Friday's Random Thoughts

Here's a random gif of Tom Hiddleston.

The other day a friend of mine said, "What? That guy? He's ugly."
And I might have said "Are you kidding me?"
She wasn't even convinced when I showed her some other photos like this:

There's really no explaining other people's tastes.

Classics and Cocktails
This month I'm supposed to be reading The Count of Monte Cristo, the unabridged version. It's HUGE. I think Anna Karenina gave me PTSD because I'm extremely reluctant to pick up another enormous book and find myself hating it. And the more I think about it, the more I really, truly hated Anna Karenina. Great romance, my ass. Selfish, self-involved jackholes? Yep.

Anyway, I'm busy reading Dark Places by Gillian Flynn, which is turning out to be a great read. And as soon as I finish it, I'm going to read Gone Girl by the same author. Those 1600 pages of The Count will have to wait.

Limited Engagements Make Me Pissy
I really want to see the movie Beasts of the Southern Wild. I'm quite certain it won't come to Birmingham for awhile since Birmingham is the kind of city that desperately wishes it could be cool but isn't. Because "Roll Tide", that's why. That is why we can't have cool things.

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Classics and Cocktails Book Club (June)

Animal Farm is the sixth book in my 12 in 2012 classics challenge. I don't know how I missed reading this in school.

Did you know that the original title of this included a subtitle that read: A Fairy Story?

It's a good thing publishers omitted that because wouldn't you be disappointed to think you were picking up a book about fairies only to find it's a book about communism?

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Classics & Cocktails: A Room With a View

I am almost finished reading A Room With a View by E.M. Forster, the May pick for my 12 in 2012 classics challenge.

There are a couple of chapters left. I put it down because I'm a little worried. This is my first time to read Forster. Is he going to break my heart?

I am suddenly very invested. Lucy Honeychurch has to end up with George. If she doesn't, I am going to be terribly sad. I need them to end up together. I need love to win in the end. I hope desperately that this is not one of those classics that is a classic because the ending is horribly sad. I want a happy ending.

I need a happy ending.

And not the Jennifer Love Hewitt kind.

I'm not sure how much I believe in love and romance and all that baloney. Hmm, I guess referring to it as baloney gives some indication as to where my current belief stands.

But I can temporarily set aside my sorry, cynical worldview for a novel.

Here's how I've been picturing George, just because I can:

Lest you begin to question my loyalty to my pretend boyfriend, just know that George Clooney is way too old to be Lucy's George. But, what the hell, here's a photo of my George, too:

I finished the book.

Spoiler alert:
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I was very happy with the ending.
I might have gotten a little teary-eyed.
But I haven't dusted in awhile and I have allergies.
It's not at all because I'm not still cynical and jaded and bitter.

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Classics and Cocktails Book Club (May)

I must begin with a confession.

I did not read the book for April, Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. I tried. I read two chapters. But I kept setting it aside so I could read other books.

Books I read instead:

Hilarious. Read it. Tina Fey is my spirit animal.

Intelligent. Funny. Sad. Worth reading.

I skimmed the last third. Picoult has a formula and that formula is  getting old.

Full of great essays on aging, motherhood, and more. 

I also read this:

Junk food scarfed down in a couple of days. Don't judge me. It's still better than Fifty Shades of Grey.

And I started reading this:

Thanks to my cousin Richard for passing it along. 

I may try Tess again, but I'm not going to beat myself up about skipping a classic last month. It's my challenge and I make the rules and the most important rule is this:

I do what I want.

The Classics and Cocktails pick for May is A Room With a View by E.M. Forster, a novel "about a young woman in the repressed culture of Edwardian England. Set in Italy and England, the story is both a romance and a critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked A Room with a View 79th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century." So says Wikipedia.

One of the characters is named Lucy Honeychurch. That's right. Honeychurch. Where buzzing bees go to praize Jezuz.

Happy reading! 

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Classics and Cocktails Book Club (April)

"We must call [Hardy] the greatest tragic writer among English novelists." - Virginia Woolf


Tess of the D'Urbervilles, first published in 1891, by Thomas Hardy is the April Classics and Cocktails Book Club pick.

I was at Barnes & Noble in Patton Creek last night and noticed a stack of copies of the book on the front sale table for $4.98, so get thee to the bookstore and buy your cheap copy today.

