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Parkles

Parkles

"Some say life is the thing, I prefer reading."

I am a devoted anglophile (I make one mean Steak and Kidney Pie), I brew ale, cider and mead, drink tea by the gallon (loose leaf Ceylon and Assam from Harney and Sons) and can whip up some killer syllabub (though I prefer to use brandy over Sherry).
Besides reading, one of my... more »
  • Bend, OR, USA
  • member since February 19 2008

Parkles’s last login was 1 hour ago. show recent activity »

Books I've read

     
 
 
 

Public Notes

  • Chrissi W

    Chrissi W says

    Friend! Give me your schedule again so we can have a little date. The next 10 weeks are shaping up to be very akin to torture in that I will always be tired, stressed, slightly confused, and in pain. But that's graduate school, right? Regardless, I am determined at some point to to enjoy your charming and witty company despite all the forces in the universe trying to keep me from you!

    posted 3 hours ago. ( send a note )
  • Hope N

    Hope N says

    Oh NO! I can't believe you cut all the fat off the goose! That must have been hard to do! And very very dry. I have a big jar of goose fat in the fridge now and I'm a happy happy bunny. I sautéd broccoli in it last night. Is anything not improved by being sautéd in goose fat? (Maybe one or two things, but still...) Congrats to your husband for his first Christmas dinner!

    Let's see...the stars in the wine dept for me were a montbazillac (a cooked, sweet wine) we had with foie gras and also with dessert, and a gigondas (a robust red wine) we had with the goose. I like wines with a strong character! The chestnut soup was delicious and the recipe will definitely be going on my blog if you'd like to try it out and pretend to be a hobbit.

    I'm glad you liked David Copperfield. Aunt Betsy is definitely my favorite. And Uriah Heep scared the bajeezes out of me when I was 7, and - who am I kidding - when I was 20 too!

    I'm never a big New Year's Resolutions person. Often a couple times in the year though I sit down and write out goals or intentions for the next couple months. It helps me focus, I think, but I don't want to have to beat myself up over them. Most of my intentions this year are tending towards theater projects: a show that's going up in two weeks, another that's in the planning stage that I hope we'll have dates for soon, and a director who I really want to work with, and am planning on pestering until he gives me a role in one of his shows ;-) Also I intend to get a bunch of the poems I've written this year out of the jotted-down-on-the-back-of-a-receipt stage and edit them and do something with them. Not sure what yet...

    I'd love to see your 2010 book list when it's ready! I'm always loathe to set reading goals because I don't want it to feel like work and I go through periods of wanting to read wildly different things and get more reading done if I go with the flow...
    By the way, did you end up getting my message with my address?

    posted 6 days ago. ( send a note )
  • Hope N

    Hope N says

    Merry Christmas Kaisha!
    That sounds like fun. I'll imagine that too.
    What I'll actually be doing is learning how to roast a goose with a foodie friend while our significant others sit at the table and rub their bellies expectantly ;-) Oh and there will be lots of wine involved. And chestnut soup. And potatoes cooked in goose fat. And did I mention wine? Lots. My friend is a pastry chef, so she's doing dessert: her twist on the traditional French "buche de Noël"... mmm...
    I hope you have a lovely Christmas!
    :-) Hope

    posted 10 days ago. ( send a note )
  • Hope N

    Hope N says

    Sorry for being so unresponsive these days - Christmas preparations have me going a bit crazy. I'm spending Christmas in Paris for the first time, and had to get all my presents for family quite early so that they'd get there in time! What are you all doing for the holidays? Have you gotten your applications in yet?

    Actually the music video was fun, mostly because the director and tech crew were really nice - and so was the band we were making the video for - and that makes a HUGE difference. It's true that in movies you spent most of your time waiting for a shot to be set up, then giving it your all for a matter of seconds and waiting again. It's important to be in good company. What kind of short movies/documentaries has your husband done?

    And how's David?

