Plug for Eliza Enea's "Small Steps"

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 07:53:13 +0000

Fairytales coming to life during your University years are often more annoying than magical.

Well, just so you know, the South Wing of the university vanished (so no classes, because that’s where they were held) and the roommate with the crossbow isn’t on goblin patrol duty because she went to a werehamster convention, or something like that.

It’s the cheerful, absurd, fantastic, fluffy style of the story that brings on the fun. It has the air that you could be attacked by soft rabbits at any point of time and will need to pet them before you move on. The plot is cute and amusing – sometimes you might think there’s no stopping the matchmaking ways of the older generation of women, except through paranormal means. I have been assured that the behavior of such middle-aged women is entirely modeled on reality and have to be Mighty Glad to have escaped a large collection of aunts trying to set me up with cute men (I’m not entirely sure I wouldn’t have liked being subjected to eye-candy whenever I visited relatives, but that’s another story).

Eliza Enea’s lovely, heart-warming series, „Small Steps” is happening over on the Big World Network, where it’s read by the authoress herself in her own clear, pleasant, talented way. Check it out!

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Mon, 23 Sep 2013 08:01:20 +0000

Soooo… Read the book, decided to check the film out on youtube. Ran into this 10-minute preview, which I thought perfect for satisfying my curiosity. And I saw the English literature teacher, Mr. Anderson, whom I liked so much in the book. Check him out from about 5:30.

Ermmm… What the hell was that?!

1. Which author invented the paperback book?
Answer: None that I know of. ‘Paperback’ is basically a term describing a really simple idea: soft, inexpensive covers for books, bringing the price down and enabling higher sales. There wasn’t much invention to be done there, considering that they already had papers and magazines. The idea sort of sprouted up with several publishers. I don’t know who was first.
It definitely wasn’t Dickens.

2. „[Dickens] also invented the serial.”
Answer: No, he didn’t. He just made good use of it and popularized it, with his first novel, The Pickwick Papers.

3. „In fact, at the end of the third chapter of his first novel, he had a man hanging from a cliff by his fingernails, hence the term ‘cliffhanger’.”
Answer: Who, Charles Dickens?! No way. His first novel was, as I’ve mentioned above, The Pickwick Papers. Which is a series about a few gentlemen and their (mis)adventures. Quite charming. Quite gentlemanly. Nobody goes through anything truly physically threatening, as far as I recall, although there’s a bit of an issue with prison.
The ending of chapter 3:

The dismal man readily complied; a circle was again formed round the table, and harmony once more prevailed. Some lingering irritability appeared to find a resting-place in Mr. Winkle’s bosom, occasioned possibly by the temporary abstraction of his coat—though it is scarcely reasonable to suppose that so slight a circumstance can have excited even a passing feeling of anger in a Pickwickian’s breast. With this exception, their good-humour was completely restored; and the evening concluded with the conviviality with which it had begun.

The cliffhanger scene happens in somebody else’s novel: Thomas Hardy’s A Pair of Blue Eyes. It wasn’t his first novel – it was his third. But, to the teacher’s credit, it was the first one that Hardy put his name on. The scene is at the end of chapter 21:

As he slowly slid inch by inch upon these, Knight made a last desperate dash at the lowest tuft of vegetation—the last outlying knot of starved herbage ere the rock appeared in all its bareness. It arrested his further descent. Knight was now literally suspended by his arms; but the incline of the brow being what engineers would call about a quarter in one, it was sufficient to relieve his arms of a portion of his weight, but was very far from offering an adequately flat face to support him.

There’s a bit of dialogue before the chapter ends. By the way, I haven’t read this particular book (although I knew of the scene), but Google was my friend. It should’ve been the scriptwriter’s as well.

Urgh. Movies about school shouldn’t, you know, misinform people.

Serial Fiction on Roxana-Mălina Chirilă

Plug for Eliza Enea's "Small Steps"

The Perks of Being a Wallflower