I  checked my copy out of the Hoover Library yesterday. There were at least ten more copies on the Teen section's Classics shelf so, if you don't have $5, get thee to the library instead.

From the back cover: "Tess Durbeyfield - an impressionable country girl caught between a wealthy cousin who seduces her and an unforgiving, provincial husband - finds she has no means of escaping her fate, save a desperate and irreversible act."

For some reason, I'm suddenly picturing this guy:

Jerry Lee Lewis, cousin seducer

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Classics and Cocktails: March Drink Recipe

My cousin Richard is the Vice President of Cocktails for our little book club. He's the perfect person for the job.

Go here for a fabulous drink recipe for our March book, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.

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Classics and Cocktails Book Club (March)

The 12 in 2012 classic is Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. The novel was Sylvia Plath's first and last. She committed suicide a month after it was published, under a pseudonym, in the UK.

The Bell Jar follows the mental downfall of Esther Greenwood. Esther is intelligent, beautiful, talented, and successful, but slowly losing her mind.

"I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people's eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth." 

From Amazon.com: "Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic."

Sounds super depressing. Let's do this.

Some stats:

The Bell Jar is 288 pages long.

It was first published in 1963, the same year Sylvia Plath committed suicide at the age of 30.

It wasn't published under Sylvia Plath's real name until 1967.

In 2008 Plum Pictures announced plans for a Hollywood version of the novel, the movie to be written by playwright and screenwriter Tristine Skyler and Julia Stiles to star as the novel's protagonist, with Rose McGowan as Doreen. As of January 2012, the film remains in development.

Related links:
12 Important Books in 2012

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Classics and Cocktails: The Beautiful and Damned

This month's classic for the 12 in 2012 challenge was The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald. After Tolstoy it was a fantastic relief. Reading it, I didn't feel like I was hiking up the world's steepest hill.

I love Fitzgerald's way with words and, as I read, I stopped often to jot down quotes I liked. For instance, on page 91, he writes that "All the evil hate in the mad heart of February was wrought into the forlorn and icy wind..."

Oh yes, that's the stuff.

The Beautiful and Damned is the story of Anthony and Gloria Patch, their relationship before they get married and what happens after. The relationship is based largely on Fitzgerald's own marriage to Zelda Sayre, a Southern belle from Montgomery, Alabama. The two were well-known for their drinking and partying.

Gloria, like Zelda, is beautiful and charming and much-pursued by the men around her.  She doesn't seem particularly impressed. At one point, Fitzgerald gives us this gem from Gloria's diary:

"I've decided that this matter of sticking to things wears one out, particularly when the things concerned are men." 

Amen, sister.

When Anthony first says to Gloria, "I love you," she says in return, "I- I'm so glad." Basically, she's the literary equivalent of John John here. "You love me? Um...count this penny."

Anthony's grandfather is excessively wealthy and Anthony is simply waiting for the money to come to him. So he spends his days drinking and living beyond his means. There is a common thread with a lot of alcoholics in books and, let's face it, in reality and it is this attitude of "When am I going to get what's coming to me?" 

Oh, dude, you're going to get what's coming to you. 

Anthony's grandfather dies and Anthony finds out that he has been cut out of the will. He decides to go to court to get the money he believes should be his. 

After war is declared, Anthony goes off to training camp down south, where he does very little other than have an affair with a woman named Dot and continue to be selfish and self-indulgent. When he comes back, it is clear his relationship with Gloria will never be what it was when it began. They were beautiful in the beginning and destined for great things, or so they perceived themselves to be. But the years of alcoholism and debt have robbed them of the ability to see beauty in each other. For me, it seems that all they ever really saw in each other was a reflection of what they believed to be true about themselves or what they wanted to be true. 

Even as Anthony is leaving on the train, you know that the connection between husband and wife was tenuous at best. Gloria is late and arrives in time only to see Anthony across a distance. "At the last they were too far away for either to see the other's tears."  

Gloria, too, is selfish and drinks excessively. She has always been beautiful and has always gotten what she wanted. "If I wanted anything, I'd take it... I can't be bothered resisting things I want."