    Marcel is obsessed with the Guermantes and their wonderful nobility. It's grating! He can be quite classist (is that a word?). I haven't heard of Monsieur Proust, but it sounds interesting. I agree with you - I'd rather know more about the man AFTER reading his work and not be trying to compare the two at first.

    posted 2 weeks ago. ( send a note )
  • Mel E. aka Love Lee Hart Tynkkler

    Mel E. aka Love Lee Hart Tynkkler says

    Thank you for requesting friendship! Oh my we have not just books in common, but cooking and teas as well! My family and I love Harney and Sons loose leaf teas. We could get together and drink gallons together. ;-) I love your avatar! That is really a whimsical picture. Well being the book fanatic I am, I'm going to end here and look at your shelves.
    Mel
    aka Love Lee Hart Tynkkler
    xx

    posted 2 weeks ago. ( send a note )
  • Hope N

    Hope N says

    I spoke too quickly I think, both for the cold and for Proust. I was outdoors all day yesterday shooting as an extra in a music video and it was freeeeezing! This morning there were snowflakes (for all of about five minutes - but still, unusual for Paris).

    Not having time to decide what to read next when I woke up at 5:30 to get to the shoot on time (I'm lucky I don't have to milk cows because I am NOT operational that early), I grabbed Le côté de Guermantes II. My troubles with the narrator haven't subsided though. I mean I'm still bowled over by sentences now and then that are so true and beautiful, but he has quite limited views on friendship - that it's just a way to distract one from oneself and has no true value of its own like romantic love does. And seems to think that romantic love (in his case, obsession) is an end in itself.

    What do you want to study in grad school? Are you looking in OR?

    posted 3 weeks ago. ( send a note )
  • Hope N

    Hope N says

    P.S. After reading your review of Jane Eyre - I'm curious... I read it as a teenager too and it was one of my favorite books ever. I wonder if I would like it less now...

    posted 3 weeks ago. ( send a note )
  • Hope N

    Hope N says

    I think Paris is a bit like London for winter weather - damp and rainy, upper 40s - 50s. Not too cold compared to upstate NY where I was in college. There it got down to -20 (not often, but still)! Regularly in the winter, the college would send out frostbite warnings telling us not to be outside for more than 15 minutes at a time. If your class was on the other side of campus, you had to run :-)

    I've been wanting to catch up on my Shakespeare too. I'm especially lax on the histories, which I see are some of your favs! I do love Henry V (but haven't read the other Henries), and I just saw my dad play Richard III over Thanksgiving (not his day job, but he regularly works with a Shakespeare company in the area), which was pretty cool. I like Julius Caesar a lot, although that maybe because I had a crush on the teacher who taught it to us in 9th grade... Mostly I'm familiar with his comedies and tragedies. Hamlet's my favorite - can't beat the angst in that play! And A Midsummer Night's Dream. I also saw a great version of Taming of the Shrew at the Comédie Française in Paris last year. Often their stuff is very classic but this was directed by a Lithuanian director who was a guest there and he's great. The production was so full of life and definitely sexual tension! It was like the main characters were playing this great cat and mouse game and at the end, you weren't entirely sure who had won.

    As for Marcel, I've been taking a break and I can't decide if I'm ready to go back or not. It's funny because it's one of those things where when I'm reading it, I can't get into anything else, but I've been reading lighter/plot-driven stuff and now I'm finding it hard to get back into it. Maybe also because the narrator is being a bit annoying, running after all these different women - very teenage boy. How are you doing with it?

    posted 3 weeks ago. ( send a note )
  • Hope N

    Hope N says

    How's your inner ear doing? I can imagine that must be quite disorienting!

    I know what you mean about Dickens and women. He's very entrenched in the views of his time period about them, which is unfortunate because he manages to criticize and satire a number of other of society's problems quite well. I had a professor in college who wrote a book called In Search of a Dickensian Heroine: Angels, Fallen Sisters and Eccentric Women (I didn't actually read it - I should!), in which she talks about that paradox and identifies the three categories that Dickensian women fall into. She had a weak spot for Dickens' eccentrics like Miss Trotwood in D.C. (I have to say I do too), but his angels (like David's mother, and Agnes) are unbearably stereotyped, as are the fallen sisters. I think it's his eccentric characters in general that make his books so endearing. But I'm with you on George Eliot. Can't argue there.

    Oh, I saw someone carrying Far From the Madding Crowd onto the plane to France and immediately accosted him with "That's one of my favorite books!" He said he was reading it because one of HIS favorite books was Jude the Obscure and I was like "Really?! I just finished it!" It was a lovely Hardy bonding moment between two strangers - to the annoyance of the rest of the people trying to get on the airplane :-) I haven't read The Trumpet Major, but I'll have to make that my next Hardy.

