Artist and Aesthete

At long last, someone has put time management instruction in terms I can bear contemplating: the secret is to become a Jedi and rescue a princess.

Secondly, if you're at all into gardening, I recommend reading my friend Jana's post "The Secret Garden," wherein she describes this season (in western Washington, at least) briefly and beautifully. And, by referencing Mary Lennox, also in familiar and beloved terms.

Deposition of Christ, Fra Angelico

Thirdly, today is the memorial of Blessed Fra Angelico, patron of artists. And on that note, Masha recently put up a discussion post on the artist's relationship to physical beauty. I spent some time this morning trying to create a full-length essay in response, but I have a couple of princesses to rescue, and anyway it turns out I wasn't saying much. Simple must the answer be, then. From Masha:

Artists tend to obsess over physical beauty. They live in one extreme or the other, setting up physical perfection as a tiny god or rejecting it utterly and filling their lives with ‘meaningful ugliness’ - pushing out the beauty in search of relevance. I lean toward the former.... I do have to work hard to avoid making physical beauty an idol - reminding myself that so many of the Saints were not beautiful people in the physical sense, and some were unpleasant people to be around as well.

The saints seem to preach moderation in all enjoyments—which means that when it comes to beauty, I feel like a decadent, if (hopefully) an innocent one. I don't often hesitate to linger five minutes longer than I should at the piano, feeling my way through a Chopin prelude—or to stand in a parking lot with cold groceries in a warm car, just watching the sunset—or to re-read the splendid last page of a good book again and again and again. I'd stare at people in public without hesitation, making a memory of her eyes or his smile or her juxtaposition of scarlet lipstick and black scarf or his curly-topped toddler features, if it wasn't rude. Despite my chronic scrupulosity, the aesthetic pleasures are one arena in which I have utter, blissful, Edenic freedom.

It is true that under certain circumstances I have to guard against the capital sins, of which vanity at my own fair image in the mirror on a good hair day is far from being the least of the temptations, height and flat chest and dysfunctional sense of style notwithstanding. But overall, it seems to me that moderating my admiration for the beauty of the earth would not mean changing how much of it I took in, but the way I look at it—and not for the better.

Because there's beauty everywhere. I told myself I would learn to love the rain, and in stating so, found the work half done. There's beauty in the soft gray of clouds and the ambiance of wet twilight, in green sprouts pushing up through mud in the garden and in wet hair sticking to flushed faces. There's beauty everywhere in people, too. As Masha says, it's not only in the "young and whole" but "in weathered skin, gnarled hands, and the nobility that well-worn age brings to the body. There is beauty in Rubenesque women and in the darkness long sorrow leaves on the face." I have been thinking so much of this lately, feeling as if I see beauty in every face that I open my eyes long enough to notice.

Lent, in its fasting and prayer and sacrificial giving, is a living recollection of Christ's forty days in the desert—but I've always found beauty in the desert, too. Phoenix and Albuquerque are breathtaking places, all reds and browns and oranges and blues, all particularly striking to a waterlogged Pacific Northwester who drowns every day in grays and greens.

Masha is unlikely to disagree with this, unless she's read something I haven't—but I've yet to read saint or Scripture writer who suggested to me that I ought to take less delight in the arrangements of bare branches around the altar, the dark Phrygian melody of the Pange Lingua, or the picturesque simplicity of broth and bread. As for Easter lilies and Easter tables and full choir with organ and brass quartet on the grand Alleluias, they can wait. Their bright and magnificent loveliness will be all the more striking for the time of being content with humbler beauties.

Accio Moxie and other stories

This is my thousand-and-first published post on this blog. And here we are, just a few days shy of A Light Inside's seventh birthday.

Happy milestones, little blog. I love you dearly.

* * *

* * *

This week, I've had—as I recall—my first cold of the season. I got off easy: my primary symptoms were a few days of inability to drag myself off the couch, a headache whenever I stood up, a scratchy throat whenever I started talking, and acute perfectionism mingled with a beastly lack of focus whenever I tried to write. Everyone else around here talks about having three straight weeks of significant malaise.

(The [theoretical] secret: elderberries. Yeah, I know, your mother was a hamster, etc. I'm not kidding. Elderberry brandy taken by the teaspoon every two hours the moment you begin to imagine you might be getting sick... let's just say it's well worth the try.)

My own biggest problem with getting sick was missing Ash Wednesday Mass. I love Ash Wednesday Mass. It was hard to make Lent feel like it had officially begun without the black cross-smear on my forehead, especially since I was sick enough to not be hungry, which felt like cheating.

Also, I missed my dog, who died about six and a half years ago. She used to cuddle down in the crook of my arm when I was sick. Maia, not so much.

Me: "Maia, please stop walking up and down me. I feel lousy enough."
Maia: "I'm just looking for someplace to sleep."
Me: "Stop looking. One trip back and forth should be sufficient."
Maia: "Your knees aren't pulled up into a respectable sleeping nook."
Me: "You know, my dog used to cuddle in the crook of my arm. For hours."
Maia: "Did you have a point with that statement?"
Me, sighing: "I guess not. Just pick somewhere and lie down."

* * *

The YA Book Queen has a list of the top seven comments she's received from non-YA-reading adults. It would seem that either people are bigger jerks where she lives, or I don't spend enough time in public with my copy of The Goose Girl.

Anyhow, all I've got to say is: Go ahead, random stranger. Make a snide comment about how I "must love Twilight." I'll summon up all my moxie—in my imagination, I have moxie to summon—and say, "I do, actually. Meyer did some fascinating things with literary alchemy and tie-ins to nineteenth-century classics. And I loved her thoughtful portrayal of loss and grief in New Moon."

It would be fun to see if the random stranger had a response to that.

Dear The Internet, please stop using Twilight as a symbol of trashy literature. No, it's not The Great Gatsby. It wasn't trying to be. It's also not nearly as bad as people make it out to be; no, not on any level. Thanks.

* * *

Music of the week: Beethoven. I don't link enough of my favorite composer, probably because most of his pieces are longer than the ten minutes I try to keep these linked videos to. But here's the beautiful second movement to his seventh symphony.



* * *

Happy weekend!

Currently Reading: The Little Prince

“Isn’t it true that sheep eat bushes?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Ah! I’m glad.”

I didn’t understand why it was so important that the sheep should eat bushes. But the little prince added:

“And therefore they eat baobabs, too?”

I pointed out to the little prince that baobabs are not bushes but trees as tall as churches, and that even if he took a whole herd of elephants back to his planet, that herd couldn’t finish off a single baobab.

The idea of the herd of elephants made the little prince laugh.

“We’d have to pile them on top of one another.”

But he observed perceptively:

“Before they grow big, baobabs start out by being little.”

“True enough! But why do you want your sheep to eat little baobabs?”

He answered, “Oh, come on! You know!” as if we were talking about something quite obvious. And I was forced to make a great mental effort to understand this problem all by myself.

Author: Antoine de Saint-Exupery

From Goodreads: Moral allegory and spiritual autobiography, The Little Prince is the most translated book in the French language. With a timeless charm it tells the story of a little boy who leaves the safety of his own tiny planet to travel the universe, learning the vagaries of adult behaviour through a series of extraordinary encounters. His personal odyssey culminates in a voyage to Earth and further adventures.