At the end, the court decides in Anthony's favor and he inherits his grandfather's $30 million. But, by this time, Anthony has been losing control of himself and his alcoholism. He has been stumbling around New York, slurring his words and trying to sell bonds. I found the part about Anthony's attempts to be a salesman excruciating. I can't imagine much worse than going on cold calls. I'd probably get wasted drunk beforehand, too. 

On the same day the court will decide if he gets his inheritance, Anthony is pushed over the edge by a visit from pathetic and desperate Dot. He hurls a chair at her in a rage and, I assume, she runs back home to Mississippi. Gloria comes home to find him sitting on the floor with his stamp collection, acting like a little boy. 

"Get out," he says, protective of his collection. "Or I'll tell my grandfather." 

When the novel ends, Anthony and Gloria have all the money they wanted but Anthony is "a little crazy." 

As for Gloria, she is exactly what she never wanted to be. 

In the beginning, Gloria expresses her concern for being "clean" and she is drawn to Anthony because he seems "clean" too. "You and I are clean like streams and winds. I can tell whenever I see a person whether he is clean, and if so, which kind of clean he is.”

More than six years later, a character says of Gloria, "I can't stand her, you know. She seems sort of - sort of dyed and unclean, if you know what I mean." 

Here's a good example of what someone who is "clean" might look like: 

Here is what someone who is "unclean" might look like: 

Overall, I enjoyed the book, although I can't say there was a truly likable character among the bunch. It's a book about selfish people cursed with weakness and addiction. And I should confess I took a brief break from Jazz Age shenanigans to read a memoir by Bill Clegg titled Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man and a thriller titled Before I Go to Sleep. 

I found this review of The Beautiful and Damned from 1922. Apparently, the critic did not like the book at all: 

"The novel is full of that kind of pseudo-realism which results from shutting one's eyes to all that is good in human nature, and looking only upon that which is small and mean-a view quite as false as its extreme opposite, which, reversing the process, results in what we have learned to classify as "glad" books. It is to be hoped that Mr. Fitzgerald, who possesses a genuine, undeniable talent, will some day acquire a less one-sided understanding."

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Classics and Cocktails: February Drink Recipe

My cousin Richard is reading the classics for the 12 in 2012 challenge along with me and has provided an excellent drink recipe for February's book, The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  

French 75 

3 oz of gin

3 oz of fresh lemon juice

4 tsp of fresh sugar

1 1/2 cups of ice cubes

1 cup chilled champagne

In a cocktail shaker, combine gin, lemon juice, sugar, and ice cubes. Shake to chill. Strain cocktails into 2 wineglasses and top off with champagne. (Alternatively, serve drinks over ice in highball glasses.)

"Can't beat a drink with champagne on top. Plus, it's '20s New York and that means bathtub gin and speakeasies. Enjoy." - Richard Grimes

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Classics and Cocktails Book Club (February)

Fitzgerald (1896-1940) and his wife Zelda, January 1921.
Time Life Pictures/Mansell/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

I'm so happy to put Anna Karenina behind me. I keep thinking about how I've always wanted to run a marathon just so I could say I'd done it. That's how reading Anna Karenina felt except that I think running the marathon would have been less painful.

The 12 in 2012 book for February is F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned. I have no doubt Mr. Fitzgerald will show us a better time than Mr. Tolstoy. And it certainly won't take an entire month to read it. The Beautiful and Damned is 370 pages long. WAY less than that damn Anna Karenina. (Sorry, I may have a bit of PTAKSS - Post Traumatic Anna Karenina Stress Syndrome.)

The Beautiful and Damned is about Anthony Patch and his beautiful wife Gloria. They are newly married and living a life far beyond their means. The book chronicles their moral, physical, and financial decline, a fictional take on the stories that came out of Fitzgerald's real-life marriage to Zelda, a marriage marked by drunken revelry, debt, and scandalous behavior during the Jazz Age in New York.

Yes, hell yes, bring on the drunken revelry, please. 

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A Letter to Tolstoy

Dear Leo,

Can I call you Leo? Or should I call you Lev? You Russians and your multiple names, so wacky.

I think after spending most of January together, we should be on a first-name basis.

Matthew Arnold said your book was not to be taken as "a work of art" but as "a piece of life."

