On average I watch four movies a week, on the internet, at the cinema, filmfour, sky, LOVEfilm, I could go on.

Most of the time I watch good quality stuff, absolute essentials in the film world, like Shakespeare in the literature world. However, sometimes I do succumb to popular tastes – like most recently Confessions of a Shopaholic.

I’ve compiled a list below of films I would like to see, or see again. I intend to blog about them too, I would love to know your opinions. Even if you have none, like me - I’m not a movie critic and film modules at university don’t count, sometimes it is just enough to watch something great; just like when you read something great but lack the full knowledge and expertise to analyse it to bits.

I’d like to see more of Michelangelo Antonioni (dir), I’ve only seen Blown Up which was absolutely fantastic! Incredibly clever. By some strange twist of fate he died on the same day as Ingmar Bergman – famous Swedish director, son of a priest and yet he’s films are renowned for their ‘largely spare and stark aesthetic, an existential framework, and plots driven by a fascination with death and the moral torments of the human soul’. I’ve only seen Winter Light, The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries. Here on youtube you will find BBC Four documentary on the man, here is part one of four (the other parts should be easy to find) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNXw_...om=PL&index=56



- Through a Glass Darkly (Bergman)
- The Silence (Bergman)
- Cries and Whispers (Bergman)
- Sophie’s Choice
- The White Countess (starring Ralph Fiennes, one of my favourite actors)
- The Passenger (Antonioni)
- The Eclipse (Antonioni)
- The Adventure (Antonioni)
- Doctor Zhivago (David Lean’s version, I love this film! It’s beautiful)
- The bridge on the river kwai (david lean, one of those movies everyone talks about but I’ve never seen, doesn’t seem like my cup of tea)
- Blue Velvet (David Lynch, one of those films always thrown into an undergraduate film module!)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (I’ve only ever seen clips)
- The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover (Peter Greenaway)
- The Quarrel (1992, amazon describes it as: A chance reunion of two Holocost survivors - one a Hasidic Jew, the other a skeptical journalist who has turned his back on religion - leads to a searing probe of good and evil and an ultimate test of faith and redemption)
- Something by Andrei Tarkovsky, a Russian director recommended to me by a friend – any suggestions anyone?
- The Crying Game (1992, I’m sure we’ve all seen this but don’t give away the plot to those who haven't!)
- The 400 blows (1959)
- The Chatterley Affair (2006. Amazon: ‘a docudrama based on the obscenity trial held in October 1960 over D.H. Lawrence's book, Lady Chatterley's Lover’)
- Incantato (2003, a shy older man falls in love with a blind woman, friends who have seen this tell me it has the best love scene ever – sensitive, touching, romantic, erotic…must see this!)
- The Lives of Others (2006 Oscar winner for best foreign movie, a close friend lent me the dvd, I got to the end and rewound it immediately and watched it all over again. Compelling!
- Hitchcock! Can’t forget him. I’ve only seen a handful – Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, The Birds, Frenzy and North by Northwest (annoying ending or what!) ]]> optimisticnad https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7965-Film-list A Tragic Climax: the horrifc murder of the popular fiction writer Arnold Baffin https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7952-A-Tragic-Climax-the-horrifc-murder-of-the-popular-fiction-writer-Arnold-Baffin Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:59:10 GMT __A tragic climax: the horrifc murder of the popular fiction writer Arnold Baffin by optimisticnad __ The murder of the prolific popular...
A tragic climax: the horrifc murder of the popular fiction writer Arnold Baffin

by optimisticnad


The murder of the prolific popular writer, Arnold Baffin, has shocked the nation. ‘Who?’ you may ask but those who knew him and liked his work are intense in their devotion. Among his titles are: The precious Labyrint, Tobias and the Fallen Angel, A Skull on Fire and my personal favourite – Mysticism and Literature.

What made this murder of the ‘wonderful’ writer all the more chilling was that it was committed by an intimate friend. Bradley Pearson, a 58 year old retired tax inspector and a failed writer with a fixation with Hamlet, has been arrested for the murder of his friend, his literary rival and protégé. The police found Arnold Baffin dead in his home, his skull slightly indented by a large fire poker. They found Arnold’s blood and hair on the poker, and Mr Baffin’s blood on Bradley Pearson’s shoes which places him at the seen of the crime.