    So do you have a favorite Shakespeare play? Sometimes I find it hard to tell with plays until you see them well-done on stage. It makes such a difference from reading them.

    posted 1 month ago. ( send a note )
  • Hope N

    Hope N says

    Hey Kaisha - Sorry for taking so long to write this time. Thanksgiving was a bit crazy with family. I just got back from the States yesterday and am completely jet lagged for the moment. Plus Marcel and I got caught in a downpour on the walk home from babysitting today with no hat or umbrella. He's a bit warped and I'm sniffling, so I'm drinking plenty of tea to warm up and hoping his pages don't stick!

    How's Dickens? I finished Jude the Obscure. That's some good quality tragedy! I actually quite liked it. I wanted to slap Sue though. Often. And I thought it was too bad that it seemed to give the message that a liberated, independant woman would be asexual if she could be. Come on, men, we still have a sexuality when you're NOT in the room. Not to get on a feminist kick or anything but it seems Hardy was going that way and I guess was limited by his time period...

    Speaking of Jude and tragedies, I saw Jude Law in Hamlet in NY over Thanksgiving and I'm completely in love. I'm pretty critical when it comes to Hamlet (and when it comes to movie stars on stage for that matter). It's one of my favorite plays and I've seen about 5 or 6 different versions of it, but his performance was stunning. He's extremely generous in his emotions with the audience. You felt like you were Hamlet's best friend and each of his soliloquies was a direct appeal to your judgment. I was quite impressed.

    How was your Thanksgiving?
    -Hope

    posted 1 month ago. ( send a note )
  • Laurel H

    Laurel H says

    Parkles, I've read all of Trollope's Barchester novels and will surely reread them sometime. I'm just starting now on the Pallisers, though I did read Phineas Finn a few years ago. Trollope is a delight. It certainly has been a Northwestern day today.

    posted 1 month ago. ( send a note )
  • Laurel H

    Laurel H says

    Parkles, my dear friend! (And close neighbor, relatively speaking--I live in Ferndale, Washington, USA.) Thanks for liking my reviews.

    posted 1 month ago. ( send a note )
  • Frabjous Day

    Frabjous Day says

    So thrilling that you loved "Bleak House"; what a brilliant novel. One of my guilty secrets is that I really love Mrs Jellyby.

    posted 1 month ago. ( send a note )
  • Lord Manleigh

    Lord Manleigh says

    A very happy Thanksgiving to you and the Rev. Septimus, Parkles, dear.

    posted 1 month ago. ( send a note )
  • Hope N

    Hope N says

    Yeah, I figured since I want to read pretty much everything Hardy, I'd should "get Jude out of the way". Of course, it's not too much of a burden since I'm thoroughly enjoying the writing. I'm only about 1/2 way but I made a friend tell me what happens because I don't like to be surprised by horrible things. It's why I love classic tragedy, but have a harder time with depressing realism. Still, there's something comforting about the world of 19th century lit where we know for sure Arabella is duplicitous because she has fake hair, and that Sue is not entirely moral because she buys statuettes of Greek gods! It all makes lots of sense!

    I just got to the US to spend Thanksgiving with my family. And of course I left my Stephen Dunn in Paris, so that'll have to be for when I get back. I brought Jude and the next Proust - you know, so I'll have something light to read afterwards ;-)

    Mmm, martini's and gumbo sounds good...

    posted 1 month ago. ( send a note )
  • Hope N

    Hope N says

    Nothing but Proust for 6 weeks? That sounds lovely. I feel I could easily become someone who starts sentences with "Proust says..." if I didn't fear sounding a bit snobby.

    That Dumas quote pretty much describes the weather in Paris right now to a t! "Humide et boueux," - yep, that's what it's like outside. An oasis sounds awfully nice. Do you have a bilingual edition?
    I don't see what's not to like about Jane Austen. I mean, come on. People are silly. You've seen the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice right? I used to spend whole afternoons on a school vacation knitting in front of it.

