Jane: You two have always been so alike.
Lizzie: What world are you living in?
Jane: The one where I have two wonderful, stubborn sisters who spend more time talking to thousands of people they've never met than to each other.
-- from episode 86 "Sisterly Support" of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries
I'd been missing Jane, and videos in which Lizzie talked ( Read more... )

Apparently the other day was Jane Austen Day in honour of Pride and Prejudice's 200th birthday. Due to time-zones, I did not discover this until after that day was finished here (While I can remember the year something was published, I never remember the exact publication dates for books ( Read more... )

We stopped and listened. Just on the cusp of hearing I detected a rhythmic pounding, more a vibration in the concrete than a sound.
‘Drums,’ I said and then because I couldn’t resist it, ‘Drums in the deep.’
-- from Whispers Under Ground by Ben Aaronovitch

1. There's no new episode of Elementary. It's just... taking a break for a fortnight ( Read more... )

Bel: Do you calculate in advance how to make me look a fool, or does inspiration strike you in the moment?
Freddie: Oh, deflection, Moneypenny, very revealing.
-- from The Hour, 2x03

Continuing from my last list, this is about The Hour, Jhereg and Yendi, Crystal Soldier, Still Life with Shape-shifter, Because of Winn-Dixie, Catching Fire and Rose ( Read more... )

How do you define young adult fiction, anyway?

I've been pondering that lately, after reading a review which discussed why Among Others, the (fictional) diary of a fifteen year old, is not YA; after the NRP's List of Best Ever Teen [YA] Novel included many I wouldn't consider YA; after reading others' reviews of Code Name Verity and realising that ( Read more... )

1. I want to go to England.

( fictional England, the 2009 adaptation of Emma, the latest of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries )

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that nerds wear glasses. Usually ugly, unflattering glasses.
-- from "Nerd Glasses", TV Tropes and Idioms

As a lifelong1 wearer of glasses, I have naturally have strong opinions about how glasses-wearers are portrayed in the media. However, as far as portrayals of minorities2 go, it feels like there are ( Read more... )

"...But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men."
"Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything."
-- from ( Read more... )

I ordered a few books online, timing their arrival - as much as one can with online shopping - so that it coincided with the end of term. The books were a Yay-I-survived-the-essays! gift to myself. Hunting for second-hand books is fun and full of the unexpected (and so much more affordable), but there is a real novelty value to buying books new.


( Read more... )

Most people who have written about questions of gender bias in language have belonged to one camp or the other. Either they want to change everything, or they don't see what all the fuss is about. Am I the only one who feels torn? [...] My reactionary self, however, prevails when I hear someone attempt to purge bias from "to each his own" by ( Read more... )