Between the good and bad, that's where you'll find me, Reaching for Heaven

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I ran across a list on Wikipedia of what are known as The Northanger Abbey Horrid Novels, the list of crazy-titled books which Isabella recommends to Catherine Morland, and that phrase "The Northanger Abbey Horrid Novels" just struck me as A Good Name For a Band. (Come to find out that the Horrid Novels are real books, thanks to the efforts of an enterprising British librarian who dug around for them, but I digress). They'd be a sort of tongue in cheek geek rock/goth rock band, something between Emillie Autumn and Oingo Boingo (when the lead singer isn't being an idiot between numbers and doing random bad impersonations of Tom Waits, or Till Lindemann of Rammstein). Their first album? "Mysteries of Udolpho". Cuts would include "Rats in the Basement, Bats in the Belfry", "Regency Twihard", "It's 1799, Do You Know What Your Daughter is Reading?", "Murk 'N Peek", and "Murdering Ye Oldie English" as well as covers of The Strawbs' "Lady Fuschia", Oingo Boingo's "Dead Man's Party", Titus Groan's "In the Hall of Bright Carvings", and Emillie Autumn's "I Know Where You Sleep".

Okay, the spammers are getting really irritating. I've gotten multiple spam comments to this one dump of comment_fic entries, so I've had to enable the CAPTCHA on anonymous comments. I have non-friends who comment from other communities that I cross post from and sometimes the odd person from InsaneJournal, so I don't want to shut them out by disabling anon commenting completely.

In more pleasant news, had a father-daughter trip to the Used Book Superstore last night: I found a clever little novel entitled "Letters to a Heroine", based on the premise that Jane Austen is writing an advice column; also found Ovid's "The Art of Love", Marie de France's "Lais", an interesting-looking young adult novel entitled "Parsifal's Page" (based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival"), and most fascinating of all, Liza Dalby's "Geisha", based on the work of an American anthropologist who is the only non-Japanese woman ever to train as and become a geisha. I'd been looking for this one for years without much luck, thus as soon as I spotted it, I snatched it up.

I've mentioned the rimless glasses debacle at Wal-Mart; today, since I was going to the Burlington Mall anyway to finish my Valentine's Day shopping, I decided to price rimless and/or half-rimmed glasses.

And I found a unisex (women's glasses cost more and they're frippier-looking) pair of each for less than $US 200 apiece. Ray-Bans, no less. I'm shocked and delighted and will be buying a pair of each stat. (Once I can scrape the money together).

I'm also stunned at how light they are, too: they make my current metal rims seem heavy and awkward by comparison, so once I actually get them, this might take some getting used to!

Also finished reading Rob Thurmann's "Deathwish"; it's a little looser on plotting than some of the previous books in the series, but that's a small quibble compared to the character development going on here. Though she had me on tenterhooks for a moment, re: my one OTP in the series, in an "Uh oh, me widdle heart is crying" sort of way. I'm curious as to where she's going to take the series next, now that she's finished one major story arc (ala Eric Kripke wrapping the Yellow-Eyed Demon story in the first two seasons of Supernatural), and I'm really looking forward to the next one, coming out in March.

Note to self: see about getting a season pass on Amazon for this season of SPN: I am woefully behind on watching it.

Started reading "Vampire Darcy's Desire" by Regina Jeffers, in earnest: I love the concept and while I have a few carps with the execution (though it's a whole lot better than "Mr. Darcy: Vampire", which more or less randomly pasted fangs on some of the Pride & Prejudice characters [MI FANGZ R PASTED ON YAY]), it's the kind of story that just tickles me in many ways: I've often imagined Wickham as a vampire, but Darcy as a dhampire (ie. a daywalker vampire) just makes it that much inciting.

Checking my email, I've discovered I have three notifications that people have Favorite'd "Red Moon/Akatsuki" in as many days. I'm thinking this is someone telling me that I'd better get on the wire and finish the last chapter of that. Most of it is in the can, it just needs to be typed and edited -- specifically a scene with Bella coming face to face with the King of Hades, and I'm juggling two different versions of Charlie Swan getting The Bad News: one is the more pathos-laden version in which Tatsumi and Mercy Falcone do the honors, the other is the more eerie version in which Charlie gets a phone call from the physician who'd treated Bella after she'd had one of her numerous falls. I'm just not sure which one is going to make the final cut, though I'm inclined to go with the second version, since it allows one to see a certain fellow's kinder and gentler side (while still managing to keep his unsettling air...). Decisions, decisions.... What say you, good readers?

The lovely PBS trailer for Masterpiece Theater's "The Complete Jane Austen", set to a lovely song by Coldplay. I love this clip so much!!

Eeesh, only eight posts in all of February. I feel like I've been neglecting you folks.

Busy day today: I had an appointment with the therapist, as well as some shopping to do at Wal-Mart. I need some new shirts for work. But let me say this:

I hate shopping for clothes.

I can never find things I like in the women's department. I don't know *WHAT* is up with the styles these days, but it seems women are dressing like hootchie-mommas, and that's about the last thing I'd go for. If I was ever going to show more skin than I do, it would be a classic noir-ish femme fatale manner, not like some cheap little tootsie. I couldn't even find any plain cotton tee-shirts that hadn't had the neckline or the sleeves messed with. So I just marched over to the men's department and picked up a few tee shirts and fleece-lined jerseys. I should be set for the season.

Also, made my semi-weekly trip to the Salem Barnes & Noble, where I picked up a collection containing Jane Austen's "Sanditon" and her three notebooks of things she'd jotted when she was a teenager. I've read her hysterical "Love and Freindship" (spelling hers!), which I'd had from the Lowell library, and I was eagerly looking for more of her early writings, which are utterly ridiculous in a good way. Someone needs to film "Love and Freindship", if only as a playful parody of the typical Jane Austen movies, since the book itself is a parody of the novels of manners of the type that she herself would later write. I think that's a testament to how witty our girl was, since she was able to poke fun at herself, as it were...

And yep, the icon is based off the funny-lovely photo from Entertainment Weekly's Most Influential People in Hollywood from a few years back.

Just got myself the perfect Valentine gift for any self-respecting Jane Austen fan who doesn't already have it:

A budget-priced one volume edition of our girl's major novels. Now I have no excuses for catching up!