Things I Like
Jan. 24th, 2008 11:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lesbiassparrowI was going to do one of those posts about things I don't like but then I thought 'well, honestly, I enjoyed a kdrama where not only was there amnesia and eye cancer caused by a car accident but also step-sibling love, an evil step-mother, and a hero who liked to play the piano on the beach, so it's not like my scathing criticism is really worth anything, is it?'
So instead I decided to type out the first 15 things that came into my head that I like to read, watch, and listen to. So you can avoid them.
1. Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. I love this book too much to be coherent really. I think it's a perfect love story in many ways even though I am sure that's not the way most people think of it.
2. Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison. Yes it has dragons and a nurse who can turn herself into a bear and Norse gods but it's not the sort of book you'd think of by that description. It's about a girl who moves through time almost without realizing it and finds not true love but herself and what she wants.
3. Cicero. Yes, he was a bit of a wanker, yes, his politics may have been short sighted but he loved Rome and he wrote the most beautiful Latin prose. Ever. And he was worth more than five Caesars.
4. Melodrama. Amnesia? First love lost? Terminal illnesses? Evil parents? Blindness? Wrong, wrong love? Bring it on, I say. Sadly Western TV has abandoned the melodrama so I must turn to alternate sources like Kdramas and Bollywood.
5. Anthony Trollope. This is probably related to 4. But he also created worlds where I find all the characters perfectly drawn down to all their venial sins.
6. Handel's Julius Caesar. Especially the recording with Janet Baker. It's funny, it's touching and it has a delicious Cleopatra
7. The Iliad. Best poem ever written. And I'm not adding in 'in my opinion.' A poem about the beauty and waste of war that makes the enemy as honourable as the 'heroes.' And has the courage to say that this is really all pointless - but still it's your only option.
8. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. Oh, everything by him. Including (shamefully) the one about how evil the Catholic church is and how Jesuits just want you to never marry so you can leave all your money to the church. Why? Melodrama, delicious melodrama.
9. Period books that actually have a role for the working class beyond being the faithful/evil/stupid servant. Oh right, I haven't read one of those yet. But I bet there's one out there. (ETA: I've just remembered the Anne Perry books. So there's one. Though I do find it strange that books written in the period have less issues about class than books written in the 20th/21st century. Georgette Heyer, I'm looking at you. I've only just read her and that woman is a truly impressive snob.)
10. Manpain. Jason Bourne's is of a fine vintage but I am not exclusive. Bring on the manpain especially in the wake of a true love dying and I am just entranced.
11. Dil Se. I like pretty much any film with Shahrukh Khan in it (Darr excepted) but this one probably above all. Amazing dance numbers, a heart breaking love story and more angst than you can shake a stick at.
12. Sherlock Holmes. "I am Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don't." He can tell you if the man walking across the street has been to China, is a freemason, or beats his wife. He the perfect detective and the books themselves are also a type of love sonnet for London and logic.
13. Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood. I never read anything that made me smile and be so sad at the same time.
14. Strange Brew. The best film about hockey and doughnuts ever made. I AM NOT APOLOGIZING FOR THIS.
15. Raymond Chandler. "She was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window." Sad men who are just good enough to try and right things in a corrupt world that doesn't give a damn. It's got the prejudices of its time but still it manages to not be quite as horrendous about the lower classes as English detective fiction of the same period.
ETA: And why did I not know that Spiderman III was such a dreadful film? Amongst the many things I was traumatized by was Peter Parker looking like a young Hitler when he was in his evil phase. That's just not right, people.
So instead I decided to type out the first 15 things that came into my head that I like to read, watch, and listen to. So you can avoid them.
1. Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. I love this book too much to be coherent really. I think it's a perfect love story in many ways even though I am sure that's not the way most people think of it.
2. Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison. Yes it has dragons and a nurse who can turn herself into a bear and Norse gods but it's not the sort of book you'd think of by that description. It's about a girl who moves through time almost without realizing it and finds not true love but herself and what she wants.
3. Cicero. Yes, he was a bit of a wanker, yes, his politics may have been short sighted but he loved Rome and he wrote the most beautiful Latin prose. Ever. And he was worth more than five Caesars.
4. Melodrama. Amnesia? First love lost? Terminal illnesses? Evil parents? Blindness? Wrong, wrong love? Bring it on, I say. Sadly Western TV has abandoned the melodrama so I must turn to alternate sources like Kdramas and Bollywood.
5. Anthony Trollope. This is probably related to 4. But he also created worlds where I find all the characters perfectly drawn down to all their venial sins.
6. Handel's Julius Caesar. Especially the recording with Janet Baker. It's funny, it's touching and it has a delicious Cleopatra
7. The Iliad. Best poem ever written. And I'm not adding in 'in my opinion.' A poem about the beauty and waste of war that makes the enemy as honourable as the 'heroes.' And has the courage to say that this is really all pointless - but still it's your only option.
8. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. Oh, everything by him. Including (shamefully) the one about how evil the Catholic church is and how Jesuits just want you to never marry so you can leave all your money to the church. Why? Melodrama, delicious melodrama.
9. Period books that actually have a role for the working class beyond being the faithful/evil/stupid servant. Oh right, I haven't read one of those yet. But I bet there's one out there. (ETA: I've just remembered the Anne Perry books. So there's one. Though I do find it strange that books written in the period have less issues about class than books written in the 20th/21st century. Georgette Heyer, I'm looking at you. I've only just read her and that woman is a truly impressive snob.)
10. Manpain. Jason Bourne's is of a fine vintage but I am not exclusive. Bring on the manpain especially in the wake of a true love dying and I am just entranced.
11. Dil Se. I like pretty much any film with Shahrukh Khan in it (Darr excepted) but this one probably above all. Amazing dance numbers, a heart breaking love story and more angst than you can shake a stick at.
12. Sherlock Holmes. "I am Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don't." He can tell you if the man walking across the street has been to China, is a freemason, or beats his wife. He the perfect detective and the books themselves are also a type of love sonnet for London and logic.
13. Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood. I never read anything that made me smile and be so sad at the same time.
14. Strange Brew. The best film about hockey and doughnuts ever made. I AM NOT APOLOGIZING FOR THIS.
15. Raymond Chandler. "She was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window." Sad men who are just good enough to try and right things in a corrupt world that doesn't give a damn. It's got the prejudices of its time but still it manages to not be quite as horrendous about the lower classes as English detective fiction of the same period.
ETA: And why did I not know that Spiderman III was such a dreadful film? Amongst the many things I was traumatized by was Peter Parker looking like a young Hitler when he was in his evil phase. That's just not right, people.
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-25 08:45 am (UTC)Not period so much as classic, but you might like North and South.
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Date: 2008-01-25 08:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-25 09:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-25 11:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-25 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-25 11:17 pm (UTC)The thing is that I am always vaguely surprised that light period books seem to have so little time for anyone who isn't at the high end of the social scale. That's a huge generalization, I know, but I was browsing through Amazon and rather depressed by how 90%+ of the population seems to be just there to be window dressing or possibly an attached servant.
And I also recently read some Heyer for the first time and was a bit astonished to find she's even more convinced that class = quality than books produced during the periods she wrote about.