Notes: Somehow I missed this classic when I was little. Whereas many a children’s tale reads differently in adulthood, though, this one made a little girl of me again for the reading; I might as well have been five, poring through the text and comparing the pictures to the words as I did with Billy and Blaze.

When I got to the end, and the author told me that I loved the little prince just as he did, I assented wholly—not as the thirty-five-year-old woman who would have wanted to sweep a child like that up into her arms and mother him, but as the prince’s equal in age and height and emotion: someone who would have sat beside him in the sand and talked about sheep and baobab trees with unquestioned confidence and sympathy.

The only grown-up part left me after the read, in retrospect—and it’s only half grown-up—is the part that desperately wants to know what to do with the heartbreaking loveliness of the tale. I couldn’t quite solve the ending; it left me breathless and sad and unsettled, hopeful and afraid.

Looking back, I see a thousand little things—places where the story reflects Christ-imagery as clearly as a stained-glass window, thoughtful moments depicting what it means to love and find meaning. But it’s all tied up with the part of me that wants to know what happened, wants to know it in terms that my mind, still so dependent on science despite all my devotion to imagination and fairy tales, can comprehend.

De Saint-Exupery says something similar of himself once: “...here you’ll have to forgive me. My friend never explained anything. Perhaps he thought I was like himself. But I, unfortunately, cannot see a sheep through the sides of a crate. I may be a little like the grown-ups. I must have become old.”

The author, who vanished with his airplane just two years after writing this book, bequeathed his readers a value for childlike understanding along with his love for his planet-hopping friend. The book is full of innocent, single-sentence philosophies that would seem aphoristic if they weren’t all of them bigger in meaning than in words. Like Lewis, de Saint-Exupery writes to children as equals; like Hodgson Burnett, he writes to them as intimates; like Carroll, he unchains his imagination for them. The result is that the adult reader must sit down in the sand and listen as a child—and from that perspective the whole world seems, for a time at least, infinitely clearer and more beautiful.

In the end, it’s no harder to understand why the book is a classic than it is to understand why it makes you cry.

Top Ten Tuesday: Romances Again

There's only one problem with this excellent topic: I've listed my picks before. And they haven't really changed. Amy and Laurie? Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth? Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester? Does it get better?

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish! Do come join the fun...

Probably not. I could, however, go on listing for a very long time. Twenty. Fifty. A hundred. For today, we'll stick with twenty.

11. Kitty and Levin from Lev Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. That scene where they're talking to each other in first letters is just. So. Cute.

12. Ian and Wanderer from Stephenie Meyer's The Host. A particularly sweet and engaging love story, with a fair amount of depth to it and too many adorable moments to choose from.

13. Percy and Annabeth from Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series. I never would have thought a couple in a humorous middle grade boy story could be so compelling.

14. Barney and Valancy from L.M. Montgomery's The Blue Castle. I'm always faintly creeped out by the images of Ryan Gosling with "Hey, girl" stamped across them—maybe because I don't know the context—but Barney's "Oh, girl..." gets at my heart every time.

15. Perrin and Faile from Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time. While Mat and Tuon form a more unique and interesting pairing, and I grew to sympathize with the Rand/Min passion (if not their morals), the love between Perrin and Faile was especially satisfying.

16. Harry and Ginny from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. They could laugh together. I was pulling for them from book two.

17. Ron and Hermione from the same. Her mercury and his sulphur were an explosive combination. I was pulling for them from the middle of book one. :)

18. Sophie and Howl from Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle. In the book—I've yet to see the Miyazaki adaptation—this is actually not a particularly sweet romance. It is, however, adorable.

19. Ella and Char from Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted. They slid down banisters together and wrote the cutest letters to each other. I just loved them.

20. Shasta/Cor and Aravis from C.S. Lewis' The Horse and His Boy. Fighting all the time may not be the best way to fall in love in real life, but it makes great fiction. It's mostly foreshadowed, as they're children in the story, but the beginner's chemistry is all there.

Honorable mention to Pat and Jingle from L.M. Montgomery's Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat; they would certainly have made this list had Pat not taken so desperately long to get her heart around the truth.

Who else should we name?

Benedict XVI and the Invitation to Love

The fact that I've dreaded the end of Benedict XVI's time in St. Peter's see will not make sense to all of you, I suppose, and no, I don't blame you. Lived experience depends too much on perspective. If you're not Catholic—judging by my own past experience—the pope is an awkward blend of megachurch pastor and foreign statesman, irrelevant if you don't pay attention to him and likely problematic if you do, and all of that's made worse by the colossal ineptitude of the news media in reporting him. I don't think they mean harm, half the time; it's just that they make the sort of bumbles that happen when people try to pass themselves off as part of an unfamiliar culture. And when they do mean harm, often out of a Skeeteresque penchant for spinning headlines to be interesting rather than truthful, they manage it.

Benedict XVI at a Wednesday audience in Rome, November 2009.
Lou took the picture. I stood on my chair and grinned and waved.

Anyway, the pope resigned today due to age and failing health, and the white smoke should rise again before Easter. And I, honestly, am grieved over it. He's been a good father: firm and reliable and generous, intellectual and wise, careful and thoughtful in his relations to both church and world. And holy. Everything I ever heard him to say, everything I knew of him—not his handlers at the Vatican, but him personally—doing, aimed at an increase of faith, hope and charity, at pressing close enough to touch the hem of Christ's robe.

And that's what mattered these eight years, to his spiritual children at least. The see of Peter, like everything else about Catholicism, is a work too great for one man. Trying to keep a manifestly varied horde of fighting, straying, searching people on track to find God through Christ would be impossible for a hundred, or a thousand. Benedict XVI buckled down to the work almost against his will; he would have preferred, I hear, to retire and write; but he took up the pallium with humility and steeled himself to drive the thundering chariot of Chesterton's vision, struggling to hold "the wild truth reeling but erect."

He made serious effort toward the reunion of all Christians, which endeared him quickly to me. Again, a work too great for one man; despite five hundred years of Protestantism and a thousand years of East-West schism, the wounds of division are on both sides still sickening and bloody—as I well know, having un-taped a long what's-wrong-with-the-Catholic-Church letter from my own door with shaking fingers. But entire Anglican congregations have reconciled with Rome under his watch. It's a start.

He wrote. This, too, made me love him. I find his heady, theological style difficult to read, and have never even made it through one of his encyclicals, let alone the books. But when I've read sections thereof, the thick phrases contain straightforward, innocent and loving truths.

More than anything else, he invited all of us to know and love God. From his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est:

Faith, hope and charity go together. Hope is practised through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the face of apparent failure, and through the virtue of humility, which accepts God's mystery and trusts him even at times of darkness. Faith tells us that God has given his Son for our sakes and gives us the victorious certainty that it is really true: God is love! It thus transforms our impatience and our doubts into the sure hope that God holds the world in his hands and that, as the dramatic imagery of the end of the Book of Revelation points out, in spite of all darkness he ultimately triumphs in glory. Faith, which sees the love of God revealed in the pierced heart of Jesus on the Cross, gives rise to love. Love is the light—and in the end, the only light—that can always illuminate a world grown dim and give us the courage needed to keep living and working. Love is possible, and we are able to practise it because we are created in the image of God. To experience love and in this way to cause the light of God to enter into the world—this is the invitation I would like to extend...

