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bushfire paranoia is go
3 Jan 2012 10:22 amSummer has kicked off its sandals and settled in! It's been around 35 (= 95F) here most days, with thunderstorms in the evenings, and it's been even hotter in Victoria and South Australia. 'Tis the season of total fire bans and most of the population rushing to the edge of the continent and splashing around in the sea.
We make iced tea every day and Tasha the cat can be found sprawled directly underneath an air conditioning vent at all times. It's so hot that the unpleasant idea of turning on the oven has finally outweighed my desire to bake things -- all to the good, Mum's pleaded with me to STOP BAKING for the sake of everyone's waistlines. I don't think she realises how much pent-up baking urge I have after three years in a res college (no oven) and one year in Orange (oven was terrible; burnt the base of everything). The cookies will continue. When it's cooled down a bit.
*
I can't believe I've never read Northanger Abbey before now. Mum & I watched the most recent BBC version (with Felicity Jones, who was Miranda in the Helen-Mirren-as-Prospera Tempest film; she has the most perfect, birdlike ingénue face) and I immediately pounced on the book afterwards. It's HYSTERICAL. Jane Austen goes off on rants mid-page about how undervalued the novel is! Fun is poked at every Gothic romance trope imaginable! Austen, Austen, why did I ever doubt you.
I'm also reading it with, at the back of my mind, all the posts that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sarahtales has been making about the Gothic genre. This post on the Gothic Heroine/Mysterious House pairing is SO TRUE.
Catherine, you fickle vixen, you.
*
There's an exhibition on at the National Library of Australia at the moment which features handwritten manuscripts from a very impressive German collection. I have now seen letters/diary entries/more letters written by Newton! And Kepler! And Einstein! And Darwin! And Goethe and Dickens and Hegel and Kant and Marx and Nietzche and Voltaire and Watt and the dude with the twitching frogs' legs. Galvani. Plus musical scores written by Handel and Bach and Mozart and Schubert --
Actually, there was a book of Goethe's poems set to music by Schubert; the blurb on the exhibit said that apparently Schubert sent it off to Goethe with a polite note asking if he could dedicate it to the poet. Goethe returned it without comment. BURN.
*
I start work in two weeks. I expect I have already forgotten half of my medical degree.
We make iced tea every day and Tasha the cat can be found sprawled directly underneath an air conditioning vent at all times. It's so hot that the unpleasant idea of turning on the oven has finally outweighed my desire to bake things -- all to the good, Mum's pleaded with me to STOP BAKING for the sake of everyone's waistlines. I don't think she realises how much pent-up baking urge I have after three years in a res college (no oven) and one year in Orange (oven was terrible; burnt the base of everything). The cookies will continue. When it's cooled down a bit.
*
I can't believe I've never read Northanger Abbey before now. Mum & I watched the most recent BBC version (with Felicity Jones, who was Miranda in the Helen-Mirren-as-Prospera Tempest film; she has the most perfect, birdlike ingénue face) and I immediately pounced on the book afterwards. It's HYSTERICAL. Jane Austen goes off on rants mid-page about how undervalued the novel is! Fun is poked at every Gothic romance trope imaginable! Austen, Austen, why did I ever doubt you.
I'm also reading it with, at the back of my mind, all the posts that
sarahtales has been making about the Gothic genre. This post on the Gothic Heroine/Mysterious House pairing is SO TRUE.Her passion for ancient edifices was next in degree to her passion for Henry Tilney - and castles and abbies made usually the charm of those reveries which his image did not fill.
Catherine, you fickle vixen, you.
*
There's an exhibition on at the National Library of Australia at the moment which features handwritten manuscripts from a very impressive German collection. I have now seen letters/diary entries/more letters written by Newton! And Kepler! And Einstein! And Darwin! And Goethe and Dickens and Hegel and Kant and Marx and Nietzche and Voltaire and Watt and the dude with the twitching frogs' legs. Galvani. Plus musical scores written by Handel and Bach and Mozart and Schubert --
Actually, there was a book of Goethe's poems set to music by Schubert; the blurb on the exhibit said that apparently Schubert sent it off to Goethe with a polite note asking if he could dedicate it to the poet. Goethe returned it without comment. BURN.
*
I start work in two weeks. I expect I have already forgotten half of my medical degree.