Rachel Baffin, the unhappy and unfulfilled wife of Arnold, in an interview revealed how Bradley Pearson was a rather dull and rude person, envious of Arnold’s success as writer and constantly critiqued Arnold’s work. This short paragraph from a recent review of Mr Baffin’s work, by his friend and murderer (what an oxymoron!) reveals their different attitude to art:

"Arnold Baffin is a fluent writer. He is a prolific writer. It may well be this facility which is his own worst enemy. It is a quality which can be mistaken for imagination. And if the artist himself so mistakes it he is doomed. The writer who is facile needs, to become a writer of any merit, quality about all; and that is courage: the courage to destroy, the courage to wait."

From the outset the police could not understand why anyone would want to hurt Arnold Baffin, a man who was as ‘harmless as a fly’. Mr Baffin’s wife, Rachel Baffin, provided the police with two motives. She claims that though Mr Pearson was a cold and distant man, he was never violent and that he must have been driven to this horrendous act out of not only envy, but vengeance.

Vengeance for what you may ask.

Bradley Pearson, 58, had a love-affair with Julian Baffin, 20, daughter of the victim. It was Mr Baffin who tore the lovers apart, revealing Mr Pearson’s true age; Mr Pearson had told Julian he was ten years younger.

However, it was not the revelation of his true age which killed their relationship but rather the revelation that Mr Pearson had sex with Julian Baffin – who at the time was dressed as Hamlet, for the first time immediately after he heard about the suicide of his mentally distressed sister, Priscilla Saxe; a death for which Mr Pearson is partly responsible because of neglect. What a piece of work is a man! Naturally the naïve and foolish Julian Baffin fled the very next morning after having refused to leave Bradley Pearson the night before when her father had revealed some home truths. To flaming youth let virtue be a wax.

Did Bradley Pearson truly love Julian? His diaries and his letters – which we were granted an exclusive look at, revealed an intense love for Julian, but how much of this was just simply lust misunderstood? After all, his diary revealed that on their first ‘proper’ date at the restaurant in the Post Office Tower that a sort of giddiness filled him, locating itself primarily in the genitals.

Far more important is the question did Bradley Pearson really the commit murder? A deep throat source has suggested that actually Bradley Pearson had undergone a transformation because of his love for Julian; that is he became a better, a more generous man than he was. This deep throat source has also revealed that Mr Pearson has been framed for the murder and is only keeping silent to protect someone he loves. A final shocking revelation from this deep throat is that our beloved Arnold Baffin was not as ‘harmless as a fly’ but rather a violent man, as his wife’s often bruised face and eyes testified.

Could this be true? Could Bradley Pearson actually be innocent? The mind boggles. Is this a grave miscarriage of justice?

To find out, please read ‘The Black Prince’ by Iris Murdoch.

Fooled you. :D

For never was a story of more woe than this of – sorry, wrong play.

:lol: ]]> optimisticnad https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7952-A-Tragic-Climax-the-horrifc-murder-of-the-popular-fiction-writer-Arnold-Baffin The hundred most influential books since the war https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7924-The-hundred-most-influential-books-since-the-war Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:06:36 GMT Times online full article: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article5418361.ece Certain seminal works... Times online full article: http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle5418361.ece

Certain seminal works which were published before the Second World War but which have had a major influence since the war were set aside. That list would certainly include:

Karl Barth: Credo
Marc Bloch: Feudal Society (La Societe feodale)
Martin Buber: I and Thou (Ich und Du)
Norbert Elias: The Civilizing Process (Uber den Prozess der Zivilisation)
Sigmund Freud: Civilization and Its Discontents (Das Unbehagen in der Kultur)
Elie Halevy: The Era of Tyrannies: Essays on socialism and war (L'ire des tyrannies: Etudes sur le socialisme et la guerre)
Martin Heidegger: Being and Time (Sein und Zeit)
Johan Huizinga: The Waning of the Middle Ages (Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen)
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World
Franz Kafka: The Castle (Das Schloss)
John Maynard Keynes: The Economic Consequences of the Peace
John Maynard Keynes: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
Lewis Namier: The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III
Jose Ortega y Gasset: The Revolt of the Masses (La Rebelion de las masas)
Karl Popper: The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Logik der Forschung)
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Tractatus logico-philosophicus (Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung)