The invitation stands, and God help me take him up on it. As for Benedict himself, he closed the announcement of his resignation with the words "With regard to myself, I wish to also devotedly serve the Holy Church of God in the future through a life dedicated to prayer."

I'll miss his quiet, fatherly leadership. But I'm ever grateful for his prayers.

The Advent of Daffodils and other stories

Spring is coming!

First daffodil...

grape hyacinths...

stars of Bethlehem...

leaf buds on the white lilac...

and the clematis, which didn't wait to be pruned.

Spring spring spring spring spring spring spring SPRING. Of course, this also means that the wild buttercups and dandelions are coming up in my garden, along with grass. And I was hoping I'd get more book written during the winter than I have thus far. But still—spring! Tarry not, but come quickly!

* * *

Maia on laundry day:

*white load*

Maia: "WARM LAUNDRY! My favorite!"
Me: "Get out of there, beast. As much cat litter as you spread around the house, I really don't want you in the clean dishtowels."
Maia: "Make me."
Me: "Oh, we're going to play that game? I'll shut you out of the room."
Maia: "Nanny nanny boo boo! I can open the door!!"
Me: "Fine. Make me fight this doorknob."
Doorknob: "Are you sure? You know how difficult I can be to open again. See, I'm bouncing off the latch to give you time to reconsider."
Me: "?%^&!"

*red load*

Maia: "Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeets! AWESOME. Bury me under the blankets when you make the bed. I'll attack them when you spread them over me."
Me: "Great, now you're clawing up the sheets. If only that weren't so cute."

*jeans load*

Maia: "TANK TOP STRAPS!!!" *pounces*
Me: "Give me that! You're going to put holes in my shirt."
Maia: "SOCKS!!!" *pounces*

*towels load*

Me: "Ah, thought I heard you coming. Preemptive strike..." *throws bath towel over her*
Maia: "Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Nice human. Nice warm towel."
Me: "You just better not have any cat litter in your paws."

* * *

Music of the week: I like finding quality indie singers on YouTube. Of course, I hardly ever listen to radio, so Daniela Andrade could be signed to a mainstream label and as famous as Lady Gaga and I would never know.



* * *

This just came up in my YouTube sidebar, and I'm wondering if I should be offended:

But I watched it.... and I must admit, I could sympathize.

Fortunately for me, Lent is coming. Sooner than spring. I never give up the internet entirely—that would smack of giving up friendship—but I do usually attempt to get my surfing habit under control and repurpose my time a little.

Happy weekend!

Currently Reading: The Tail of Emily Windsnap

Actually, all I really wanted to think about was the silkiness of the water as I sliced through it—before everything went wrong. I could still hear its silence pulling me, playing with me as though we shared a secret. But every time I started to lose myself to the feeling of its creamy warmth on my skin, Mandy’s face broke into the picture, glaring at me.

A couple of times, I almost fell asleep. Then I suddenly would wake up after drifting into panicky half-dreams—of me inside a huge tank, the class all around me. They were pointing, staring, chanting: “Freak! Freak!”

I could never go into the water again!

But the questions wouldn’t leave me alone. What had happened to me in there? Would it happen again?

Author: Liz Kessler

From Goodreads: For as long as she can remember, twelve-year-old Emily Windsnap has lived on a boat. And, oddly enough, for just as long, her mother has seemed anxious to keep her away from the water. But when Mom finally agrees to let her take swimming lessons, Emily makes a startling discovery—about her own identity, the mysterious father she's never met, and the thrilling possibilities and perils shimmering deep below the water's surface. With a sure sense of suspense and richly imaginative details, first-time author Liz Kessler lures us into a glorious undersea world where mermaids study shipwrecks at school and Neptune rules with an iron trident—an enchanting fantasy about family secrets, loyal friendship, and the convention-defying power of love.

Notes: As I believe I mentioned recently, I’m on something of a quest for an intelligent, well-written, captivating mermaid novel. Yes, this is probably absurd, but I've retained something of my childhood fascination with undersea life. I’ve yet to find the mythical object, though The Tail of Emily Windsnap was the best shell I've turned over so far.

Part of its success is its target age range. A middle grade story doesn’t have to make the scientific sense that even a young adult novel generally must, and from A Wrinkle in Time through The Giver, middle grade novels have often left the screws loose on their internal logic. In the case of Emily Windsnap, any reader with a remotely adult mind will find themselves thinking, “A bird may love a fish, but how would they conceive a daughter?” and this will go on niggling right through the suspiciously simplistic arguments at the climax about “being punished merely for loving.”

Be that as it may, Emily Windsnap is at least a well constructed story with an enthusiastic, likable young voice and amusing characters. For the reader at the right age, Emily should offer a quick, pleasant, relatable read; most middle schoolers can sympathize with her fear of being called a freak, and many a young girl dreams of being a mermaid. I did, and chances are I’d have loved this story at about age seven.

As it is, I enjoyed it well enough. Mermaid books nearly always seem to fail in the worldbuilding department, but Kessler kept up an appealing, if sometimes cutesy, depiction of underwater life. The little bits of wordplay were fun, and creepy Mr. Beeston, hilarious Mystic Millie, and loyal, lovable Shona kept the story lively and interesting.

Unlike A Wrinkle in Time and The Giver, however, Emily Windsnap does not have the depth to transcend its age category—but I can hardly reproach it much for that. It succeeds perfectly well at what it was designed to do. It’s a quirky, easygoing little story for the very young. As such, it's one of the stronger mermaid offerings available.

Top Ten Tuesday: Best Bookish Memories

This topic purports to be a challenge, what with thirty-one years of intensive reading to think back through. But I'll do my best.

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish! Do come join the fun...

Not necessarily in order:

1. The Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows release party. Rachael, Ben, Brenna and I went together, and we were Luna, Lupin, Tonks, and McGonagall respectively. It was quite the emotional buzz. As was staying up the rest of the night reading the book.

2. Reading the entire Chronicles of Narnia on the family moving drive from Florida to Montana when I was seven. All except for the last half of The Last Battle, anyway. I ran out of road and had to finish in Missoula.

3. Reading books aloud with my family when I was a kid. Wilson Rawls' Summer of the Monkeys was a favorite, as were George MacDonald's Wee Sir Gibbie of the Highlands and Alec Forbes of Howglen.

4. Always having a book in my desk for study hall during middle school (two of my three public school years). I can't count the number of times I read Johanna Spyri's Heidi, or Rawls' Where the Red Fern Grows, or Dodie Smith's 101 Dalmatians.

5. When I went back to being homeschooled: bribing myself to do my math work by allowing myself to read a chapter of a novel after every ten sums. The great thing about being homeschooled is that you can get away with that in school.

6. This was probably kind of dangerous, but I used to take a book and sit in a corner of the horse pasture just to be near my horses while reading. On a related note, this Super Bowl commercial made me cry horribly. I miss Lovely.

