January 2012
3 posts
Project Education 365: Learn One New Thing Every...
So, I realised (and it wasn’t one of my daily learnings!) that posting my knowledge updates once every couple of weeks isn’t good enough, because by the time I do them I’ve forgotten what I learned when. So here’s the last few days:
January 15th:
Salt Lake City, Utah (US) was founded by Mormans in 1847, which means that all the stuff that seems random in the first of...
Project Education 365: Learn One New Thing Every...
So, the last time I posted, I had learnt 3 things. In my opinion, all of them are relatively useful. Here are things I have learnt since:
January 4th:
Koinonia is a Christian religious principle that refers to the sense of community and fellowship created by the dynamic of a congregation. Literally, it translates from the Greek as “intimate participation” and I can see how it is...
Project Education 365: Learn One New Thing Every...
On New Year’s Eve evening, I made a decision that rather than let my brain continue to disintegrate into post-Masters mush, in 2012 I am going to make a conscious effort to learn and retain one new thing every day, whether it be the definition of a word, a random useless fact, or something else useful or otherwise. Had I been organised, I would have posted my intentions on New Year’s...
November 2011
1 post
E4 esting - epic!! →
September 2011
1 post
I Learnt Something A Bit Worrying Yesterday...
The Oxford English Dictionary, who are to all intents and purposes the authority on all things English (language), are retiring the phrase “cassette tape”, and are apparently adding in “<3” alongside the definition for “heart”. Time News Feed and The Huffington Post have both written articles about this and have done their best to remain objective, but I...
July 2011
1 post
Glenarvon - Lady Caroline Lamb
So, there has been quite a gap since I last wrote. Those of you who know me will know that this is because I have been slaving away writing, first, assignments for my two modules this semester and since, commencing work upon my 15,000 word MA thesis. I am greatly looking forward to being able to resume “normal” service and blog more regularly and finally get to reviewing some of the...
April 2011
3 posts
"Do you have a spare ciggie?" - Semantics of the...
While I was walking through Sheffield on my way back from work earlier, a bloke approached me and the following discourse took place:
Him:”Do you have a spare cigarette?”
Me: “I don’t smoke.”
It was only as I walked away from him that, pedantic as I am, I realised I hadn’t answered his question. In telling him I don’t smoke, literally speaking, all I...
Black Swan - Released 21/01/2011
When a film has rave reviews and goes on to win a bucketload of award trophies, I can’t help but feel apprehensive about seeing it (if I haven’t already). I normally avoid putting too much stock in any sort of institutionalised assessment of a film’s calibre; media hype tends to build up such excited anticipation that the experience of seeing the film is usually underwhelming...
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest - Stieg...
Looking at the visitor stats for my other blog, Artsy Does It (on Wordpress - go look!) I noticed that one of the most popular search terms leading people to the blog was “What happened after The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest?” The short answer is, of course, “who cares?!” Everything is wrapped up fairly neatly at the end of the third and, may I emphasise, FINAL...
March 2011
2 posts
I wrote this for my other blog. Please read it. →
Some of you may not know that as well as my Tumblr blog, I also edit and write for a project called Artsy Does It I’m working on with an old uni friend to showcase the arts: book, film and music reviews, creative writing, and hopefully we’ll be getting some artists and graphic designers on board to upload their work to show the world. I don’t like to plug myself, or us, but...
February 2011
1 post
The Reader - Released 02/01/2009
The Reader, upon its release way back in 2009, was one of those films that I saw trailers for, desperately wanted to see and never got round to. Maybe it was my lack of friends willing to endure it for me, and maybe it was that I just got too busy or too poor to be able to go. Either way, it slipped off my radar until, on a whim, I bought a copy on DVD recently and made myself take time out of...
January 2011
7 posts
The Girl Who Played With Fire - Stieg Larsson
About a week ago I read an article in the Guardian that talked about how the partner of the late Stieg Larsson, who apparently has been left with nothing because she and Larsson weren’t married and so his assets reverted to his family, is intending to finish a fourth installment of Larsson’s Millennium saga. I cannot express how irritated this announcement made me....
terrydassow asked: Are you a wide reader of vampire texts? I am, which is why Bram's Dracula seems a whole different type of vampire mythos than the modern day versions. Bram Stoker's text has much more of a Marxist analysis potential, much like Pride and Prejudice does. Do you prefer the original myth to the modern day versions?
Why Bram Stoker's Dracula is probably the best...
This evening, I finished writing the second essay of my academic career on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Even though I was focussing on roughly the same argument (Count Dracula as an embodiment of Fin-de-Siecle anxieties about reverse colonisation and racial purity), the stuff I dug up and the way I discussed it this time was completely different to the way I handled it the first time. And I...
December 2010
4 posts
9 - released 28/09/2009
Since today is a day for facing demons, this evening I decided to face 9. I’ve been intending to see this film since it was released in 2009 but, after hearing many, many bad things about it, have been putting it off. And, having finally gotten around to it, my judgement is that it was entirely what I expected, and simultaneously, entirely what I didn’t.
Tim Burton’s films...
Golden Age of the Dandyprat - Sunday Times →
What a gem the Sunday Times have come up with this time. Perusing this on my parents’ sofa, I couldn’t help but laugh at some of the hilarious slang terms that were used in the late 18th century. Among the more amusing are “doodle sack” as a euphemism for a woman’s nether regions, and the original definition of the word “nincompoop”, which, to the 18th...
