Sustained Criticism

"Special Topics in Calamity Physics", wtf? Finished by sheer willpower, I do not think I will ever work up the stamina to re-read it. If I ever do publish something, someone please tell me if it's reading like an early, fake (taking a leaf out of "The Lambs of London" (alas, Blue has gotten to me, I'm referencing other works in my writing)) and bad Nabokov.

Why on earth the sloppy ending, why the 16 pages on the Nightwatchers? Why, why, why?

The characterization bored me: the Bluebloods seemed transparent and Schneider was too much of a mary-sue. And Blue seemed too much an extension of the author, too hung up in her own cleverness. The endless, at times very purple chapters relieved by sparkling dialogue, quotable ideas and general fun. It was too long, contained too many badly-written chapters, had a fun structure, bad ending, intriguing structure and "final exam", but all in all a disappointing book. I think I might have to remedy it by paging through TSH.

Written, by the by, by Marisha Peasl - she has obviously read both Tartt and Nabokov, and fails miserably at striking out on her own.

It also lacked the breathtaking passages Tartt flaunts so marvelously. ("And always, always, that same toast. Live forever.")s
If anyone else reads it and makes more sense of it than I have, enlighten me.

I'm handing the esteemed English project in tomorrow. Hopefully I'll have time to print it when I get to school, without getting too darn late for class - my printer isn't working (no surprise, really, but still very annoying). It worries me that I can't get anything decent out of Edward, and that my conclusion sucks mightily. "Three works, three portrayals, three ideas, and three ways of life. Living deliberately, attempting adaptation or living by oblivion-heightened ideals?" You may laugh. That is the thing's final line. At the very least I got to rant about "Art for Art's sake" and have some fun quoting.

“His students – if they were any mark of his tutelage – were imposing enough, and different as they all were they shared a certain coolness, a cruel, mannered charm which was not modern in the least but had a strange cold breath of the ancient world: they were magnificent creatures, such eyes, such hands, such looks – sio oculos, sic ille manus, sic ora ferebat. I envied them, and found them attractive, moreover this strange quality, far from being natural, gave every indication of having been intensely cultivated. (It was the same, I would come to find, with Julian: though he gave quite the opposite impression, of freshness and candor, it was not spontaneity but superior art which made him seem unstudied.) Studied or not, I wanted to be like them.” - The Secret History, page 32.

Bodil compared me to Hedda Gabler. The saddest part is that I can fess up to a few uncanny similarities.

I got a birthday present from Mari earlier. It's the Soundtrack to the 5th season of SFU, "Everything Ends". I love it. It's beautiful. Thank you :] ("Let's be friends?")

And I know I'm mixing British and icky American terribly, but it's late and I'm tired. Most of all I feel like running away upstairs and re-reading the wonderful passage of "Magician: Master" where Pug unleashes his powers on the Tsurani. And that I will, in a moment.