I thought it gave a much clearer sense of how the friends and relatives of a high- spirited young woman of wealth might worry about the particular dangers her situation would pose for her. I have to confess that Emma is not my favorite Austen novel so maybe I didn't mind quite so much seeing it boiled down to the the essential story. Didn't much warm to the "chicken rustling" scenes...although this dramatization made the income and social rank gaps among the various characters very clear, which made the story easier to understand.
I also very much liked the decision to explore the complexities of Sense and Sensibility with a two-part version that captured all the nuances of a mother and sisters suddenly fallen from a great height by one of those pesky wills that leave impoverished women at the mercy of unsympathetic relatives.
I'm looking forward to the conclusion tonight (Sun. April 6).
Returning to the somewhat-less-distant past of 1978--
From March 2 to April 5, 2008 I read:
Lady Oracle, Margaret Atwood
I clearly recall reading this book because it was the first time I found a novelist who openly discussed some of the repercussions of being a fat little kid. The book made me very uncomfortable though, and her other books have approached women's lives from a point of view that depressed me so much that I have shied away from her books since.
The Trees, Conrad Richter
The Fields, Conrad Richter
The Town, Conrad Richter
My note: Very moving, gorgeous old-timey talk
I saw the three part miniseries with Elizabeth Montgomery (yes, from Bewitched), and Hal Holbrook. It set me off reading the Richter trilogy, which was well worth it.
This site goes into how Pulitzer-Prize-winning Richter researched and intuited how people lived, and thought, and spoke on the Ohio frontier during the pioneering that he wrote about
About Richter
Life after Life, Raymond A. Moody, Jr., M.D.
My note: Foreword by note death groupie, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, M.D.
I don't remember why I was feeling snarky about Kubler-Ross, I did like the book.
Moody's website
Blye, Private Eye, Nicholas Pileggi
The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper, John D. McDonald
Laidlaw, William McIlvanney
McIlvanney is still publishing
How to Save Your Own Life, Erica Jong
A Book of Common Prayer, Joan Didion
My note: Quite boring, but at least short
A Family Affair: The Margaret and Tony Story, Roger Hutchinson & Gary Kahn
Valentines and Vitriol, Rex Reed
My note: Good for people with short attention spans. But some amusing lines, e.g. "Japanese Emperor Hirohito, just interviewed on his 50th wedding anniversary, was asked 'what do you regard as your greatest mistake?' His answer: 'World War II.'"
The Woman Warrior, Memoirs of a Girlhood Among the Ghosts, Maxine Hong Kingston
Some interesting and valuable things she has been doing
Kingston on Moyers Journal
From March 2 to April 5, 2008 I read:
House of Whispers, Margaret Lucke
Couldn't put it down, definitely a page turning ghost story (must note that for me it wasn't scary, just suspenseful).Review
Neuromancer, William Gibson
William Gibson
Silicon Noir--Reading this author's groundbreaking 1986 book so long after most people have provides an odd perspective. I can see how much of his work has been borrowed and expanded upon, for example in The Matrix. But the echoes I got from were from noir books that it hearkens back to like Nathaniel West, even Chandler. Hammett, Heinlein, Jim Thompson and William Burroughs..
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