The final list was:

BOOKS OF THE 1940s

1. Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex (Le Deuxieme Sexe)
2. Marc Bloch: The Historian's Craft (Apologie pour l'historie, ou, Metier d' historien)
3. Fernand Braudel: The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (La Mediterranee et le monde mediterraneen a l'epoque de Philippe II)
4. James Burnham: The Managerial Revolution
5. Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus (Le Mythe de Sisyphe)
6. Albert Camus: The Outsider (L'Etranger)
7. R. G. Collingwood: The Idea of History
8. Erich Fromm: The Fear of Freedom (Die Furcht vor der Freiheit)
9. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment (Dialektik der Aufklaerung)
10. Karl Jaspers: The Perennial Scope of Philosophy (Der philosophische Glaube)
11. Arthur Koestler: Darkness at Noon
12. Andre Malraux: Man's Fate (La Condition humaine)
13. Franz Neumann: Behemoth: The structure and practice of National Socialism
14. George Orwell: Animal Farm
15. George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-four
16. Karl Polanyi: The Great Transformation
17. Karl Popper: The Open Society and Its Enemies
18. Paul Samuelson: Economics: An introductory analysis
19. Jean-Paul Sartre: Existentialism and Humanism (L'Existentialisme est un humanisme)
20. Joseph Schumpeter: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
21. Martin Wright: Power Politics

BOOKS OF THE 1950s

22. Hannah Arendt: The Origins of Totalitarianism
23. Raymond Aron: The Opium of the Intellectuals (L'Opium des intellectuels)
24. Kenneth Arrow: Social Choice and Individual Values
25. Roland Barthes: Mythologies
26. Winston Churchill: The Second World War
27. Norman Cohn: The Pursuit of the Millennium
28. Milovan Djilas: The New Class: An analysis of the Communist system
29. Mircea Eliade: Images and Symbols (Images et symboles)
30. Erik Erikson: Young Man Luther: A study in psychoanalysis and history
31. Lucien Febvre: The Struggle for History (Combat pour l'histoire)
32. John Kenneth Galbraith: The Affluent Society
33. Erving Goffman: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
34. Arthur Koestler and Richard Crossman (eds): The God That Failed: Six studies in Communism
35. Primo Levi: If This Is a Man (Se questo un uomo)
36. Claude Levi-Strauss: A World on the Wane (Tristes tropiques)
37. Czeslaw Milosz: The Captive Mind (Zniewolony umysl)
38. Boris Pasternak: Doctor Zhivago
39. David Riesman: The Lonely Crowd
40. Herbert Simon: Models of Man, Social and Rational
41. C. P. Snow: The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution
42. Leo Strauss: Natural Right and History
43. J. L. Talmon: The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy
44. A. J. P. Taylor: The Struggle for Mastery in Europe
45. Arnold Toynbee: A Study of History
46. Karl Wittfogel: Oriental Despotism: A comparative study of total power
47. Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations (Philosophische Untersuchungen)

BOOKS OF THE 1960s

48. Hannah Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil
49. Daniel Bell: The End of Ideology
50. Isaiah Berlin: Four Essays on Liberty
51. Albert Camus: Notebooks 19351951 (Carnets)
52. Elias Canetti: Crowds and Power (Masse und Macht)
53. Robert Dahl: Who Governs?: Democracy and power in an American city
54. Mary Douglas: Purity and Danger
55. Erik Erikson: Gandhi's Truth: On the origins of militant nonviolence
56. Michel Foucault: Madness and civilization: A history of insanity in the Age of Reason (Histoire de la folie a l'age classique)
57. Milton Friedman: Capitalism and Freedom
58. Alexander Gerschenkron: Economic Backwardness in Historial Perspective
59. Antonio Gramsci: Prison Notebooks (Quaderni del carcere)
60. H. L. A. Hart: The Concept of Law
61. Friedrich von Hayek: The Constitution of Liberty (Die Verfassung der Freiheit)
62. Jane Jacobs: The Death and Life of Great American Cities
63. Carl Gustav Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Erinnerungen, Traeume, Gedanken)
64. Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
65. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie: The Peasants of Languedoc (Les Paysans de Languedoc)
66. Claude Levi-Strauss: The Savage Mind (Le Pensee sauvage)
67. Konrad Lorenz: On Aggression (Das sogenannte Boese)
68. Thomas Schelling: The Strategy of Conflict
69. Fritz Stern: The Politics of Cultural Despair
70. E. P. Thompson: The Making of the English Working Class

