There's only so many ways of saying that life is so ridiculously busy that it's impossible even to keep up with the things that I like to do, this blog for example. This week I've got two more freelance assignments to get to after one that I handed in earlier in the week (holler to Scarbie for the work!), my RRHB's web redesign (which is going really well), a full-time job, Christmas shopping (thankfully almost done), knitting (come on, it's relaxing!) and babysitting. And surprisingly, this is a quiet week.
Annywaay, what I have been doing is trying like crazy to finish up some classics for the 1001 Books challenge by the end of the year. One book in particular, Middlemarch, so I can cross at least one massive classic off the list. In my ballistic state, I bought a copy of the Penguin classic only to discover a second-hand version on my shelf, and then I decided that it'd be easier to read the 900-odd page book on my Sony Reader because then I wouldn't have to cart the giant book around everywhere. Let me just say that it comes up at 1800+ pages when dumped in ebook format from Project Gutenberg so even though it's a quicker read, it's still a bit daunting.
But I'm loving it. I've totally decided that not all Victorians deserve to be abolished to the dusty bins at used bookstores and university course lists. The book is engaging, has great dialogue and effortlessly shows Eliot's irony (writing of women who have no opinions whilst being a woman who obviously had many opinions) in surprisingly refreshing ways. I'm already thinking of what my life would have been like had I married the first person I fell for when I was Dorothea's age. Of course, now that I've started watching the impeccable Brideshead Revisited with Jeremy Irons, I'm wondering if there's some sort of miniseries I can buy for Middlemarch too.
Sigh.
Obsessions are just so expensive.
Other classics I dumped on the Sony Reader: Dracula, Dead Souls, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Mansfield Park. Combined, it's well over 5,000 pages so I'm not sure I'll get through even one of them by the end of the year, but still, I love my Sony Reader.
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3 comments:
there is a Middlemarch BBC series and it is excellent: albeit much shorter and compact than the novel. however, it still clocks in at five or six hours. It is available most places. I think it was made in the mid-90s
The cast is magnificent: in particular, Rufus Sewell as a young Will Ladislaw.
I really enjoyed it
( and I am a Victorian lit nut, so I am happy that you like Eliot!)
Here ya go:
http://shop.wgbh.org/product/show/8944
I'll have to add Middlemarch to my reading list soon! You'll enjoy Dracula. I've got Dorian in the lineup as well.
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