As in, I have wasted a piece of my life reading it. Maybe I shouldn't say that. I'm going to be grateful that I read it, that I now know what all the fuss is about. I'm not going to devote too much space to analyzing my dislike for your book. But here are a few thoughts:

I don't understand why the title of the book is Anna Karenina. Come on, you know the book should have been called Konstantin Levin. Funny how no one ever talks about how more than half of this excruciatingly long book is about a man named Levin. I haven't seen any movies based on the book but I'd bet that all the annoying, long-winded Levin stuff gets cut out.

I read that you based the character of Levin on yourself. So allow me to apologize before I say that I hated him. What a mopey, self-involved, boring-ass man. If he blushed one more time, I thought I might step into the book and smack him. Reading portions of the book in which Levin discusses farming and peasants and whatever else felt like being at a really long, awful dinner party with the most boring people in the world.

By the end of the book, when Levin has this big revelation about faith, I couldn't have been less invested. I was just glad it was over. I had my own little faithful moment and I thanked God I was finished reading this.

OK, let's talk about Anna. Everyone acts as if the book is only about the love affair between Anna and Count Vronsky. Unfortunately, I didn't care about these characters at all. Here's another Count to show you how much I cared:

I read on the back of my book that Nabakov said this was "one of the greatest love stories in world literature." I'm afraid I just don't get it.

Why do they love one another? What is it about either of them that is so fantastic? They're good looking?

What I saw was one of the greatest stories of codependence in world literature.

If you think you cannot live without someone else, if you are willing to kill yourself (as both Vronsky and Anna are willing to attempt, one successfully) then you are codependent. Your love isn't any greater than anyone else's. Your CODEPENDENCE is greater. That is all.

People make this mistake all the time. They buy into the bull shit of Romeo and Juliet, this idea that the greatest love stories involve someone dying by their own hand, by their own misery.

I have had someone tell me he could not live without me. I never want to hear someone say this to me again. I will never say this to someone. We are not meant to put so much weight on another human being.

Does this mean that when I love my love isn't as strong or true or romantic?

If love is measured by how much you are willing to destroy yourself, then it is a sad thing. It is an addiction.

There is nothing that I could not do without. Life must be adjustable in this way. We must accept what life brings us or what life takes away. Acceptance is the only way to find peace in this harsh world.

After Anna's death, "It showed him (Vronsky) the eternal error men make in imagining that happiness consists in the realization of their desires."

I guess I just wish people would quit calling it a great love story. It seems obvious to me that you weren't saying, "Ooh, look how romantic this is."

Leo, I can appreciate that Levin (and you) gave so much thought to life, to its meaning, to humanity, to farming. I can appreciate that Levin wants to live his live, striving for goodness. I can appreciate that, with his realization that other religions besides Christianity also speak of goodness, maybe Levin will be more accepting and less of a judgmental douchebag. Levin, Pozdravlyayu! (Congratulations!)

Honestly, I just wish it hadn't taken 700 pages for Levin to get there.

I began to dread picking it up. I was thrilled to put it down. At night, while I lay in bed and read Anna Karenina, I looked longingly at other books. I was the Anna Karenina of reading. I was in bed with this one, but I wanted to be in bed with that one.

I sincerely hope that I can shake off this horrible feeling of dread by December, when I have pledged to read your other doorstop of a novel, War and Peace. 


Maybe I  will write you another letter then, Leo. In your honor, I will now sign off with all my various names.

Sincerely,
Amy/Amy B./Becky Bickers Girl Detective/LBG/George Clooney's Girlfriend/Amushka Bickerskaya

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Classics and Cocktails Book Club

You might have seen that I'm going to attempt to read 12 classic novels in 2012, important books that I somehow failed to read in my previous 38 years of living. (Click here for my blog post about it.) A couple of friends, Michelle and Shellie, have decided to join me on the first one, Anna Karenina, which I'm going to read in January. Have you checked the calendar? January is racing toward us like a high-speed train.

Anna Karenina is the tragic tale of the woman who wrote the "Banana Fanna" song. You know: Anna anna bobanna banana fanna fo fanna me mi mo manna Karenina.

At the end, poor Anna slips on a banana peel.

Hold on, just checked my notes. That's not right. It's a tragic love story about married aristocrat Anna Karenina who has an affair with the affluent Count Vronsky. Oh well, it's still perfect for the dark and dreary days of January when I will be sitting on my arse for most hours of the day. So why not join me in reading a book about people who make really poor decisions while sitting on your arse, too?

