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ricardienne) wrote2006-08-18 09:41 pm
ricardienne) wrote2006-08-18 09:41 pm
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Iris came over the other day and we had a good talk about fundamentalist religious friends who don't try to convert you (I mean really: don't they care about our immortal souls? What kind of friend lets a friend blithely go to hell in a handbasket?), being intolerant, nervous breakdowns, and distribution/grad school entrance requirements. I should keep in touch more often with her.
Also yesterday, I read Rose Tremain's Music and Silence. It made me realize several things: that I know absolutely nothing about 17th century Scandinavian politics, that I haven't read a "literary" novel in a while, and that this kind of novel ALWAYS seems to deal with The Darkness of the Human Condition and Repressed Desires and so on. Always. This particular one centered (sort of) around an English lutenist coming to the court of the fading, indebted, and occasionally off-his-rocker Christian IV of Denmark. It isn't really about the lutenist though, any more than it is about King Christian, or his morganatic wife Kirsten, or her lady-in-waiting Emilia. And of course all of these characters have Pasts, distant and recent, which are being recounted alternately with bits of the present. I did like it, though, enough to stay up all night to find out whether it ended happily or not.
There were other things I was going to write about, but now I don't want to. Maybe later -- tomorrow, when things that happened today can be yesterday.
Also yesterday, I read Rose Tremain's Music and Silence. It made me realize several things: that I know absolutely nothing about 17th century Scandinavian politics, that I haven't read a "literary" novel in a while, and that this kind of novel ALWAYS seems to deal with The Darkness of the Human Condition and Repressed Desires and so on. Always. This particular one centered (sort of) around an English lutenist coming to the court of the fading, indebted, and occasionally off-his-rocker Christian IV of Denmark. It isn't really about the lutenist though, any more than it is about King Christian, or his morganatic wife Kirsten, or her lady-in-waiting Emilia. And of course all of these characters have Pasts, distant and recent, which are being recounted alternately with bits of the present. I did like it, though, enough to stay up all night to find out whether it ended happily or not.
There were other things I was going to write about, but now I don't want to. Maybe later -- tomorrow, when things that happened today can be yesterday.