7. The YA blogger meetup at ALA a couple of weeks ago. I met Lenore Applehans (Level 2), Kristen Kittscher (A Wig in the Window), Cat Patrick (Forgotten, Revived), two of the editors from Flux Books, Sarah Woodard of Sarah's Random Musings, Jasmine Rose of A Room with Books, Benji Kenworthy of The Non-Reluctant Reader, Rachel Patrick of Beauty and the Bookshelf, Amy Tintera (Reboot), Gabrielle Prendergast (Wicket Season, Audacious, Capricious), and half-met agent Jill Corcoran.

8. Writing songs about Harry Potter and The Wheel of Time. And performing said songs for WWU and Vancouver Potter fans.

9. Reviewing books on this blog. Does it count as a memory if I still do it?

10. Being part of my Catholic girls' book club. This is also still going on, but every meeting seems to be a good memory. Which reminds me, I haven't read this month's book yet...

What are some of your favorite bookish memories?

Beautiful Various

The short story collection of prizewinners and honorees from the 2012 Tuscany Prize for Catholic Fiction is now available on Amazon for just $2.99. My friend Christie, otherwise known as L.C. Ricardo, was one of the honorees; her story, The Debt, is beautiful. Recommended.

Also along the writing contest lines: NPR has a contest open for 'three-minute fiction' in which a story is told through the transcript of a voice mail message. Sounds like fun, and I might consider entering if I weren't in so deep with my novels right now. Writer friends, you have till 11:59 p.m. ET on Sunday, Feb. 10 to enter.

Not exactly along writing contest lines, but more to do with failures of translation—Nice try, L'Osservatore Romano:

This made me laugh so hard.

Lastly, artist and writer Terri Windling has been posting art-themed quotations on her blog this past week or so. I've enjoyed the lot, but last Thursday's had two that particularly spoke to me. The one begins "Every work of art is one half of a secret handshake..." and the other, "I think every work of art is an act of faith, or we wouldn't bother to do it...." There are others, and there are lovely pictures.

Belated Blogging and other stories

When I start blogging at 8:30 PM... yeah. I'll make sure you get the basics. Here's Maia demanding a tummy rub:

And probably preparing a sneak attack on the first
human who obeys.

* * *

Music of the week: I went looking for something YouTube recommended so I didn't have to think hard, and came up with Yiruma—probably because I've listened to a bunch of Nobuo Uematsu. Yiruma's themes tend to be a little repetitive, but very pretty, and I love this one. I'm also a sucker for piano and cello.



* * *

Happy weekend!

100 Most Favorite Movies

...because I can never resist a challenge. Want to join in? You can take the challenge yourself at Nathan Bransford's blog.

I didn't think I could come up with a hundred movies, but proved myself wrong in just 24 hours. Goodness only knows what I've missed by not taking a month to do this.

Artistic and literary favorites:

1. Everafter
2. Les Misérables (Hooper)
3. Phantom of the Opera (Schumacher)
4. Much Ado about Nothing (Branagh)
5. Pride and Prejudice (Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle version)
6. Persuasion (Ciaran Hinds/Amanda Root version)
7. Sense & Sensibility (Ang Lee)
8. Emma (Kate Beckinsale version)
9. Life is Beautiful
10. Bella
11. The King’s Speech
12. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
13. The Scarlet Pimpernel (Anthony Andrews version)
14. Cinderella (Rodgers & Hammerstein; Brandy version)
15. My Fair Lady
16. Fiddler on the Roof
17. Mr. Holland’s Opus
18. Chicago
19. Moulin Rouge

Geekfests:

20. Star Wars: A New Hope
21. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
22. Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
23. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (it was the only one I liked)
24. The Fellowship of the Ring
25. The Two Towers
26. The Return of the King
27. Stardust
28. Back to the Future (I like the first one best, but they were all lovable)

Old favorites:

29. Casablanca
30. Hot Lead, Cold Feet
31. It’s A Wonderful Life
32. The Happiest Millionaire
33. The Apple Dumpling Gang
34. The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again
35. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
36. The African Queen
37. Support Your Local Sheriff

Rom-coms:

38. Return to Me
39. While You Were Sleeping
40. Anne of Green Gables
41. Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel (but do not under any circumstances watch the third)
42. A Walk to Remember
43. Sabrina
44. Sleepless in Seattle
45. You’ve Got Mail
46. Elizabethtown
47. 10 Things I Hate About You
48. My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Drama:

49. The Man from Snowy River (the sequel's likable, but not as good)
50. Frequency
51. Remember the Titans
52. The Shawshank Redemption
53. The Pelican Brief
54. Castaway
55. Little Women (Winona Ryder version)
56. Slumdog Millionaire
57. Save the Last Dance
58. Polly (the one starring Rudy from The Cosby Show)

Comedies and dramedies:

59. Galaxy Quest
60. A Knight’s Tale
61. Blast from the Past
62. The Gods Must be Crazy
63. The Princess Bride
64. McClintock!
65. Napoleon Dynamite
66. Hook
67. Surf Ninjas
68. The Kid
69. The Replacements
70. Sneakers
71. Sister Act (even though the writers knew absolutely nothing about the Catholic Church)
72. Scrooged
73. What About Bob
74. The Truman Show
75. Liar Liar
76. Elf
77. Stranger than Fiction
78. Office Space
79. The Wedding Singer
80. Spanglish
81. Mr. Deeds
82. Robin Hood: Men in Tights
83. Spaceballs

Favorites of my inner child:

84. Aladdin (Disney)
85. Robin Hood (Disney)
86. Tangled
87. Toy Story 1
88. Toy Story 3
89. Finding Nemo
90. Pete’s Dragon
91. The Muppet Movie
92. The Muppet Christmas Carol
93. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
94. The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit
95. The Sandlot

Favorites of my inner teenager:

96. The Princess Diaries
97. Raise Your Voice
98. Twilight
99. New Moon
100. Eclipse

I have yet to see The Artist, anything by Miyazaki, or Singing in the Rain. I know. Scold if you must. But what else have I missed? And what would you pick?

Currently Reading: The Truth Teller’s Tale

I amused myself by trying to guess which ones were Safe-Keepers, which Truth-Tellers. The old, grim-looking woman with the hot blue eyes was clearly a Truth-Teller; all the others stayed as far from her as they could, not wanting to have their clothes critiqued or their motives examined aloud. There was a tall, heavy man who sat by himself in the corner. His face looked both watchful and sharp; I thought he could be one of those rare Truth-Tellers who kept as many secrets as he pleased. Across the room from them sat two women and a man, laughing and talking in low voices. Safe-Keepers all, I thought, for it was strange but true: Safe-Keepers, at least the ones I knew, all seemed sociable and at ease with the world, despite all the dreadful secrets they knew and must keep buried in their hearts. Truth-Tellers, who could release their burdens aloud every day, were often nasty-tempered and fierce, and many of them were friendless.

Author: Sharon Shinn

From Goodreads: Innkeeper's daughters Adele and Eleda are mirror twins—identical twins whose looks are reflections of each other's, and their special talents are like mirrors, too. Adele is a Safe-Keeper, entrusted with hearing and never revealing others' secrets; Eleda is a Truth-Teller, who cannot tell a lie when asked a direct question. The town of Merendon relies on the twins, no one more than their best friend, Roelynn Karro, whose strict, wealthy father is determined to marry her off to the prince. When the girls are seventeen, a handsome dancing-master and his apprentice come to stay at the inn, and thus begins a chain of romance, mistaken identity, and some very surprising truths and falsehoods.

