How is it that Mondays manage to sneak up so fast on a person? I mean, one minute it’s Friday afternoon at 4 and whamo! the alarm clock is going off. Usually Mondays aren’t that busy for me, but today was pretty much work, work, work. What’s up with that? I hope everyone had a nice weekend. I got a good deal of schoolwork in, I watched a wonderful movie (Lars and the Real Girl), we had our first frost of the season, and Bookman and I took a lovely walk around the lake where we dodged goose poo and joggers and admired the changing trees. And of course I read.
I finished volume three of Virginia Woolf’s diary. I am happy about this because it had been languishing on my nightstand for over a year. I am not certain how one properly reviews a diary, but I’ll mull it over and see what I can come up with.
I also did some seasonal reading and read a couple more M.R. James stories. I am halfway through another and when I am done I will do a three-story sort of review on them.
I also happily downloaded Edith Wharton’s story collection The Descent of Man which contains the story “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell,” rumored to be wonderfully frightening. Danielle has read this one and hopefully she remembers it well enough that we can compare notes. There is a TV movie of it too that gets a decent rating in the Internet Movie Database. Unfortunately Netflix does not have it so I guess I am out of luck. Wait! I lied, they do have it. It helps if you look it up under the title of the series it belongs to and not individually. I feel some Halloween weekend fun will be had.
I am now entering week three of my school quarter (on a side note, I applied for graduation last week – squee!). Digital preservation is filled with all kinds of sticky and interesting problems so the reading for this class is rather enjoyable. A good many of my classmates are in the archival studies track so they have a slightly different perspective on things than the usual librarian approach. Last week saw a lively discussion on whether or not it was okay to “hack” your sources in order to preserve them. In the example that facilitated the discussion a magazine sent out a diskette with a poem on it that was readable only once. Someone hacked the disk in order to save the poem. Issues of copyright and ethics and the intent of the artist and our inability to know now what might be valuable in the future were delved into. Of course there is no resolution, only much food for thought.
That’s my reading world right now. Oh, and I am still intending to do a write-up of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. With luck it will make an appearance this week. Now to go snuggle in with my laptop and homework.
Congratulations on your application for graduation – how exciting!
Woohoo!! Sooo exciting!
Speaking of languishing in the bedside table, we’ve been here for maybe three weeks and already I have piles of books next to the bed. I swore this would not happen… alas.
That sounds like a lovely weekend and how exciting (and relieving) to have graduation in sight! Really glad to hear that this module is interesting – that makes it all go by much faster.
Squeeee! Well done Stephanie!
Congratulations on registering for graduation – must be a great feeling!! Looking forward to your review of Dangerous Liaisons, I am also reading it at the moment.
Your posts always make me want to pull out my high brow books, which usually sit firmly at the bottom of my pile on my nightstand. I’ve wanted to read VW’s diaries from the beginning, too, but never seem to get around to them. Yay–someone can finally explain that Edith Wharton story to me. I will try and read it this weekend again as I checked out her collection of ghost stories from the library. I just remember being perplexed by it–I was obviously missing something! I came so close to reading M.R. James last weekend but couldn’t decide which one so I read something entirely different. Congrats on applying for graduation–you’re so close to finishing–isn’t it a wonderful thought!
Fiona, thanks! The actual graduating won’t be taking place until the end of May next year, but it isn’t that far off.
Daphne, thanks! I can hardly wait. Now that you have a house you will have the pleasure of little book piles all over the place
Litlove, the closer graduation gets the more restless I become. Now hopefully the economy will have recovered sufficiently that there will be jobs.
Maggie, thanks!
Willa, thank you. It is a great feeling. It has been a long time coming. We shall have to compare notes on the book!
I’ve finished my first M.R. James story too, “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”, and quite enjoyed it. My Edith Wharton collection had the story in that you’ve mentioned but I chose “Miss Mary Pask”, which was delightfully creepy. When I’m reading the old-fashioned stories, I like them best; when I’m reading the contemporary ones, I like *them* best. Easily satisfied!
Danielle, your own reading choices aren’t exactly always light and easy! I considered picking up vol 4 of VW’s diary but I think I would like to do some reading of her fiction first. It’s fun to have read what she writes about. We’ll see though. I hope to get to the Wharton story by the weekend so we will compare notes. And thanks, it’s weird having graduation on the horizon.
Buried in Print, I just read that James story! I loved it too. I will make a note that Miss Mary Pask is creepy and try to find the time to read it.
Your park sounds just like ours, especially the goose poo! I’m quite shocked about the frost though. Isn’t it just a few weeks since you were languishing in horrendous heat?
I’m looking forward to what you have to say about Les Liaisons D.
I’m envious that you’ve already had your first frost (yes, I am weird that way), but maybe we’ll see some of that in Maine soon. Sounds like a fantastic weekend to me. If you like the Edith Wharton, get her collection of ghost stories — one of my all-time favorite ghost story collections. Congratulations on applying for graduation!
Sounds like a nice weekend! Congrats on applying for graduation — the end is in sight! Now I’m going to go read your posts on the books you finished …
Katrina, this time of year the goose poo is everywhere it seems. The hot was over at the beginning of September and we have been having gorgeous fall weather. Our average first frost date is Oct. 5th. It was a very light frost though so it just killed the delicate things, the hardy fall asters and mums are still going strong.
Emily, it was a light frost and since then we’ve been having an “Indian summer.” today we might reach 80! The last hurrah. It will likely be turning cold by the end of the month. Thanks for the tip about the Wharton ghost story collection.
Dorothy, thanks! The is in sight which is making it difficult to concentrate at times.