BOOKS OF THE 1970s

71. Daniel Bell: The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
72. Isaiah Berlin: Russian Thinkers
73. Ronald Dworkin: Taking Rights Seriously
74. Clifford Geertz: The Interpretation of Cultures
75. Albert Hirschman: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty
76. Leszek Kolakowski: Main Currents of Marxism (Glowne nurty marksizmu)
77. Hans Kueng: On Being a Christian (Christ Sein)
78. Robert Nozick: Anarchy, State and Utopia
79. John Rawls: A Theory of Justice
80. Gershom Scholem: The Messianic Idea in Judaism, and other essays on Jewish spirituality
81. Ernst Friedrich Schumacher: Small Is Beautiful
82. Tibor Scitovsky: The Joyless Economy
83. Quentin Skinner: The Foundations of Modern Political Thought
84. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: The Gulag Archipelago
85. Keith Thomas: Religion and the Decline of Magic

BOOKS OF THE 1980s and beyond

86. Raymond Aron: Memoirs (Memoires)
87. Peter Berger: The Capitalist Revolution: Fifty propositions about prosperity, equality and liberty
88. Norberto Bobbio: The Future of Democracy (Il futuro della democrazia)
89. Karl Dietrich Bracher: The Totalitarian Experience (Die totalitaere Erfahrung)
90. John Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman (eds): The New Palgrave: The world of economics
91. Ernest Gellner: Nations and Nationalism
92. Vaclav Havel: Living in Truth
93. Stephen Hawking: A Brief History of Time
94. Paul Kennedy: The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
95. Milan Kundera: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
96. Primo Levi: The Drowned and the Saved (I sommersi e i salvati)
97. Roger Penrose: The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning computers, minds, and the laws of physics
98. Richard Rorty: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
99. Amartya Sen: Resources, Values and Development
100. Michael Walzer: Spheres of Justice ]]> optimisticnad https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7924-The-hundred-most-influential-books-since-the-war First draft https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7884-First-draft Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:04:12 GMT Any feedback would be great. It's in free verse but I'm still not sure about line composition and stanzas. Are all sonnets in metre? If so the in the line 'sonnets in metre' - 'in metre' would be reduntant.

Maybe I don't need the last line of the poem? Is it better with or without?


You don't know what it's like
wasting so so many years of your life

it's like chasing dandelions
in a gale
almost, almost in your grasp

It's never going to happen
- but they made it to the moon.
It's never going to happen
- but they've painted Black the white house.

It's like reading sonnets in metre
to the deaf

i eat, and i live, and i breathe, and
time nods my way like an acquaintance
across the street as they rush by.
Please
believe me when i say
i'm fine

Except when I think of you, alive, somewhere
lips to lips in a tender embrace,
or lying in your lover's arms
skin to skin in a sleepy haze.
You close your eyes on the day to dream
of a better tomorrow.

Dream me an existence in your tomorrow
then at least we will have every night
and when you close your eyes for the last time
- won't we have all eternity?

And I will dream the same, we'll have two
eternities together.

oh,

but,

an eternity of eternities still won't compensate this lifetime apart
in a world where - you fool,
open your eyes - dreams never come true
and fade away quicker than a dandelion on a windy summer's day

But how to beautiful to behold! ]]> optimisticnad https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7884-First-draft A trip down memory lane https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7763-A-trip-down-memory-lane Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:01:27 GMT I spent most of my day thinking did I really enter the short story competition here a year or so ago? I couldn't remember and yet I had a vague feeling of emailing my short story.

