Hm. I fear the language of this blog may stray into some era of lost civil propriety so bear with me if you please - it's that odd habit of mine to absorb whatever language of whatever novel I have recently read and this weekend has been dedicated solely to getting through Wilkie Collins' 1868 epistolary novel The Moonstone. Generally considered the first detective novel and precursor's to Sherlock Holmes etc, it sadly does not resemble the Holmes mysteries in length and is instead a 500 page tome that I have read online. Time out to say how much I hate reading things online because a) my eyes!, b) awkward laptop positioning, and c) I read slower - so it really has taken me all freaking weekend to get through this book (I don't know if this has something to do with the screen or whether I keep getting distracted by googling random things and so on.) What's worse is I knew exactly who did it (and suspected how) by page 100. Collins was a close associate of Charles Dickens and apparently published his works in serial in Dickens' magazine - which doesn't surprise me in the least. You all know how I feel about Dickens. Not that The Moonstone isn't good, I can appreciate its place and I did actually finish it, but as with all novels of that era, I just find them so dull - honestly why must they take so long to say what they have to say? Academically, I'll put up with it because it's important to see the development of things and canon and blah blah blah, personally I find it inaccessible.
Because of that wonderful undertaking, I have gotten nothing else done this weekend. I've just finished my reading for tomorrow's class, Popular Fiction (which is also the class I read The Moonstone for) and the return to uni seems to be the perfect time for me to give up sleeping. So I've pretty much resigned myself to at least seven weeks of only 5 hours sleep max a night. Yay *sigh* Next on my reading list for Popular Fiction is Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely. I also have Dune after that. Luckily the other ones on the reading list I've already read. I haven't been able to find any readings for the dread class of the semester Theory & Writing, but whatever it is I'm sure it'll be absolutely boring and I will probably stop doing any readings for that class four weeks in. As always, I am a dedicated student. I have another class this semester, Writing Seminar, but I don't think I have readings for that *strokes beard*
If you can make sense of the nonsense I just typed, well done! If not, it pretty much comes down to me having class on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. I will whine about this again in due course, as always.
This week is actually shaping up to be quite epic. The return to uni aside, there's Florence + The Machine on Friday night, followed by the Neil Gaiman reading at the Opera House on Saturday and a panel discussion on Sunday. The last two are part of the 'Graphic' festival the Opera House are hosting all through August - I'll also be attending a Joss Whedon talk as part of it at the end of the month.
Things I still need to do, then, include:
> Clean up the Torchwood essay from the conference and email it off
> Finish a short story and submit it to a comp by the end of the month
> Sort something out with MobyMag
> Uni readings
> Costume shopping
> Finalise things for Melbourne
Things I did last weekend:
> Saw Inception. Loved it with an unholy passion. It's just so fantastic to see a wholly original idea and execution in this quagmire of adaptations and mediocre sequels. And may I just take a moment to welcome all the new members to the suit fetish club. I've been here a while, and I think you'll enjoy it. (As I have said many, many times before, if men wore waistcoats all the time, the world would be a better place.)
> Saw Knight & Day. Look, there's no better Tom Cruise than Spy Tom Cruise. Except perhaps Top Gun Tom Cruise, but stop living in the past.
> Winterland festival with M. Not so much festival as five stalls and a very small ice-rink. Still had a great time though, and the fudge I bought was absolutely divine.
The only way I get through life these days is with bullet points. As for the necessary work mention - things are crazy busy as always during deadline times, there was one on Friday and I have one a week for the next two weeks.
Ooooh yeah, watching Talkin Bout Your Generation tonight (for the internationals, its panel show where three generation teams 'compete' against each other) and one of the games was spin-offs, where they'd show a pic of a spin-off show and they had to say what the parent show was. The minute the game was explained, I simply said 'Torchwood.' Mum was watching with me and apparently she is used to my randomly saying 'Torchwood' at everything, so it was ignored. Imagine both our surprise when an image of Jack and Ianto then did actually appear (from COE, if anyone cares, on their way to executing the worst plan ever). The Baby Boomers team got it right and we were treated to a nice pic of David Tennant. Which is always a good evening I know. What I found highly ironic in my 'finding-fault-and-reading-too-much-into-everything-is-the-only-way-I-can-deal-with-COE' way was that in choosing an image to represent Torchwood, they had chosen one of Jack and Ianto. Not Team!Torchwood, not even with Gwen. Anyway, there'd already been a Doctor Who joke earlier in the program so I was feeling quite pleased with myself. Don't ask me why Who references make me feel pleased, they just do - also keep in mind that here on the other side of the world, it's not something that generally comes up in every day discussion or that everyone knows about - shameful as that is. You live empty lives people!
Clearly I have gone mad with tiredness, so I'd better leave it at that. Up in 5 hours and out till 10pm. It's the glamorous life.
Music: Mack the Knife - Frank Sinatra
Mood: Hyper
Dune is amazing!
ReplyDeleteSo I've heard. And it's not from the 19th century which makes a very nice change lol
ReplyDelete