Well, I'm pleased to report that this week's Agents of SHIELD is easily the best episode of the season thus far (not meaning to damn with faint praise). There were some laugh-aloud funny bits, the season arc is starting to feel like an arc instead of writers throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks, and they did some nice things ( Read more... )

So. I have an Issue that has been simmering on low heat for a while now with occasional flare-ups of righteous ire. To reduce it to essentials, I offered to do a thing, and once my offer was accepted, the terms were unilaterally changed in a really clumsy way, and I have since been seething over having to abide by the new terms and the way they ( Read more... )

So 2011 was my Year of Women reading theme, including books by women and featuring interesting female protagonists. I read 31 books as part of the theme and am listing the ones I rated 4 or 5 stars at Goodreads below- more than half of them, which shows that it was a highly enjoyable year!

( Books! )

Last week Pacific Women's Chorus had solo auditions. I was recovering from being ill and was hanging on to what remained of my voice for dear life and fighting through congested brain. I felt that I did reasonably well, considering.

The big work that everybody wanted a piece of was Franz Biebl's incandescent Ave Maria, which has three solos (alto ( Read more... )

Ari and Bluey, you were right. I continued reading "Tropic of Cancer" on the bus ride home yesterday because I didn't have anything else to read. I have come to the conclusion it's simply awful writing that's achieved piggyback success thanks to far better banned books like "Ulysses." Clearly, Miller intends to elevate the squalor of his setting ( Read more... )

I thought I'd take a stylistic break from "Of Human Bondage" by reading Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer," and while it is undoubtedly a stylistic break, I'm nearing my saturation point on vaguely-arty Bohemian types living in squalor in Paris and moaning about the women they can't have. I'm only about 30 pages in, but I'm also a bit annoyed by the ( Read more... )

I just finished "Of Human Bondage," and while I really enjoyed it, the protagonist's realization at the end that he only dreamed of extraordinary things because he didn't think he'd ever have the solid middle-class existence that his soul craved reminded me horribly of the Epilogue of Doom. So that started me thinking about the coming-of-age novel ( Read more... )

I was snickering to myself on the bus ride to work this morning over the following bit from W. Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage."

For forty-eight hours Hayward lived in an agony of indecision. He had talked of getting occupation of this sort so long that he had not the face to refuse outright, but the thought of doing anything filled him ( Read more... )