A quick search revealed - YES! I did. I lost - a respectable loss, coming second with 6 votes. http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=25346

I'm not everyone's cup of tea, maybe I'm kidding myself that I have talent - but thank you anyway to all those who voted! :thumbs_up

I'm looking forward to the April short stories, it's rather selfish not bothering to read the stories and voting isn't it? So I'm going to stick in ...who knows, might even enter this year if the writer's block passes... :D

Good luck to all! :thumbs_up ]]> optimisticnad https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7763-A-trip-down-memory-lane Sonnet (of sort) https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7684-Sonnet-(of-sort) Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:42:47 GMT Here is another attempt at writing a poem: Tangled bed sheets soiled with regretted passion Last night was the last time, she said, he said... Here is another attempt at writing a poem:

Tangled bed sheets soiled with regretted passion
Last night was the last time, she said, he said only
you I want. Heaped on the floor, face ashen,
with yearning, fingers clinging to his shirt, fondly.
Late sun’s rays and morning’s noise wakes her from sleep,
Sepia dreams of innocent bisque doll
gently fades away; now severed and cheap.
How lost – years lost! Misplaced love, it was all:
white lies, motel bills, false kisses,
unfulfilled promises, repressed toxic guilt,
such is the life of shelved mistresses
who are soon forgotten, and like flowers, wilt.
What thick veil covers the truth and how true
love is fiddled away by those we falsely woo. ]]> optimisticnad https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7684-Sonnet-(of-sort) Confessions of a _____________ https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7677-Confessions-of-a-_____________ Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:30:31 GMT Not sure how to fill in the blank. Confessions of a 'cynic'? A 'nobody'? Or a 'shopaholic' - seeing as that's what I'll be talking about. So if you're strapped for time and don't particularly want to waste five minutes of your life reading about the new movie 'Confessions of a Shopaholic' then look away. NOW. Don't say I didn't warn you...

otherwise, buckle up.

Let's start with motive. Why would anyone waste about an hour and half of their life watching this trash? This leads to a few confessions of my own.

First, I'm a secret movie-junkie.

I watch more or less anything [good]. Film Noir and thrillers are my favourite but if there's a handsome guy about I'll watch it.

Second, I'm a secret chick-flick movie junkie. :eek:

I know!

And third - well, surely this saint-like man does not need an introduction? You might have seen him in adaptations of Dickens/period novels, often as the eponymous hero (David Copperfield/Daniel Deronda) or more recently in 'The Jane Austen book club'. A graduate in English Language and Literature from Oxford - come on, you're already half in love with him now aren't you? - blessed with gorgeous curls and blue eyes and - alas - engaged to our 'Juliet' (Claire Danes)

Who is this man who has sent Opti in a speechless paroxysm of passion?





Why it's Hugh (Who?) Dancy! :D

Isn't he just adorable?

I will watch anything with Hugh Dancy in it - no matter how 'bad' it is. Although...I'm sorry Hugh, but you do spend an awful amount of time playing a two dimensional character with no or little ...ooomph.

Now that's true love isn't it? Seeing the imperfections but still loving them? :lol:

Rebecca Bloomwood, played by the tiny Isla (i-la) Fisher, is a designer label shopaholic with spiraling out of control debt. Chased by the debt-collector, Derek Smeath, who is waved off with awful excuses, she manages to land a job as a journalist at a savings magazine. Irony? Woah - stop right there, like a movie such as this would be familiar with the term 'irony'.

She becomes intimately involved with her boss Hugh Dancy but the course of true love never did run smooth. Derek Smeath catches up with her on national tv, Hugh Dancy feels betrayed and jogs off in a humph, credits cards declined - 'really declined' and her best friend gives her the two fingers.

But, being an awful chick-flick, everything works out after a hard to believe auction, a wedding and lots and lots and lots of pennies for Derek Smeath.

There is also what I felt to be a little bit of propaganda here disguised as a chick-flick. Rebecca Bloomwood tackles her shopaholicism (mouthful) and debt - there is hope for all; at one point her father tells her: 'Your mother and I think that if the American economy can be billions in debt and still survive, so can you'. Yeah, but she's armed with Prada and Gucci. What does the American economy have?

'When I shop, the world gets better' remarks Rebecca Bloomwood. Honey, you should have learnt to read. . . ]]> optimisticnad https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7677-Confessions-of-a-_____________ Poem https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7659-Poem Sat, 07 Mar 2009 15:35:17 GMT Girls should always be weary
of men who talk so airy
for it means by talking such sweet love
they've had much practice laying above.


(I've decided to start writing poetry! :lol: Don't know where this came from, was just writing on jonjit's wall that I mistrust men who are so poetic (like himself) ....)

p.s should that be 'lying' or 'laying'? ]]> optimisticnad https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7659-Poem Google Earth https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7589-Google-Earth Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:59:33 GMT GOOGLE EARTH IS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (when I can navigate it) :lol: :thumbs_up GOOGLE EARTH IS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (when I can navigate it) :lol:

:thumbs_up ]]> optimisticnad https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7589-Google-Earth Famous Frontal Development ... https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7569-Famous-Frontal-Development Wed, 25 Feb 2009 22:05:57 GMT

The doorbell rings.

