conuly

Or they insult and criticize others for not reading enough classics, for preferring more recent fiction to books 300 years old. Anything by Dickens or Shakespeare or Milton is exalted and above reproach, anything written in a modern vernacular or involving recent technology and mores is suspect at best. If you can easily understand it it's trash, if you enjoy it you should have picked a harder book, and if you didn't learn anything (it's understood you won't learn anything unless it's one of The Greats) you wasted your time. Heaven forbid you enjoy any form of genre fiction!

I don't understand this attitude at all. Quite aside from the fact that this, combined with force-feeding tragedies to teens, is what causes people to turn away from The Classics altogether, it's not like your choice of reading material is a matter of moral judgment at all, is it? You should read what you like, and don't worry about whether it's thick and old and respected enough. Who cares?

But with that said, there is one book that's been on my "reading list" (such as it is, I mostly follow my own advice) for most of my life, that I have been putting off reading, and that's The Scarlet Pimpernel. Not because it's A Classic, but because it's talked up a lot in The Girl With The Silver Eyes (now that is a classic!), and I've always wondered what the fuss was about. In fact, not long after the tenth time I read The Girl With The Silver Eyes (and how I identified with Katie!) I located a copy of Pimpernel in our house and attempted to read it.

Yeah. I was about eight. I didn't even make it three pages. And I was a good reader, easily, but there's more to a book than just the combination of words.

This kinda irked me, because Katie loved the book, and her neighbor loved the book, and Katie was awesome, so why didn't I love this book? And every once in a while I'd think about it and go "Maybe I should try again", but I'd remember that bad experience and put it off for a while. It's not like there's any shortage of reading material in this world, however much it might feel like it at times.

Well. I've started reading it online today, and guess what? I get what the fuss was about! Even if I'd persevered, I would not have enjoyed it at that young age, that's clear to me, but I do now. (You guys need to read this book. Seriously.)

Of course, if I'd had the book pushed on me in a "Read this unless you're a stupid smelly person with no taste or sense" fashion I doubt I'd ever have picked it up. I still don't know why people do that. That's the real waste of time.

It's apparently a type of marsupial, described as being "cute".

This? THIS is cute?

I would've called it ( Read more... )

No sooner do I articulate a thought than somebody unconnected has the same thought entirely! Why is that?

Not sure I'd normally go to linguaphiles about hand claps myself, though, as I said before, I do see the connection.

Must call and see if they're ever running the Early Learner Workshop ever again, put that on my to-do list.

Here is their contact page. Notice anything interesting there?

Well, let's see. We've got their mailing address - check. Their main phone number - check. Secondary phone number, various extensions - check, check. Fax and TTY? Double check. Email? Email? EMAIL?

No email! And it's so weird, too, not to have email "in this day and age" (as people have no doubt been saying since shortly after they started talking), don't you think?

I'm very weirded out by it.

Um... let's see...

Okay. Last year, at Swedish Midsummer, we did the silly sorts of songs where you go around and make hand motions, and I remembered the tunes of almost all of them except the one I *wanted* to remember. That's the one that you acted out various parts (man, woman, crying, laughing, I don't know) and spun in a circle clapping.

Middle of the year, I find a nursery rhyme/game that seems almost the same. In English. I mean, it has the acting and spinning and clapping and all. Weird, yeah?

This year, Ana declared it her favorite. So I ask one of the two Swedish au pairs at the toddler programs we go to about it, and after some talking she remembers the name of it. She knew the song, of course, but not the name. (The two au pairs come together, speak Swedish to the three 20-month-blondes they bring with them, and are largely assumed to be a couple with triplets. But no, it's twins and another one and they just know each other, which is probably better than triplets.)

So she wrote down the name, which turns out to be "Räven raskar över isen", which doesn't appear to have *anything* to do with what we were doing, but whatever. After some patient googling, I find a site with the music written up and a midi - which is currently down, but again, whatever.

And a teeny bit of browsing the site gets me one with lyrics like this:

En elefant balanserade, på en liten liten spindel-tråå-ååd
Det tyckte den var så intressant, så den gick och hämtade en annan elefant

Två elefanter balanserade, på en liten liten spindel-tråå-ååd
Det tyckte de var så intressant, så de gick och hämtade en annan elefant

Tre elefanter balanserade, på en liten liten spindel-tråå-ååd
Det tyckte de var så intressant, så de gick och hämtade en annan elefant

Now, I don't speak a word of Swedish, of course... but guessing that "elefant" means "elephant" and "en, två, tre" means "one, two, three", and spindel-whatever might just mean "spider"...

Then I think we have that exact same song in English.

Which made me laugh, because we sing that same song in Spanish every Wednesday! Well, they sing, I kinda hum along and bounce Evangeline, because I haven't read the words and only know what they mean, not how to sing them.

Too weird, right?

And I didn't believe it when I was sitting on the bus, and there were hands banging against the windows - a prank, yeah?

But this, this I believe. *sniff*

It is the end of the world as we know it. So, uh, I'm going to get some chips, and then you can help me figure out how to turn brains into dip. Maybe if I have platters, the zombies won't eat *my* brains.

Of Knuffle Bunny.

( Read more... )

This is actually much tamer than the last time I did this. *shrugs*

So if you're interested, you can now, apparently, go to the spinoff comm worldoflj. Not many members yet, but it looks like a good compromise, so go looky.