lady_schrapnell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lady_schrapnell) wrote2006-09-01 06:23 pm
lady_schrapnell) wrote2006-09-01 06:23 pm
Not dropped off the face of the earth... yet.
Though it might have seemed awfully like it. Went to Bristol to see the new house (v. nice!) and then Charlie came here for a good long stay. We never got to Kilkenny, which I've been talking about for ages, and my sister (the latest in the string of nearest & d... to be worryingly unwell) didn't make it here to meet Charlie, but other than that it was all good.
Before and After, there was a lot of the usual getting stuff for Younger Daughter's return to school (brief pause while I complain about the fact that the schoolchild pass which enabled her to travel to and from school for €4 a week is no longer valid now that she's 16, but the student card is only for people in 3rd level education. The cost difference is significant too - €10 instead of €4. ) and lamenting the actual return to school, but I am very impressed with the prescribed texts for the English Honours Leaving Cert - on the whole, a really interesting bunch of books, films and plays. And My Oedipus Complex and Other Stories is on - yay! Other than that, they do tend to the bleak and tragic, but still good. NOT so good is the fact that a new poetry anthology is printed every bloody year, though most of the poets seem the same as when Older Daughter took it. Not cheap either. When I think of the thirty-year run of Soundings....
And then we lost all phone service (and obviously internet also) for a couple of days. Not happy!
Moving away from the local stuff, but still in life-aside-from-current-reading area - I am now officially registered for the Children's Lit MA! Another big yay. Though the excellent course convener and tutor has just gone on study leave. Sigh.
Anyway, haven't been getting through that many books lately, for some reason, though I have been doing my Reading with Intent, with great pleasure. (Charlie called it smithing, which made me laugh - and I hope isn't minded by the author!) Did read The Shape-Changer's Wife, though I think I've still not done a BC journal for it - ack (will do it, I promise!) - and was much more impressed than I'd expected, given some of the previous journal entries. (Though I should have just trusted T's opinion and not worried!) Very good. I succumbed once again to the 3 for 2 on all children's books offer in Waterstone's , and got Enna Burning (knowing that Shannon Hale had a new one coming out and that Goose Girl is now officially first of a trilogy), Laurie Halse Anderson's Prom, since I thought Speak was so excellent, and Does My Head Look Big in This, because I'd heard good things about it. Prom went to YD first and I started with Does My Head - of which I've only managed 70-some pages. I so wanted to like it and so couldn't if something major depended on it. I might manage to finish it - in short installments - just so I can say I stuck with it (and on the faint possibility it might improve - a lot), but on the other hand, life's looking shorter by the minute and why waste it reading something so ... painful? Went on to Enna Burning instead.
Seem to have said 'proper report on recent reads soon' a few times without follow-up lately, but proper report...
Before and After, there was a lot of the usual getting stuff for Younger Daughter's return to school (brief pause while I complain about the fact that the schoolchild pass which enabled her to travel to and from school for €4 a week is no longer valid now that she's 16, but the student card is only for people in 3rd level education. The cost difference is significant too - €10 instead of €4. ) and lamenting the actual return to school, but I am very impressed with the prescribed texts for the English Honours Leaving Cert - on the whole, a really interesting bunch of books, films and plays. And My Oedipus Complex and Other Stories is on - yay! Other than that, they do tend to the bleak and tragic, but still good. NOT so good is the fact that a new poetry anthology is printed every bloody year, though most of the poets seem the same as when Older Daughter took it. Not cheap either. When I think of the thirty-year run of Soundings....
And then we lost all phone service (and obviously internet also) for a couple of days. Not happy!
Moving away from the local stuff, but still in life-aside-from-current-reading area - I am now officially registered for the Children's Lit MA! Another big yay. Though the excellent course convener and tutor has just gone on study leave. Sigh.
Anyway, haven't been getting through that many books lately, for some reason, though I have been doing my Reading with Intent, with great pleasure. (Charlie called it smithing, which made me laugh - and I hope isn't minded by the author!) Did read The Shape-Changer's Wife, though I think I've still not done a BC journal for it - ack (will do it, I promise!) - and was much more impressed than I'd expected, given some of the previous journal entries. (Though I should have just trusted T's opinion and not worried!) Very good. I succumbed once again to the 3 for 2 on all children's books offer in Waterstone's , and got Enna Burning (knowing that Shannon Hale had a new one coming out and that Goose Girl is now officially first of a trilogy), Laurie Halse Anderson's Prom, since I thought Speak was so excellent, and Does My Head Look Big in This, because I'd heard good things about it. Prom went to YD first and I started with Does My Head - of which I've only managed 70-some pages. I so wanted to like it and so couldn't if something major depended on it. I might manage to finish it - in short installments - just so I can say I stuck with it (and on the faint possibility it might improve - a lot), but on the other hand, life's looking shorter by the minute and why waste it reading something so ... painful? Went on to Enna Burning instead.
Seem to have said 'proper report on recent reads soon' a few times without follow-up lately, but proper report...
no subject
I'm far too frazzled to be anyway coherent atm, but part of my reason for wanting to read the book, once I heard about it, was the desire to hear why someone would choose to wear the hijab and their experience doing so. Because I do feel uneasy about the fact of women being forced to wear it, even though this isn't always the case, of course. Complicated!
And then it gets complicated when you think how many teen girls are going to be harrassed *anyway* - certainly by mean teens - which doesn't make it okay to give someone a hard time for expressing their religious beliefs, of course - not saying that. See - wasn't joking about lack of coherence.
But - minor quibble - she went to the Catholic school because the nearest Islamic one was too far & her parents couldn't do the travelling to take her - and then says 'plus' the values were similar. So it wasn't first choice. But it's good - I'd a friend from grad school in Ithaca who got a job teaching at a Catholic school and said many (non-Catholics) were sending their children there to avoid mixing with ethnic minorities. *That* is bad.