Just Readin'

Once again, I'm super behind on the popular books band wagon. For example, I just read Outlander by Diana Gabaldon two months ago (which, I remember, was super popular approximately six years ago). In that vein, I just finished reading Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. Yes, I'm aware that it became super popular circa 2004 and that the movie version is a cult classic. So, on average, it takes nine years for me to get around to reading a popular book. Anyway, I read  Howl's Moving Castle  and I absolutely loved it. I found it to be a charming and very sweet novel. In contrast to typical high fantasy novels, I found it to be a straight forward, enjoyable story. The book begins with  "In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three."   I was drawn into the novel immediately; the story was intriguing and funny and a joy to read. Jones mast...

Paul Gauguin is one of my favorite painters. (Actually, as I write this, there is a print of his painting  Mahana No Atua hanging next to me on my bedroom wall.) So, during my winter break, I decided to read his Tahitian journal, Noa Noa . Noa Noa is a travelogue written by Gauguin, first published in 1901. Although, Gauguin billed the book as his genuine experiences, it seems pretty clear to me and other critics that it's mostly fictional or exaggerated. That being said, I found the book to be very interesting. From a narrative perspective, Noa Noa is a bit dull. Gauguin's writing style has a tendency to be wordy and pedantic. However, from an ideological perspective it's quite interesting. To my mind, Gauguin is an excellent example of Romanticism and Romantic thought. If you don't know, Romanticism was an artistic and ideological movement that reacted against the Enlightenment. Romantics believed that the world could not be understood purely though the le...

So, I think Neil Gaiman is a genius -- and also a deeply disturbed individual -- and here's why. I just finished reading one of Neil Gaiman's newest books The Sleeper and the Spindle . I make it my business to pay attention to everything Neil Gaiman writes, however, if you haven't heard of this book, suffice it to say that it is a really, really twisted version of the Sleeping Beauty story. The premise of the story is that, about seventy years ago, a princess was cursed by a witch, causing her to sleep forever. The sleeping curse, which had previously been contained to the princess' castle, suddenly begins to spread throughout the world, causing many thousands of people to fall asleep and not to wake. A young queen -- who remains nameless -- sets out to wake the princess and lift the curse. I won't go into the details because I don't want to spoil the story, however, the conclusion of the story is basically the opposite of the Sleeping Beauty story in every wa...

A little while ago, I saw a documentary about Shakespeare's mother , which talked about all of the social and political changes that occurred in the lifetime of Shakespeare and his mother. Although I know quite a bit about the history of England, it never really occurred to me that Shakespeare lived through the dynastic shift between the Tudors and the Stuarts and was born shortly after Elizabeth I established Protestantism as the official religion of England. Although England's official religion would remain constant for the rest of Shakespeare's life, in the lifetime of his mother England's religion changed three times. These important shifts would certainly form an important backdrop in Shakespeare's life, particularly in a world in which religion determined how everyone saw the world and their place in it. In fact, there is some speculation that Shakespeare and his family remained Catholic even after the Protestant Reformation, further muddying the waters. Wha...

As some of you know, I'm a big fan of the Game of Thrones series (AKA The A Song of Ice and Fire Series ), and, like many fans, I've been waiting a long time for the sixth book in the series -- The  Winds of Winter -- to come out. The last book in the series was published in 2011, so, as you can imagine, fans are getting a little antsy. However, all you Game of Thrones fans out there can get your Westeros fix with  A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms , which was released earlier this year. George R.R. Martin's latest novel is a compilation of the Tales of Dunk and Egg, a set of three novellas that were written between 1998 and 2010. As a bit of background, Knight takes place about one hundred years before the events in  A Game of Thrones  and follows the story of Dunk, "Ser Duncan the Tall," and Egg, Aegon Targaryen. Most fans consider it to be a sort of prequel, for lack of a better word -- although, it's really just a story set in the same universe. Howeve...

Not gonna lie, I'm not a big fan of Henry IV. Everyone's always trying to tell me "but blah blah blah Falstaff", "but blah blah blah power politics" and I'm like "eh, cool story bro". But one scene from this play has always fascinated me: Act II, Scene III. This scene is unique in the play, not only is it the only scene to include a woman (at least a woman who actually has lines) but because it gives us a unique glimpse into domestic life and issues of gender. That one speaking female character is Lady Percy, also known as Kate (although her real life counterpart's name was Elizabeth). Kate is a woman in a man's world. As her husband, Henry Percy, Hotspur, famously says: ...this is no world / To play with mammets [dolls] and to tilt with lips: / We must have bloody noses and crack'd crowns... -William Shakespeare But what is interesting about Kate is the way she attempts to resist this world centered on patriarchy. She is...