vodkafan

True! I didn't intend to entangle the two. My mind went off in a different direction sorry. "Puke a buzzard." That's great. I have to use that phrase..

Surpassing The Love Of Men 4/5 Lillian Faderman This feminist author is quite famous apparently but must be getting on a bit now. Anyway this book was quite useful for background for the patriarchal society that Victorian women had to put up with and struggle against. The 19th century was the part I was most interested in of course, but it travels from the end of the 17th through to near the end of the 20th. It is always a danger when writing a novel to put contemporary ideas and motivations into characters heads when society- and therefore people's internalized views - was based on completely different precepts. I think it will help me a lot. Anyway I think I have put the cart before the horse in this review and not explained what the book is about! It's basically about women's relationships with each other and how they changed over 300 years. Any reader of Jane Austen will know that "romantic friendships" were very real and important to women in this era. Women didn't just write flowery love letters to each other because it sounded good. Because women had virtually no power in this time-their lives and marriages and property were completely run by men- these relationships were their moral support. Nowadays they would call it a support structure or network. These women really did love each other and formed relationships that lasted lifetimes. But they were love relationships not sexual relationships. It was considered an ideal and pure love. Men also had the same sort of thing going on and love letters of the time exist between men too, all completely innocent. (Remenber "Kiss me Hardy" by Admiral Nelson?) This innocence reached a high point during the Victorian age when the society of men and women became almost completely segregated and homes were even divided into male and female rooms, so the importance of these relationships became even more essential. It was possible, if a woman did not manage to marry, that she would spend her whole life in the company of other women without hardly ever seeing a man who wasn't a father or brother. Can you imagine this happening today?! This all changed at the very end of the 19th century because of Freud (he has a lot to answer for) who seemed obsessed with sex to be honest. I never liked him and I like him less after reading this. I lay it on his carpet that society nowadays is so sexualized. Anyway,in the public mind in the space of only thirty or so years everybody became aware of sex , the words lesbian and homosexual were invented as perjorative terms wrapped up in scientific and medical jargon, and anybody who loved someone of the same sex-even completely innocently- was made to feel guilty. So the women's vital support structure was undermined and collapsed in one generation. The author's sources and facts to back this up make really amazing and dramatic reading. There was at the same time a great political struggle going on for women to have more rights and as a method of undermining these efforts women were often accused of being lesbians to weaken the links between them and discredit them. That's all history now but the main thing for me that was useful was that Victorian society really was run on very different lines that women crossed at their peril. As my book has both male and female protagonists who are masquerading as Victorians I have to be aware of when they are breaking the rules and when not.

I didn't find it insulting but on the other hand I don't agree with her: I think a great book is a great book. Whatever age demographic it is written for. If there is a problem with people reading YA books way past the intended age demographic it is that many people aren't growing up. I know several people who are still stuck in a teenage mindset into their forties....they don't know how to budget , handle money or even cook properly..they read and watch whatever comes on the telly or comes out at the cinema ..and worst of all they don't know how to raise children. Instant gratification is all they want. Sorry I digressed a bit.

Big Son and I watched Cocknies Versus Zombies and Kingpin. Yesterday I had to watch Now You See Me with the kids but I worked out the plot half way through. I wasn't really impressed with that one.

Hi it'smeagain yes it was very well filmed. I haven't actually read the book The only Dickens I have read is Great Expectations at school. I finished watching it but am watching it all over again now with Big Daughter a couple of episodes a week. I have quite a few DVDs of Victorian series to get through.

I can't recall that's ever happened to me yet. I think maybe the closest was reading a lot of Andre Norton SF as a kid growing up and then finding out later that the author was a she using a male pseudonym...but I wasn't betrayed just interested in why...Anna Begins I find your reaction quite interesting. Do you think you will be able to get over it?

Kate Hope y'all don't mind me rudely jumping in...Hello Julie! it's been ages. Hope you are OK. So many southern writers you two are discussing I have never heard of! What do southern writers write about do they have a certain style?

Yes - you have to admire the enthusiasm of a woman who will happily make her own re-usable Victorian cotton sanitary towels and fill them with moss. And the bit about feeling all her organs go back into their proper places after she takes her corset off. Yikes!