Notes: After Summers at Castle Auburn, I couldn’t wait long to track down another Shinn novel. This one, recommended by George (thanks, George), came with so many fascinating concepts that I was hooked from a glance at the back cover.

The fascinating concepts include the idea of mirror-twins, who reflect each other in perfect reverse—in this case, from the palindromic names, Adele and Eleda, on down. What each sees when she looks at the other is her own mirror image and the inverse of her magical gift. Adele hears secrets, offers wisdom, but never betrays a confidence. Eleda never lies or misinforms, and her words can even be prophetic.

Eleda (naturally) narrates the story, which carries a very Shinn setup: festive, lighthearted magic, loosely medieval worldbuilding, and memorable, pronounceable names. For all my fondness for thoughtful naming practices in fantasy, it's certainly easier on the reader to discover Micahs and Gregorys and Melindas mingling with the Roelynns and Darians, with not one Lúthien Tinúviel or King Roedran Almaric do Arreloa a'Naloy in the bunch.

Like Auburn, Eleda’s world comes strikingly alive for that of a standalone novel, and it grows its heroine outside the farm-to-destiny cycle common to its genre. It’s cheerful, likable, relaxing high fantasy—the sort that can be comfortably read, like Shannon Hale’s or Diana Wynne Jones’, even by those who wouldn’t come near million-word monsters like A Song of Ice and Fire or The Wheel of Time.

More than anything else, it’s a love story—or rather, a set of love stories. As such, it’s thoroughly enjoyable, if also thoroughly simplistic about the idea that true love of the romantic type is what grows you up and forms the basis of all your happiness. The story is far from being thoughtless, however. The play of Safe-Keeper against Truth-Teller is downright insightful, and there’s some pretty symbolism around the Wintermoon celebrations especially.

The tale would be worth reading for the attention to tangible detail alone, as that’s simply beautiful in places. The scene of Eleda’s first evening out with her young man is one of the loveliest of its type I’ve ever read.

There was nothing in this story to make me regret picking it up. I’d like to re-read it. As with Summers at Castle Auburn, it’s likely to send me hunting up more of Sharon Shinn’s work.

Top Ten Tuesday: Most Frustrating Characters in Fiction

I suspect most of us are thinking about the same person. Without further ado, then.

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish! Do come join the fun...

1. Dolores Umbridge (The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling). She dresses in pink; she collects plates with pictures of kittens on them; she never speaks but in a soft, girlish, over-polite voice; and she made Harry carve the words "I must not tell lies" into his own flesh—because he refused to deny the truth. While she didn't kill as many people as Voldemort, she was much more maddening. With Voldemort, at least you knew what you were getting. (AK'd.) Umbridge was a cold-blooded, legalistic, cheaply feminine sadist.

Right, so she's going to be hard to top. Here are a few others, though.

2. Tom Sawyer (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain.) I don't remember much of Tom from the book bearing his own name, but he made me want to throw things at the end of Huck Finn's. The Duke and the Dauphin also deserve mention here, but they were passive irritations who bored me to the point of angst. Tom and his calculating mischief were active sources of distress.

3. Lucinda (Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine). Prone to giving magical gifts that sound nice but carry serious consequences, Lucinda spends most of the tale blissfully blind to the down side of her largesse. Her eventual shame almost made me leave her off the list, but it doesn't change what she did to those giants.

4. John and Fanny Dashwood, Lucy Steele, and Mrs. Ferrars (Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen). I couldn't pick. Fanny is mean-spirited and John is an idiot. Lucy is manipulative. Mrs. Ferrars is an unfortunate combination of arrogant, small-minded, and heartless. Lucy plays the most direct role, but they all compete to be the most unfeeling.

I would put Pride & Prejudice's Mr. Collins on here, too, if he weren't so comparatively powerless and stupid as to be more comical than anything.

5. Mrs. Norris (Mansfield Park, Jane Austen). Proof positive that favoritism is a bad idea.

6. Vronsky (Anna Karenina, Lev Tolstoy). For all that her husband wasn't appealing either, Anna's adultery might have been a touch more emotionally comprehensible if this guy had had even one redeeming quality. I hope he was handsome, because he struck me as neither good-natured nor good-hearted nor intelligent nor even really manly. Maybe riding steeplechasers made him look manly, but for him, even that was a form of indolence.

7. Matrim Cauthon and Fortuona Athaem Kore Paendrag, whenever they're apart (The Wheel of Time series, Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson). Without Tuon, Mat's a selfish skirt-chaser. Without Mat, Tuon is a dispassionate ruler with no shame about her penchant for making collared pets out of Aes Sedai. Also worth mentioning are all the Whitecloaks, the Sea Folk at any bargaining table, and Berelain for her attempts to break up Perrin and Faile.

8. Denethor (The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien). The middle of a world war is a really lousy time to go crazy and nearly kill your own rather important son. Grima/Wormtongue also deserves the demerit here.

9. The Thénardiers and Javert (Les Misérables, Victor Hugo). In the musical, the Thénardiers are sometimes comic and Javert is sometimes sympathetic. Not quite so much in the book—at least, not to my memory. The former are so cruel in their selfishness, and the latter so relentless in his legalism, that I didn't like being around them at all.

10. Erlend Nikulaussøn (Kristin Lavransdatter, Sigrid Undset). I have never detested a protagonist's love interest like I detested Erlend. The man was selfish and thoughtless and had no self-control. I lost much of my sympathy for Kristin when she fell in love with him, which meant that I spent half the book frustrated with her, too.

Not the most cheerful topic, but perhaps a rather cathartic one. I'm sort of shocked at how many judgmental statements I just made, truthfulness notwithstanding. :)

Which characters do you find most frustrating?

Happy 200th Anniversary, Pride and Prejudice

After playing some Italian songs, Miss Bingley varied the charm by a lively Scotch air; and soon afterwards Mr. Darcy, drawing near Elizabeth, said to her—

"Do not you feel a great inclination, Miss Bennet, to seize such an opportunity of dancing a reel?"

She smiled, but made no answer. He repeated the question, with some surprise at her silence.

"Oh!" said she, "I heard you before; but I could not immediately determine what to say in reply. You wanted me, I know, to say "Yes," that you might have the pleasure of despising my taste; but I always delight in overthrowing those kind of schemes, and cheating a person of their premeditated contempt. I have therefore made up my mind to tell you that I do not want to dance a reel at all—and now despise me if you dare."

"Indeed I do not dare."

Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at his gallantry; but there was a mixture of sweetness and archness in her manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody; and Darcy had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by her. He really believed, that were it not for the inferiority of her connections, he should be in some danger.

On January 28, 1813, publisher Thomas Egerton released Jane Austen's second novel to the world—and now, two centuries later:

Quiz: How well do you know Pride & Prejudice? I scored a hundred percent on the questions which were actually about the book. Hey, quiz people, no fair penalizing us for not knowing trivia about adaptations and pastiches and what not.

Apparently in modern-day Britain, parents are more likely to consider marriage as linked to financial security for their sons than for their daughters. The Telegraph has that story.

Tour Britain, Austen-style! I'm drooling. Chatsworth House, a possible inspiration for Pemberley, is bee-ee-ay-yootiful.