    My sister sent me some poems by Stephen Dunn that I've been reading and enjoying. Have you read anything by him. If not, I'll copy a poem or two for you! Also, I started reading Jude the Obscure. I'm afraid it will depress me, but then again, there's nothing quite like a good tragedy. Written in Hardy prose. The preface (written by Hardy) is pretty brilliant. There's one from the time it was published, and another from a second publication 16 years later where he talks about people's reactions. Half the people who talked about it found it too shocking and the other half read it expecting to be shocked and found it moralistic! Probably a sign he did a good job.
    "Then there was the case of the lady who having shuddered at the book in an influential article bearing intermediate headlines of horror, and printed in a world-read journal, wrote to me shortly afterwards that it was her desire to make my acquaintance."

    Have you tried any of your Finnish books yet?

    posted 2 months ago. ( send a note )
  • Hope N

    Hope N says

    P.S. Oh yes, from what I can tell Zola is quite popular in France. I hate to admit I haven't read him...yet... I'm scared he'll depress me. Realism sometimes has that effect :-)

    -Hope

    posted 2 months ago. ( send a note )
  • Hope N

    Hope N says

    Oh I miss snow! It hardly snows in Paris. Hope you're staying warm.

    Isn't that terrible how required reading puts you off books so completely! Why do you think that is? I mean we love reading, so that's clearly not the problem. I think that effect wears off a bit in college though, partly because you get to choose (more or less) the subjects you study and take classes where you're predisposed to like the reading list! Proust COULD appeal to teenagers I think, especially the teen love parts, not Swanns Way so much.

    Haven't read any Anthony Trollope. You'll have to let me know what you think when you get around to it. I think both Zola and Balzac are read in the French national curriculum. I've only read bits of Balzac for my French degree and they didn't make much of an impression either way. My partner can't stand him and a close (French) friend of mine who loves classic French lit, says he's "dusty", so that's not very encouraging. Have you read him?

    I'm having trouble deciding what to read next. I've been reading I'm A Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson, but it's a series of articles so I can't really read it front to back in one go like a novel. I have piles of books to read, but none of them quite as appealing as more Proust... Last year, when my partner's father was dying of cancer, I read an exorbitant amount of fantasy, detective novels and other books that whisk you away to other worlds because I couldn't really concentrate on anything else. I think the pendulum is swinging the other way because now all I want is classic lit. I'm reading Pride and Prejudice out loud to my partner because she's never read any Jane Austen and that's just unacceptable. English is not her native language so Victorian syntax is a bit hard for her to navigate, but reading it together means I can explain quickly when there's confusion (my parents gave her A Tale of Two Cities last Christmas and she cursed them the whole way through, even though she liked it. Not an easy read!).

    posted 2 months ago. ( send a note )
  • Lord Manleigh

    Lord Manleigh says

    My dear Parkles, I recommend you read "Cooking with Fernet Branca" - I think you'd get a kick out of it.

    posted 2 months ago. ( send a note )
  • Hope N

    Hope N says

    Glad you like my blog. That means a lot coming from a fellow foodie. Mmm, fresh cheese right from the cow! Now I'm sad that you live half way around the world from me (I guess the exact other side of the world is more like Hawaii, but close...) I bet that calf is cute. I thought baby cows were born more in spring... or is it all year round?

    "Perhaps that's why real novels are as rare/As winter thunder or a polar bear." - Ah how true. Like the excerpt. At the back of my edition of The Guermantes Way I there's an annex with a bunch of documents including some of Proust's correspondence, most of which he spends trying to convince different people that he didn't base his characters on them or, in some cases, that he did. :-) In one letter, this wonderful exchange (rough translation by me): "Many people believe I based Saint-Loup on Albuféra, but I wouldn't have dreamed of such a thing. Come to think of it, he probably thinks so himself, that must be why he's so annoyed with me..." Oh Marcel.

    Glad you're appreciating D.C. a bit more this time around. I haven't gone back to read most authors I decided I didn't like early on... but I probably should... I guess Hardy falls into that category though. I wasn't ready to read him when we had to in 7th grade and I was depressed by Tess so I decided I didn't like him. But I just wasn't old enough... I think one really does have to read books at the right time to appreciate them. Proust often gets a bad rap in France because the beginning of Swann's Way (where he talks about waiting for his mother to come kiss him goodnight) is part of the national curriculum at the beginning of high school and I'm ready to believe it doesn't appeal to most 15-year-olds! (Not to be ageist, obviously the "right time" can be very different for different people...)

    So has your Guermantes way recovered from the wine. And have you?

    posted 2 months ago. ( send a note )