How To Be A Victorian 5/5 Ruth Goodman Ruth Goodman is a social historian who is familiar through TV programs like Victorian Farm where she and two practical research archeologists spent a whole calender year living as 19th century farmers wearing the proper period clothes, eating the food and working the land using Victorian methods. She is therefore a bit of a heroine to me! What was great about her book was the fact that she has tried all these things for real and is able to write about them with complete confidence and give a personal insight that is really helpful to anybody wanting to give authenticity to fictional characters . Little gold nuggets of info like what it actually was like to walk, work and move about in corsets and bustle dress; having to perch on the edge of chairs and approach them at an angle; stuff like that. The chapters are constructed so that it follows a Victorian through his/her entire day from waking up , getting dressed , eating, commuting, working until going to bed again at night. The last research book I read had the same format but this was much better.

Still watching Bleak House. 6 episodes still to go.

When I saw the topic title I thought it meant that you were moving house Kate

I think Raven might be talking about Cecil Court. If you are walking down Charing Cross Road towards Trafalgar square it is a side turning on your left. On the corner is a New York burger place where I had a tasty burger. There are many small shops in Cecil Court with an olde worlde feel selling old second hand books, maps and prints. They have bargain racks outside you can peruse. Much Victoriana . Some of it is overpriced, but not all . I got a book of Victorian theatre posters. I met a most extraordinary cockney woman running one of the print shops, which she has taken over from her father and has been in the family about a century.

Both brilliant films. And Swayze plays likeable characters in both.

Haha yes like most of us I think...

I still like his "biggies" Ghost and Dirty Dancing. Yes, I think he was an OK actor. But the autobiography is pretty boring, to be honest. I have heard from other places that he and Jennifer Grey didn't get on all at the beginning of filming for DD and both had to be persuaded to carry on. It would have been interesting to read all the stuff like that from the horse's mouth. But he just glosses right over that so I just knew the book was a bit of a shine job. And as his wife co-wrote the book with him you just know she is always painted in the best possible light. You can almost sense her angel wings .

The Time Of My Life 1/5 Patrick Swayze and Lisa Niemi I actually finished reading a book. It's been a while since that happened. This makes a hat-trick of books I have read in the last year of celebrity biographies- Doris Day, Michael Caine and now Patrick Swayze. I don't think I will read any more. They are just too sanitized and cleaned up like they are only telling half the story.

Thanks Peace! That backs up what the Wiki articles told me....so why then do Rodeo horses buck and kick the way they do? Are they specially trained just for entertainment purposes?

Specifically , breaking in or backing a horse that's not been ridden before. It's for a passage on my book. There is a part where one of the female characters is given a horse to ride deliberately that has not been ridden before in an attempt to humiliate her, but she manages to stay on it . Like most people who don't know anything I was influenced by the films I have seen: where some cowboy gets on a wild bronco and after he tires the horse (and breaks its spirit) he lets anybody ride him. (The horse, not the cowboy!) But now I am not sure how realistic this really is; I looked on Wiki about horse training and it says that horses are trained for years on ropes and by one to one with their grooms and owners before anyone attempts to ride them. Nobody just throws a saddle on a wild horse and gets on it- it just doesn't happen. Anybody can help out?

That's amazing that after all these years Tom Baker and Sarah-Jane Smith came out on top, as that's exactly the way I would have voted. Genesis of The Daleks definitely a yes from me, but I can't much judge the 80's and 2000s as I didn't watch Dr Who during those years. Of the modern stories I really enjoyed The Girl Who Waited because of both the time travel and human elements. It was well thought out.

Bleak House, the recent BBC version with Gillian Anderson and loads of other good actors. I haven't read the book and the menacing darkness of it is rather gripping. Watching an episode every day.

Is that Rupert Everett in a HORROR film? Must look that one up

Conan the Barbarian (Arnie version 1982)

I expect a baby will come eventually

Bride And Prejudice with Anupam Kher and Aishwaryria Rai. It was fun but I still can't forgive Gurinder Chadha for making Darcy an American...

Well, it possible to convert word documents into Mobifiles and from there to kindle, because that's what authors who write for the kindle do. So I suppose technically it is possible to reverse the process. But you wouldn't have a book just a load of A4 paper. It simply wouldn't be worthwhile.