Shannon Hale has released a couple of clips from her upcoming movie Austenland! Also, here's director Jerusha Hess talking Pride & Prejudice with Time Entertainment.

I'm still watching The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Lizzie's at Pemberley Digital right now, and today's episode was SO CUTE. I thought so, anyway. The Daily Dot has brief anniversary tributes from some of the cast and crew.

Need some adaptations, pastiches, spinoffs and the like? Here's JaneAusten.org's list of films and Wikipedia's list of literary adaptations. I doubt the latter is complete, but it'll get you started. Here's a Goodreads list that'll go further. There are 189 items on that list, as I write this.

Merch: Pride & Prejudice 200th Anniversary coffee mug, trivia game, note cards, board game, book charm necklace, and... it looks like Forever Young Adult already did this section for me. Thanks, Megan.

Time to raise a glass of wine and toast the author. Here's to you, Jane!

The Down Side of the Grandiose and other stories

Well, friends, your blogger feels much as a mountaineer must after struggling to a tough peak, waving arms and imbibing champagne at the traditional summit celebration, and, finally, strapping all her gear back on to glissade down.

After reviewing Brideshead Revisited, the Les Misérables movie, and A Memory of Light all in just over a week, it feels a touch anticlimactic to think of returning to books designed as fun reads rather than storm-covered Mt. Everests of emotion. The grandiose tends to temporarily spoil one for the everyday, no matter how good the everyday.

On the other hand, grandiose is a lot of work. The aforementioned mountaineer would certainly agree. If all reviews took me as long as A Memory of Light did... Well. They would be fewer.

Potentially bigger problem: A Memory of Light really made me want to write a fourteen-volume high fantasy saga of my own. About what, you ask? Who knows? Who cares? Something awesome. All that time with the same two hundred characters... No, Jenna. Bad Jenna. You have a lot of revisions to handle first.

* * *

It's awfully tempting, right now, to bore you all with my to-do list. I'm headed to Seattle tonight for a couple of events including overdue catch-up time with a good friend. While I'm gone, Lou—bless that man; bless him from the very heights of heaven—is going to upgrade my computer from Vista to Windows 8, hopefully speeding it up and smoothing out some of the issues that even a good little soldier like my Dell develops after four years of near-constant action. This means that my today is crammed full of things like packing and printing maps and backing up files and settings, on top of the usual Friday housecleaning and whatever.

On account of which, I had thought to abbreviate this blog post. But I do have a handful of things for you:

1. Cat picture.

2. News to delight fellow fans of Jane Austen, Shannon Hale, Stephenie Meyer, and Jerusha Hess: the movie version of Hale's Austenland drew a crowd at the Sundance Film Festival. It also drew some powerful attention, and Sony picked it up for distribution. It's coming to theaters!!! No firm word on when yet, but it doesn't matter—I'm seeing it.

3. For Wheel of Time fans: In a chat recently hosted by Tor, Brandon Sanderson answered fan questions about various plot points in A Memory of Light. Warning: spoilers for A Memory of Light! But if you've read that book, this is a lot of fun to read.

* * *

Music of the week: In honor of our shared birthday on Sunday—his two hundred and twenty-two years before mine—a little Mozart.

* * *

Time to start backing up my computer, if I want to not lose pictures and music and bookmarks tonight. Happy weekend!

Currently Reading: A Memory of Light (The Wheel of Time, book 14)

“You think you could stay away from me?” Rand asked, smiling. “You really think it would let you?”

“I could bloody try. No offense, Rand, but you’re going to go mad and all. I figured I’d give you one less friend nearby to kill. You know, save you some trouble. What did you do to your hand, by the way?”

“What did you do to your eye?”

“A little accident with a corkscrew and thirteen angry innkeepers. The hand?”

“Lost it capturing one of the Forsaken.”

“Capturing?” Mat said. “You’re growing soft.”

Rand snorted. “Tell me you’ve done better.”

“I killed a gholam,” Mat said.

“I freed Illian from Sammael.”

“I married the Empress of the Seanchan.”

“Mat,” Rand said, “are you really trying to get into a bragging contest with the Dragon Reborn?” He paused for a moment. “Besides, I cleansed saidin. I win.”

Authors: Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

Synopsis: The armies of the Light are finally marshaling against the armies of the Shadow for the Last Battle, Tarmon Gai'don. While Rand prepares to go to Shayol Ghul and challenge the Dark One, the remaining Forsaken compete with each other for the Shadow's favor by working against Rand's allies. But even without the Forsaken to deal with, the Light's armies are outnumbered and desperate. Their only hope of winning means laying aside differences and even old enmities: Seanchan and Aes Sedai, Whitecloak and Windfinder, farmer and fisherman and Aiel warrior must all take up their weapons side by side.

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.

Notes: The wind that is a beginning rises in the first chapter of every Wheel of Time novel, and as it blew down from the Mountains of Mist to herald the series finale, it carried—like a snatch of haunting melody, like a familiar scent—a startling nostalgic rush. The world so carefully and thoroughly built over thirteen previous installments and a prequel, the characters we loved enough to travel this far alongside—this was an ending for them and us together. Our ending.

"Eastward the wind blew" reads the chapter title, and certainly the wind blew east, directing the story up the final arcing segment of its circle: a circle ultimately shown to be half black and half white, the contrast marked off by a single, sinuous line. While I noted the (modified) yin and yang imagery throughout the series, I failed to think through certain of its implications, which took me by surprise toward the end. But as Light faced off with Shadow, as White and Black Towers played their part in the war, as the White Lion of Andor flew its banner over one battlefield and the black hawk of Shienar marched on another, the symbol upon which the story turned was as obvious as ever it had been.

Structurally the novel was tighter than some of its predecessors. Sanderson's meant-to-be-touching scenes were sometimes a little trite, but to make up for that, there was good humor and some quality character development. Character arcs got priority over plot points in regards to completion, which has other readers complaining around the internet, but which failed to bother me. The great heart of this story is in its cultures and characters, and the authors did not disappoint me there.

Which is impressive, considering that of the nine hundred pages, probably six or seven hundred were battle scenes. This would not normally be my thing. Because each scene was shown through a character's thoughts and emotions, however, I got through with little difficulty aside from wondering how Elayne was bouncing around on horseback while six months pregnant with twins, or from trying to imagine Shayol Ghul as large enough to house Shadowspawn in the apparent millions needed for the Last Battle.

The perspective changed every few pages, which proved less aggravating to read overall than the alternating long and short head hops found in some of the previous novels. More importantly, all of my favorite characters got head time. Rand and Egwene. Nynaeve, if not nearly often enough. Min. Perrin and Faile. Mat and Tuon together—I could never stand either of them separately, but together they’re fantastic. Aviendha. And comparative newcomers Androl and Pevara turned out to be wonderful.

There were deaths, of course. Without spoilers, all I can say is that while J.K. Rowling probably killed off a higher percentage of her key players, Jordan made up for that by killing more named characters than Rowling even possessed. I was sometimes surprised by who died and who kept surviving, but then, plot developments surprised me all over the place. That's all to the good.