Before you decide to forsake viewings of Hitch on TBS or TNT for readings of Anna Karenina, here are some important facts about Leo Tolstoy's classic novel:

1. Anna Karenina contains 351,000 words.

2. The novel was published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger. That's a period of four years. We'll be reading it in four weeks.

3. In this time, I will gain four pounds. Why? Because I like to eat crackers with cream cheese and drink cranberry and vodka cocktails while I sit on my arse and read all the livelong day. Totally worth the calories, my friends. Plus, we'll need extra sustenance to lift this book (unless you have a Kindle and then you might want to cut out the cream cheese).

4. I found a Web site that shows the entire text of Anna Karenina in two images. Here they are. See, how tiny this book really is? We can absolutely do this!

If you join in, here are the rules of the book club:

There are no rules.

 If you hate the book, if you throw it across the room and accidentally injure a household pet, if you fall asleep two pages into reading it each night and start over the next night and never get past page two, if you give up on the hundreds of Russian names and try to chuck it all and instead decide to order a Russian mail-order bride to make January more interesting, no problem. 

If you watch Hitch instead, that's cool, baby. (You know how it is, rockin' and rollin' and whatnot.) 

At the end of the month, we can check in and give our opinions on the book, whatever they may be. 

We can talk about how we're so much better than all those dumb-dumbs who spent January watching Hitch on TBS. Oh, Hitch, how I love thee. But I refuse to watch you again. I'm just going to post this video instead. Get your fix and then pick up a book! Sign up in the comments if you want to feel like you're committing to something. 

Happy reading! 

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Vodka Cranberry Jane Eyre - A Drunken Book Review

I finished Jane Eyre last night. It's the first in a series of "Important Books" I'm going to read during 2012. This one was a bit of a bonus since I'm officially beginning with Anna Karenina in January.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about the book. I decided I'd have a couple of Christmas Eve cocktails and spill out my thoughts on it. I'm going to try not to worry about how dumb I might sound. This review will contain spoilers so if you haven't read the book and don't want to know that Mr. Edward Fairfax Rochester is a drag queen, stop reading now.

So, let's begin. Hold on, let me take a sip of my drink.

I didn't love it. It reminded me of reading The Historian (THE big book of 2005; It was about Dracula; Little, Brown paid something like $2 million for it; It mostly makes you want to crawl into a coffin and take a nap). It reminded me of that book in that I found the first third boring and the last third boring. Contained within the middle third was a pretty good book.

The book begins with 10-year-old Jane Eyre who is a sad little orphan. The first third of the book mainly deals with Jane's loneliness and hardship.

In the beginning, she lives with her aunt, Mrs. Reed, and her cousins, John, Georgiana, and Eliza.

Jane is mistreated by her aunt, who is a real bitch, and 14-year-old John, who is a real son of a bitch.

"You ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed and Master Reed, because Missis kindly allows you to be brought up with them. They will have a great deal of money and you will have none; it is your place to be humble, and to try to make yourself agreeable to them," Bessie, the nursemaid, tells Jane.

Isn't this how these books always go? Poor, little abused orphan. Don't worry, John Reed will get what's coming to him in the end.

As punishment one evening, Mrs.  Reed condemns Jane to spending a night in the red room upstairs where Mr. Reed passed away nine years earlier. This room is creepy, writes Charlotte Bronte. I'm paraphrasing a bit.

I have strong feelings about this topic. People like to imagine what a space where someone died might feel like. It feels like it did before unless you give it power over you, that's what it feels like. Do not give a space power over you. One day shortly after her dad died, my daughter Kate marched toward the garage and said, "I'm going to see if Dad's ghost is in the garage."
I told her that wasn't possible but you know what this really means, right? My daughter, who was 9 at the time, is so much more of a bad ass than Jane Eyre.

I guess I should admit here that I didn't love Jane Eyre, the character. She's OK. I know I'm supposed to like her, admire her when she tells off her mean aunt, admire her tenacity. I just didn't feel much for her.

Jane is sent off to the Lowood School, which is run by Mr. Brocklehurst, who is also a real son of a bitch. The girls at the school are abused and underfed.

At the school, Jane becomes friends with Helen Burns. Helen is one of those characters you always find in books. She is wise beyond her years. She takes her abuse without question.