A semi –drunk (who could tell the difference?) Phil Mitchell slouches off the couch and looks outside through the window. Like a bad horror movie no one is outside. He assumes it is kids playing tricks.

The doorbell rings again.

Frustrated, he opens the door and shouts ‘I know who you are!’ in a drunken stupor. He wobbles down two steps, ‘I know who you are the next time I see ya, I’m gonna turn ya backside, do ya hear me?’ Half of Walford probably did mate.

He turns his pack and wobbles up the steps and …imitating some sort of 70s spy movie, the head of a gun peaks out of some leaves.

The gun is fired by someone hiding,

Cut to Phil Mitchell leaning against the wall. He touches his chest, his face twists in agony, he rolls down the steps and falls on his face. He convulses a little, raises his head and with blurry eyes looks about him – does he see the killer run off? Is he dead? The sound of a train gets louder before it mingles with the iconic theme tune which to me has always sounded like somebody using the bald head of the Mithchell brothers as drums.

An epic moment in Eastenders? Probably the last decent storyline in it.

Who shot Phil Mitchell? Come on, out with it, which bugger messed it up and didn’t finish the job?

What I can tell you is that it wasn’t Becky Sharp.

WHO?

Because Becky Sharp isn’t the kind of girl who would mess up a job like that, she’d do it properly, she’d blow him to pieces of chunky raw meat in blood gravy and feed it to her spaniel. Atta girl!


Vanity Fair, an epic triple-decker bus length , contains the essential ingredients for a good soap; from morally corrupt characters to ridiculous self-important oafs to murders and plenty of sex. Becky Sharp, regardless of whether Thackeray intended his audience to like her, is perhaps the most memorable character in any medium of fiction – on paper, on screen (as long as she is not played by the cute Witherspoon) and stage. Not provocatively clad in leather, latex and boots but in Victorian style dress, Becky Sharp possess the brains, ambition and ruthlessness that few women are blessed – or plagued, with. And of course add to that combination - her infamous looks – ‘Green eyes, fair skin, pretty figure, famous frontal development’ (chapter 19). Famous frontal development? With all due respect to her - why did Witherspoon play her I wonder.

It is ‘a novel without a hero’ because almost every character has a ridiculous fault within their nature. Even the insipid and passive but sweet and virtuous Amelia Sedley, who still loves and grieves over her dead and worthless husband. She, however unconsciously, selfishly exploits William Dobbin, the only gentleman in the novel and who has been passionately in love with Amelia Sedley since the moment he sets eyes on her. But he is indeed a true gentleman and never acts on his feelings because Amelia is in love and engaged – and then married through his help, to his close friend George Osborne. But I find that Dobbin has faults too, he is a bad judge of character - he fails to see George Osborne for what he truly is; and then he wastes his affections on Amelia and by the end of the novel realises that he has wasted his entire life pursuing someone who is not worthy. And if I'm completely honest his perpetual self-sacrifical attitude annoyed the hell out of me sometimes. Maybe it's the 'modern' woman in me but he should have been a bit more...'manly'. That's it. He should have declared his feelings much sooner and just generally be a bit more dominant and forceful. Women like that sort of that thing - just read any self-help book.

Amelia is juxtaposed against Becky Sharp throughout the novel, even from the opening chapters. In the first chapter both girls leave Miss Pinkerton’s school for ladies with a very different future ahead of them. Amelia was loved by all and treated as an equal whereas Becky was isolated and disliked because of her social status – the orphaned daughter of an opera singer and a poor artist. The difference? Money of course. Becky herself thinks half way through the novel that with five thousands pounds a year she could be - could be - could be - a good woman.