Without spoilers, it's also hard to comment much on individual character trajectories. Perrin, Mat, and Elayne had, if I recall correctly, the most onstage time of anyone besides Rand. Perrin fans like myself will almost certainly enjoy his growth as he pursues and battles Slayer. Elayne was Elayne as always, brash and queenly by turns and sometimes funny as well, but she also learned a few things. Mat was outstanding as general and hero and comic relief; Sanderson wrote his personality perfectly as far as I was concerned. Lan got some airplay, too, and his climactic scene was beautiful.

But the most interesting and emotional parts of the story for me involved Rand and Egwene. When the pair of them left the Two Rivers, innocent and in love, I rooted for them all the way. Even when they discarded the romance, leaving Egwene free to fall for Gawyn Trakand and Rand to get Wheel-woven into his exceedingly weird polyamory, it always seemed clear to me that they had some joint destiny.

It's not an obvious thing—not nearly as clear as I expected it to be, but that joint destiny is there. It's in their titular headship of the White and Black Towers; it's in a small continuum of interaction between them throughout the book. Most of all, it's in the fact that his big moment and hers bore a whole spoilerific list of interesting parallels. The hints of Christian influence in the imagery—whether intentionally included by the authors (Anglican and Mormon, respectively) or merely incidental to the esoteric symbolism—happen in part through the two of them. Egwene's moment of glory was, for me at least, probably the most powerful part of the story.

The ultimate symbolic direction of the book, however, hashed out in an extended philosophical contest between Rand and Shai'tan at the cusp of the final power struggle, did not quite make sense to me. My cruciform thought processes got tangled in the circular syllogism, and have not yet sorted themselves out. I'd rather not prove myself a fool by attempting to interpret what I know so little about, so I'll just say that the resolution suited the tale.

Despite the deaths, the ending was generally satisfactory. Sometimes happy. And for all my love for good sound moral philosophy and theology, for all my cataphatic Western preference for things that mean something positive and sensible—if I set those expectations aside enough to just enjoy it as a story, I did enjoy it. It was a good story, with flawed but beloved characters and a brilliantly realized world. I don't have a single regret either for starting it or for finishing it. Someday I will probably pick it up and walk in its winds again.

Unsettling Wonder Release and Top Ten Tuesday

First, big news: the inaugural issue of Unsettling Wonder is out, themed around the concept of Wonder Voyages! There are some lovely stories in there. I know that for a fact; I'm the associate fiction editor.

From the introduction:

In offering you these stories, we hope that they guide you on a voyage of imagination—if not from island to island in goatskin boats, then from story to story, to new lands discovered by story. I do not promise they will change you. But you will, I hope, discover something new, even indescribable.

Print and digital editions are available. I'm looking forward to my own copy coming in the mail!

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish! Do come join the fun...

Now, back to scheduled programming: the top ten settings I'd like to see more of in fiction. This is a tough one for me because I favor high fantasy, where the two important rules for setting are: 1) use your imagination, and 2) use the heck out of it.  I'll try to come up with a list nonetheless. It just might be abstract.

1. The Epic Landscape. Scenery expansive and varied enough to take in whole cultures and multiple plot lines and enormous series. Think Tolkien's work, or Jordan's—from the flowers and treehouses of Lothlorien to the mines of Moria, from the river-island of Tar Valon to the plains and walled cities of the Borderlands. I just finished the Wheel of Time, and I need another large-scale saga with a fascinating world.

2. The Beautiful Wonderland. Magical worlds with an emphasis on the lovely. Shannon Hale's teen heroines live in such places, and Maria Merryweather enters the exquisite Silverydew in The Little White Horse. Lewis' Narnia is glorious, and even Montgomery's handling of setting, notably Lake Mistawis (The Blue Castle), belongs fairly in this category. The land traveled by the boy in Paolo Coelho's The Alchemist is yet another, as is Cornelia Funke's Inkworld.

3. The Ambiguous Place in Time. This is the world that may or may not be on Planet Earth; it's not specifically tied to any location in the universe or any time period. Sharon Shinn's Auburn is an example of this, as is the world in The Wheel of Time. "In one age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist...."

4. The Unknown Planet. Here's where my taste for sci-fi drops into the mix. Someplace in the unexplored heavens, unfamiliar peoples work unfamiliar lands—on Lewis' Perelandra, for instance, or Card's Lusitania (Speaker for the Dead). This is a great way to set up a world with unique rules and features.

5. The Undersea Paradise. I am on a quest for a good mermaid book. It needs to have strong, sensory worldbuilding, lovable characters, and a meaningful concept, which combination seems unreasonably hard to find in the little world of mermaid fiction. Granted, I haven't read the entirety of said world yet.

6. The Far Side of the Portal. This is a common urban fantasy concept, but is not often done to my taste, mainly because most writers are light worldbuilders by my standards. The portal concept is as follows: step into a wardrobe in the English countryside, and voila! There's a world through there. Platform 9 3/4 is likewise a perfect example.

7. The Artists' Guild. I'm a writer and musician, and I have dabbled in both drawing and dance—and I love to see the arts and artistic gatherings in novels. Love, love, love. Artists have a way of turning their associations and spaces into settings with distinctive personalities. Sometimes these form the primary setting, as in Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus. Other times, they're small aspects of the larger world but important to the story, like the musicians' nightclub in Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind. Either way, this is one of my favorite things to find in a tale.

It's likely that I could go on, but it might take more hours than I've got to give. What settings would you like to see more of in fiction?

Les Misérables: The Movie, The Musical

What I mean is, ugly things can also be beautiful. A hawk swooping in to kill its prey is beautiful. A woman, stripped of all worldly cares and possessions, about to face her own death at the hands of a murderer, and who realizes that she is a poor soul in need of God's grace just as much as the man who is about to kill her, is beautiful ("A Good Man Is Hard to Find"). The Crucifixion is beautiful. But they're all, to certain degrees painful. Even ugly. Grace reclaims even that.

~Christie, in last Wednesday's combox on Brideshead Revisited

Christie's words returned to haunt me Saturday night during the dark, frosty walk from cinema to car. Schönberg's music still pounded in my head, my cheeks were still tacky and my eyes hot from crying, and the leftover meditative mood kept all of us to a slow pace.

I didn't expect to have to write a second superlative review in the space of one week, but the movie astounded me too thoroughly to go unmentioned here, and besides, I needed a Monday post. Apologies, therefore, if I seem to be in raving mode.

I'm not. It was just that good.

Not being a film critic but merely a writer, singer, and artist's daughter, I've got only armchair observations on the technical side of the making. Director Tom Hooper did remarkable work with The King’s Speech, but I thought he equaled or surpassed himself with Les Mis. It's well written for the screen; William Nicholson’s adaptation of the Boublil/Schönberg/Kretzmer script is flawless, as far as I can tell, though I’ve not seen the stage performance to miss the handful of things that were cut or changed.

The cinematography is on the grand scale and beautiful, even a little bit magical, though that last might be the effect of heavy use of CGI. Shot in an almost monochromatic blue, with thoughtful use of earth tones and strong red as accents, the images retain a hint of stage-play feel while—as with Schumacher's Phantom of the Opera—offering perspectives to the moviegoer that simply can't be had through the proscenium arch. There are especially stunning moments: Javert's patent leather shoes pacing the very edge of the high bridge wall, for instance; furniture thrown from windows in the making of the revolutionaries' barricade; Cosette among flowers behind the gate at Marius' first visit.