"It would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.” Helen Burns says to Jane Eyre.

I find this interesting, this question of fate. Helen Burns believes her fate is to be abused? And then to die. (Oh, yeah, she dies. Of course, she dies. Of consumption. In Jane Eyre's arms. The wise child always dies. The wise child who takes her misfortune with dignity might as well be the black dude in a horror movie.)

I think people feel better about the horrors that befall them if they believe it was meant to be in some way. Maybe this way you don't have to think about the million ways you could have changed things.

Jane Eyre stays at Lowood until she is 18, when she places an ad seeking a position as a governess. This is when she enters the second episode of the book. The first episode was "Poor, little orphan."

The next episode is the Mr. Rochester episode and this is the portion most people think of when they think of Jane Eyre. This is the section in which Jane finds love and, of course, more tragedy.

Jane meets Mr. Rochester when she is out for a walk and comes upon him. He and his horse fall on some ice and Jane helps him out. Later, when she gets home from her walk, she realizes the man she helped was her employer, Mr. Rochester (who she has never met).

There's a lot of time spent on telling us how unattractive both Jane and Mr. Rochester are. She's plain and little and elf-like. He's severe-looking.

by Ben McLaughlin

The reader is never allowed to forget how damn unattractive these folks are. Ever. I suppose the point is that it must be real, true love because who could love such ugly people? Because love is blind. Oh, by the way, this deep thought is an allusion to what happens at the end of the book.

Mr. Rochester has charm. He and Jane do some nice little sparring. But Mr. Rochester is clearly a freak. In order to find out how Jane truly feels about him, he dresses up as an old gypsy woman and visits the house to tell the "fortunes" of the people within the home. Yep, that's right, he dresses up like an old woman to trick Jane. What the fuckity fuck?

It's suddenly Some Like It Hot up in here.

These chapters in the book just sucked the SEXY right out of Mr. Rochester for me. Mostly my feelings about Mr. Rochester are that he was deeply insecure, a bit of a narcissist, and a touch pathetic. It was all, "I love you. Do you love me?" "You're my little friend." "Do you think me handsome?" Ugh. Shut up.

Mr. Rochester also tries to make Jane jealous by parading Blanche Ingram around and making her believe he is going to make Blanche his wife.

By Kate Beaton/harkavagrant.com

This doesn't even get to the heart of Mr. Rochester's big problem which is that he already has a wife and she's locked up in a room on the third floor. Yep. And the crazy wife, Bertha, is always escaping and setting fire to things and stabbing people and trying to eat off their faces. (I don't even have the energy to get into the fact that the first Mrs. Rochester is of some sort of mixed race and, before she went totally nuts, was always acting very wild. There's some racism in here that is a bit icky since Mr. Rochester links Bertha's craziness to her "impure" heritage.)

A lot of drama ensues. And it's a good read. After Mr. Rochester tries to marry Jane and the first Mrs. Rochester is revealed, Jane leaves and enters the next episode of the novel, the "Hell No, Don't Marry Your Cousin (Ick)" episode. This is when I got bored again, unfortunately. So I'm not going to go into that portion much. Suffice it to say, Jane meets some long-lost cousins and one of them, a super-religious, humorless douche who goes to India to be a missionary, wants to marry Jane.

Eventually, Jane inherits a big chunk of money (yea!) from an uncle she never knew. This is how Jane truly gains the equality and independence she has always wanted. It is only now that she can go back to Mr. Rochester. While she was gone, Mr. Rochester's crazy-ass wife set the house on fire and, after saving all the servants, Mr. Rochester was crushed and lost one eye, was left blind in the other eye (see how love is blind?) and lost a hand. His crazy wife jumped to her death during the fire.

So independent Jane marries Mr. Rochester and takes care of him.

I'm not sure how I feel about all this. I think I would have preferred Jane take her wealth and truly be independent. There are analyses of the book which will say that only by feeling equal to him could Jane Eyre truly be with Mr. Rochester.

Sure, OK. Maybe. But then why did Mr. Rochester have to be brought to his damn knees, crippled, and blinded in order for them to be equal?

The book's last chapter begins with this line: "Reader, I married him."

Then, boom, Jane goes on to tell us how it's 10 years later, Mr. Rochester has regained the sight in his one eye, the two of them chat all the time and they are in "perfect concord."