Rebecca Sharp, the indomitable quintessential anti-heroine, sacrifices all in her path, from husband to friend to son, for her ambition, for money and a place in society. Without a mother to secure her future (as so many mothers found their daughters a rich husband – who must be in want of a wife), Becky Sharp must secure her own future. She almost snares Joseph Sedley, brother of Amelia, early in the novel. Failing that she begins to work a governess to Sir Pitt Crawley’s daughters. His sister, Miss Crawley, is my second favourite character, after Becky, in the novel and one of the few people in Vanity Fair who see through her act. Thackeray out-classes even Dickens in his caricatures. Miss Crawley is a rich old hypochondriac, morally rebellious and has an irrational fear of death – not surprisingly when all her relations are waiting for the moment she keels over so they can have her money. Becky acts as a nurse to her and during that time the old woman becomes attached to her charms and wit and her constant mocking of others. It is during her contact with the Crawleys she meets her future husband – Rawdon Crawley, the son of Pitt Crawley; the heir and favourite of Miss Crawley. He falls in love with Becky Sharp, however, on her part she feels nothing but secretly marries him because his aunt will leave him all her fortune.

However, Miss Crawley is somewhat of a hypocrite. She praises unequal marriages but becomes angry when her nephew makes an unequal match with Becky Sharp. Although she dotes on Becky Sharp and think she is good enough for her brother Sir Pitt Crawley (after Lady Crawley dies), she thinks Becky Sharp is not worthy of her nephew, of her favourite. She becomes outraged when she hears of their clandestine marriage,; that her favourtie should marry a penniless governess and right under her nose too!

Her quasi-rise and success, and her subsequent fall and demise mark Rebecca Sharp as a truly remarkable character. She redeems herself a little at the end of the novel in her only selfless act - towards her old friend Amelia by exposing George for what he truly was. Amelia, under Becky's revelation about her quondam lover, can now let go of the past and stop hero-worshipping her husband; and is able to grasp with both hands her last chance of happiness. Even at the end of the novel the stark differences between the two girls stands. For example, Amelia is younger, and as Gilbert K. Chesterton remarked in 1909:

she has not lost her power of happiness; her stalk is not broken [...] But the energy of Becky is the energy of a dead woman; it is like the rhythmic kicking of some bisected insect [...] The life of the innocent, even the stupidly innocent, is within; [...] Thackeray’s thought is really suggestive; that perhaps even softness is a sort of superiority; it is better to be open to all emotions as they come than to reach the hell of Rebecca; the hell of having all outward forces open, but all receptive organs closed (Bartleby).

Thackeray weaves several plots together like a master craftsman with one common purpose – to expose human folly. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, despite its length, never gets dull and is a must read, not just for the cheap thrills that a soap can provide you but - far more importantly - for the lessons we can deduce from the text. He removes the thin fragile shroud characters use to cover their true motives and nature to expose a selfish and morally corrupt set of people who fail in their aims in the end; who under false labours pursue what they think they want the most - what they THINK they want the most - after all – ‘Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? Or, having it, is satisfied?’ ]]> optimisticnad https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7569-Famous-Frontal-Development Look what fun you can have at a book club! https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7323-Look-what-fun-you-can-have-at-a-book-club! Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:42:23 GMT I want to join a book club! I've just read Joreads' blog post on joining a book club and I am very jealous. There is one at my local waterstones but I can't attend their meetings because it clashes with my schedule. I would like to set one up but who would come?

Has anyone ever watched The Vicar of Dibley (comedy series on BBC 1) - the episode im talking about was a one off christmas special starring the gorgeous Richard Armitage, I'll find it on youtube actually- one moment... they set up a book club - if you know what the characters are like it's hillarious, but even if you don't it's still great, they talk about zadie smith's on beauty - well, sorta.... here is the link: look what fun you can have at a book club...Enjoy!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=tvv4VA...eature=related

(from 00.57 onwards to 4.29) ]]> optimisticnad https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7323-Look-what-fun-you-can-have-at-a-book-club! Irony???? https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7282-Irony Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:58:26 GMT My job involves helping university level students with their I.T and related work/issues. It's a good experience for a teacher wanna-be.

However today is hand in day for dissertations.

Which means...


:brickwall:brickwall:brickwall:brickwall:brickwall

I am going to kill the next person who even makes eye contact with me, no matter how pathetic and in need of help they look.

LIFE!!! You finish uni, feel elated that student deadlines will never ever stress you out only to end up in a job where student deadlines re your top priority!!! See, there is a God! This takes serious planning! :D

(uh oh, is the above blasphemous?) ]]> optimisticnad https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7282-Irony