Hugh Jackman (left) as Jean Valjean
and Anne Hathaway as Fantine
AP Photo/Universal Pictures

The cast surprised me despite my high expectations. Jackman brought all the grim determination to Valjean that he brought to Wolverine in the X-Men movies, plus a superb compassion and gentleness. Hathaway, whom I'd mostly seen in romantic comedies like The Princess Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada, threw herself into Fantine's desperation. I was in tears nearly every time she was onscreen.

Amanda Seyfried and Eddie Redmayne—Cosette and Marius—were mostly new to me, but did quite credibly as the innocent-souled young lovers. Samantha Barks, strikingly beautiful and expressive, will probably always be my vision of Eponine. Child actors Isabelle Allen and Daniel Huttlestone floored me as young Cosette and Gavroche; I'm not sure how children learn how to act so convincingly so early, but Allen and Jackman displayed an exquisite father-daughter tenderness together, and Huttlestone stole the show every time the camera turned his way.

The Thénardiers could not have been better cast. Helena Bonham Carter is an astonishingly flexible actress; her roles have varied from sweet Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View to elegant Queen Elizabeth in The King's Speech to crazed Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter films, with Mme. Thénardier loosely resembling the latter (that hair!) I know less of Sacha Baron Cohen's work, never having seen Borat—all the way through the movie I wondered why his face was so familiar—but he didn't hold back a thing as the thieving, garish "Master of the House". The pair brought a much-needed comic relief to the story.

The only actor I questioned was Russell Crowe, who comes off a shade too generous, I think, to be properly believable as the merciless Javert. On the other hand, Crowe's touch of noblesse oblige made Javert unusually sympathetic, which prevented me from questioning very much.

The vocals, recorded live during filming rather than in studios for lip-syncing on camera, were unadorned and unstylized, to sound like speech, in contrast to Broadway-standard tone and projection. This made the lyrics more immediately emotional, more accessible, and while I heard tones I didn’t like, the effect was lovely overall. Crowe has a firm, if not very dynamic voice; Redmayne hit just a hair off strident now and again, but made up for that with passion; Jackman was a touch thin in the high register, but his whole heart was in the music. I was too busy crying to find fault with Hathaway's vocals. I loved both Barks and Seyfried, as well as Allen's innocent, lovely rendition of "Castle on a Cloud."

The extended facial closeups of various actors singing passionately, often while in tears, came off a little awkward, though not nearly as bad as it could have been. If the emotions had been off in the slightest, it would have been more than usually uncomfortable. But Hathaway, Jackman, Redmayne and Barks, all of whom underwent the camera in the face, performed without a slip. Hathaway's "I Dreamed a Dream" is particularly gutwrenching.

Russell Crowe as Javert.
AP Photo/Universal Pictures/Laurie Sparham

There’s no nudity and comparatively little gore, but the horror of the deaths, the prostitution, the prison, and the turning of cold law upon Valjean and Fantine and the revolutionaries are not passed over lightly. It is hard to watch, hard to sit through without feeling vaguely guilty over comfortable theater seats and warm rooms and the fact of having plenty of food and clothing. Yet the suffering is reclaimed—as the story demands—by recourse to grace.

Which is why Christie's thoughts on painful beauty came back to me. For all Victor Hugo's spiritual wandering, this story is intensely, emotionally Christian, and for once Hollywood didn’t try to get in the way. It had been over ten years since I read the book, and I was thunderstruck by the lyrics, the scenes of prayer complete with candles and crucifixes, and the ending. The musical is impressively faithful to the novel, but if anything, it emphasizes the power of the bishop's gift to Jean Valjean more strongly than Hugo did.

For those who have never read the book or seen any of the adaptations thereof, the story may prove a bit challenging to follow. It may also be too much, emotionally speaking, for anyone dealing with extreme heaviness or sorrow in their own life.

Those are my only disclaimers. This was the first time in a couple of years that I felt that a movie was really worth the price of theater tickets.

The problem with claiming that a film is astoundingly good is that most of us respond to such reviews by plopping down in a theater seat and saying, eagerly, "Astound me!"—which often means coming away disappointed. So maybe it's better to go in with low expectations. Seize on your dislike for whichever of the actors you've never cared for. Imagine obvious computer effects and way-too-intimate photography. Remind yourself just how dang unhappy the story is. Whatever you need to think about. Just don't let it actually stop you from going.

Go with someone you're comfortable crying with, though.

Lone Redwoods and other stories

The fog rolled in this morning—and vanished, unfortunately, before I thought to get the camera out—but we've had several lovely clear evenings lately, with Jupiter directly overhead in Taurus, not far from the Pleiades, and Sirius tracking Orion through the sky. It's perfect stargazing except for one thing: it's so cold that I haven't yet convinced myself to pull out the telescope. Even though Jupiter and the Pleiades are two of the more stunning sights a home telescope can offer.

Maybe soon. I love the Pleiades. They make me think of Christmas lights.

* * *

* * *

All right. I know kid stuff isn't always interesting to everyone, but I have the cutest nieces and nephews ever. The three-year-old niece sent me this email the other day, with a little help from her Nana:

I visited her a couple of days later, and had the unfortunate experience of discovering that one of her pet rabbits was sick. Relaying that news to her mother meant causing the poor kid some worry over the fact of mortality, which resulted in the following conversation:

My sister: "Well, we need to have three bunnies, so if this one dies, we'll get you another one."
Tearful niece: "Another bunny?"
Sister: "Yes, another bunny."
Niece: "Another little tiny one?"
Sister: "Probably a little one, yes."
Niece, with a sorrowful sniff: "I think I would like a little pink one."

* * *

From Tall Girl Problems:

There's a reason for this, as I rediscovered at this week's choir practice. I never stand up front in the soprano line if I can help it; usually I go off to the side or, if there's room, get in the back row with the men. But practice was sparse this week, and everyone said hey, come on up, get in here—and stuck me in the middle.

I, of all things, had chosen to wear heeled boots, which put me well over six feet. The two or three girls closest on my right came barely to my shoulder. The girl on my left was shorter yet. The girl on the far side of her stood on a lower step, which put her head right at about my waist. Nobody in the entire front line got past my chin.

So yeah, sopranos: it's not that I don't like you, or that I'm too much of a loner to join in the group fun. I just feel like this tree:

Source.

* * *

Music of the week: Lou and I listen to one of his Pandora stations on weekends, an easy alt-rock thing that plays a lot of great music but had started repeating songs to death. He wanted to broaden the input bands, and as I was coming up with suggestions—The Civil Wars, Muse, The Fray—I remembered a voice I'd hardly thought of for years.

We added him. Turns out I still find Peter Bradley Adams a hundred percent listenable.



* * *

The plan is to finally see Les Mis with Lou's parents over the weekend, which I'm very much looking forward to. Though I'm nervous. I don't like crying in the theater, and all my friends' Facebook posts suggest that tears are unavoidable.

No, I still haven't seen The Hobbit. I know. The unfortunate thing is that I've stopped caring. I've begun envisioning it as a long string of goblin fights and action scenes, like Return of the King, and... ugh. I might stay home and watch the BBC miniseries of Brideshead Revisited instead.

Happy weekend!