"I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth," Jane says. "I hold myself supremely blest - blest beyond what language can express because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am; ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward's society; he knows none of mine, any more than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together...We talk, I believe, all day long."

Are you gagging yet? Maybe I'm bitter, but, dammit all, doesn't Jane Eyre seem like she'd be one of those women who is constantly posting as her Facebook status update: "My husband is the greatest." "No one is as close to her husband as I am. We are the best couple EVER!" "I am absolutely the bone of my husband's bone! LOL!"

Damn, I am so unromantic. I think I might have some issues.

I'm going to fix another cocktail.

Merry Christmas Eve to you all and to all a good night!

NOTE: This blog post features "Jane Eyre Trading Cards" by Ben McLaughlin, a really talented animation artist in Sydney, Australia who has a blog: http://ben-vanishingpoint.blogspot.com/

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12 Important Books in 2012 - Updated

After making a list of classics I've never read (a list that was in no way comprehensive), I decided to launch my first blog project. I made a list of 12 of these books to read in 2012 and I'm going to blog about it over the year because I know you're dying to hear my thoughts on Tolstoy and Plath and Orwell.

I asked friends to suggest their top picks. Only a few of you had recommendations and I know why: Because most of you suckers haven't read these books either. I can see right through you.

Based on the suggestions I did get and which books I'm curious about, I came up with this list. I'm going to shoot for one each month.

Update: I'm starting my 2012 reading project early. I'm going to read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte this month because my good friend Laurey picked up a copy for me when she spotted it in an airport last week. Good friends who support your serious projects (like writing a memoir) and support your little projects (like reading a dozen classics) are hard to come by, but I am blessed to have a lot of them. Thanks to Laurey and all my wonderful friends! Click here for my review.









January                                   
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy                  

February
The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

March
 The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

April
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

May
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

June
 Animal Farm by George Orwell

July
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

August
 The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

September
Middlemarch by George Eliot

October
 The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

November
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

December
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Why am I beginning with Anna Karenina? January seems like a good time for something especially substantial. I can picture myself sitting next to the fireplace in my bedroom on winter's coldest nights reading about a doomed love affair. I'm all about doom and gloom in January.

Why am I ending the year with War and Peace? Because I think I'm probably going to need to put nearly 12 months between my first experience with Tolstoy and my second.

Why am I doing this at all, setting up a project for myself, when I could easily spend most of my time watching movies I've already seen, reading books that aren't quite as important?

Because I have no idea where my life is headed. 2012 is a mystery to me. At least, this way I have something that I know I'll be doing. I'll be reading Anna Karenina. I'll be reading The Bell Jar. I'll be reading Brave New World.

But the rest of the year is full of questions. When and where and who and how?

Will I ever find an agent? Will I ever find a publisher? Will I finish my book? I hope to finish the rough draft of it by the end of this year. I'm on target to do so if I can stay focused and hopeful and avoid videos of adorable animals on the Internet.

So I do know I'll spend the first part of next year editing my book and anxiously awaiting edits from my friend and copy editing genius, Stephanie Gibson. I'll keep sending out my book proposal and hoping it lands in the inbox of someone who believes in this "small" book. As I've shared before, it's considered small because I'm not famous. I'm not Kim Kardashian. I'm not someone like Amanda Knox whose tragedy has been featured on Today ad nauseum. My book has no vampires. So I'll just keep trying to show people that it's worthwhile.

But I don't know much else beyond that. I'll keep mothering my wonderful children, but will we be living in Alabama by the end of 2012? I don't know.
Will I find a job? Where will it be?
Will I finally date George Clooney? OK, so I do know the answer to that one.
So who will I date? It's a mystery. Perhaps I'll be too busy reading The Count of Monte Cristo. At least, the guy on the cover of the paperback edition is pretty cute.

In truth, there are few people who truly know where they will be in a year. Their lives may look secure. They have steady jobs and stable marriages and the gift of certainty.

Unfortunately, certainty is an illusion. No one really knows what life will bring them.

In an instant, everything you have ever counted on, everything you ever assumed about the universe and how it works could change. Then what?

I honestly have no idea.

But I know that, come January, I'll be reading Anna Karenina.

That's something, anyway.

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