What I've Just Finished Reading

The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham -- interesting and enjoyable without being great, I think?

( Some thoughts )

"At least one London reviewer thought [L. M. Montgomery's portrayal of a narrow-minded small town] must have been unintentional, saying of her novel Rainbow Valley (1920):

it would appear that Canadian village life is the quintessence of all village life, except that in Canada there appears to be little hope that anyone will take [an] interest in ( Read more... )

"Naturally our aspirant wrote poems, and stories, and articles upon the seasons of the year [. . .] The concluding stanza of one of them, I remember, ran --

Alas, for the piteous yearning
For the ever-increasing pain,
For the bitterly hopeless enduring
When the clouds return after the rain!

Margery sent this one to Harper's Monthly. Fortunately ( Read more... )

Ok, time to breathe; I probably won't get kicked out of Yuletide this year after all. The Law of Yuletide forbids me from going into detail about my struggles with the prompt, and it's probably for the best. Anyway, I didn't default and I'm glad I didn't, and A Valuable Lesson Was Learned about not procrastinating. Again ( Read more... )

EDITED: It's been brought to my attention that the "short versions" of my prompts were not actually short at all; it's probably too late to do this, but I edited my letter again. :(  I'm going to put the original short versions in a link so that they aren't inaccessible. Next year, I will be better prepared and less bad at this, I hope.

Dear ( Read more... )

I'm in Charlottetown for the L.M. Montgomery Conference! It's a real place with wandering late-night teenagers, perky hipsters, and a carmel-and-white cat who lives in a tree in the park across from the hostel. Fanfiction will resume in a couple days, if anyone is still reading (and even if no one is, per Mr.Carpenter's Rules of Writing).


( Read more... )

There's a long gap in time, and more Josephine Preston, and also a certain dialect story that we are not going to talk about and whose author we certainly do not envy in any way, in Chapter 83.

Speaking of things in diary form, did you know that Marie Bashkirtseff's diary is available on Project Gutenberg? Now you do!

In Chapter 68: Ev gets political, and I do my research this time. Tom Blake is the best cousin ever, and kind of a condescending jerk sometimes. Meanwhile, Evelyn contemplates marriage, Paul Laird makes a move, Dean is Dean, Ilse is blissfully dismissive, and Ella Wheeler Wilcox is quoted ( Read more... )

Italy stands the other side
While, like a guard between
The solemn Alps
The siren Alps
Forever intervene!

All right, let's get this show back on the road. Evelyn resolves to keep a less mopey and more factual diary, and sort of succeeds for a few days, in Chapter 65.

The Emily anime continues to be awesome, by the way. Episode 12, "The Only Poem ( Read more... )

"A better reason -- but not enough, not enough. Tell me this-- if you knew you would be as poor as a church mouse all your life-- if you knew you'd never have a line published-- would you still go on writing-- would you?"
--Emily of New Moon's Mr. Carpenter, who ought to take the dash out of his own eye before he goes picking at the italics in ( Read more... )