Too true Edward Docx. Too true. →
As you will know, I quite enjoyed The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but Docx is right. That sort of stuff isn’t literature as such, it’s an excellent mimicry of the real thing. It’s the reason academics invented the literary canon: to distinguish between talented writers and writers who can follow instructions. While novels like Larsson’s are pleasant to read and may be...
On the Tuition Fee Rises
It costs approximately £40,000 to fund university study and living costs for three years. Do you dream of going to university? Excellent! The Student Loans Company will provide you with the funding to achieve your dreams, whoever you are and wherever you are from, repayable in easily manageable amounts automatically deducted from your salary once you earn £15,000 or more per annum. Or at least...
November 2010
2 posts
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part One) -...
On the morning of the general release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part One, film critics on BBC Breakfast were criticising the penultimate chapter of the Harry Potter saga. They were saying that the film, which ends on a cliffhanger, ends on a cliffhanger, like its a bad thing, and that the ‘darker’ nature of the film has made Harry, Ron and Hermione more...
Zofloya; Or, The Moor - Charlotte Dacre
This week’s reading for the Gothic module I’m studying was Zofloya; Or, The Moor, by Charlotte Dacre. I’d never heard of Dacre before so wasn’t really sure what to expect of her writing at all. I suppose that if anything, the pre-conceptive opinion of this novel I had was one of subdued dread and foreboding. I was expecting of Dacre something similar to the likes of Ann...
October 2010
5 posts
Shutter Island - released 12/03/2010
Again, a film that came out a fair while ago but that I only watched yesterday. I bought this on Blu-Ray for my boyfriend for his birthday, which was in August. “How has it taken us two months to watch it?!” I hear you cry. Well, we knew it was going to be mentally challenging and would take a lot of focus to understand it, so it took us a while to find a time where we were mutually...
The Subterraneous Passage; Or, Gothic Cell - Sarah...
This week for the MA module “The Rise of the Gothic”, I, along with one of my classmates (colleagues, perhaps? Peers? I don’t know), have been studying The Subterraneous Passage; Or, Gothic Cell, by Sarah Wilkinson. It was published in 1803 as a bluebook, which was a very cheap form of print distribution and therefore meant that books finally got to the masses and were no longer...
I'm on Twitter... I know...
I didn’t really want to join Twitter. One social networking site is enough for me and that always has been and always will be Facebook. But the world of tweeting called, just like the world of blogging did not so long ago, and I seem to have taken to that alright, so maybe Twitter will grow on me.
I do have my reasons for tweeting; it wasn’t just a case of doing it on impulse for lack...
The Time Machine - H.G. Wells
It seems that I read this book in a different way to everyone else on the Fin-de-Siecle module I study as part of my MA. Everyone else seems to have taken it from the historical perspective, where as I apparently looked at it much more from a position of symbolism and allegory. Such is the life of the literature student.
As a novel(la) I found myself fairly indifferent to the text - it is...
September 2010
4 posts
Fin de Siecle: Once More With Feeling - Walter...
Last week, after much anticipation, excitement and nerves, I finally enrolled on the MA English Literature course at the University of Sheffield. Naively, I thought that the year it will take me to gain this qualification would be roughly of equal workload to the final year of my undergraduate degree (ie not a lot) and the more emails I get to my shiny new University of Sheffield account, the more...
William Shakespeare's Hamlet - showing at...
I’m no stranger to seeing Shakespeare performed - throughout my life I’ve seen productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth (both as a play and as an opera) and various others - but this was the first time I’ve seen Hamlet on stage; not for want of trying to see it but more for lack of opportunity - it doesn’t seem to have been showing anywhere that I have...
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson...
I did a very naughty thing while reading The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I sneaked a peek at the end before I got there. I know, I know, it was a terrible thing to do. But knowing the ending in no way spoiled the remainder of the novel for me, and really only confirmed what I already suspected from the onset of the novel. I was about half way through when I cheated, and the knowledge I gained...
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist - Released...
Right. I know that this film came out absolutely AGES ago, but I only saw it yesterday. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist came out while I was in the middle of a poverty-stricken phase of life that prevented my visiting the cinema (with the excpetion of Twilight… I still managed to see that one twice) and then it seems to have just been one of those films that I completely forgot...
August 2010
1 post
Inception - released 08/07/2010
I’ve been meaning to write about this one for absolutely ages. I’ve seen a few films since, all of which (with the exception of Toy Story 3 - I can’t bring myself to critique Pixar) I intend to write about, so it looks as though I’m running behind.
Even though I saw it a while ago, Inception has remained quite clear in my mind. The concept of the film is just genius. I...
July 2010
2 posts
Wicked - Gregory Maguire
There were a few reasons I was attracted to this book initially. I was aware of the West End/ Broadway show adaptation (although I haven’t seen it… yet) and I’m very aware of The Wizard of Oz, I mean, who isn’t?! Also, the cover is pretty damn cool. I’d been eyeing this book and its sequels (Son of a Witch and A Lion Among Men) for some time waiting for them to...
Eclipse - released 09/07/2010
Those of you who know me will not be in the least bit surprised to see a review of Eclispe, the latest film adaptation from the Twilight Saga of books, residing in my blog. You will also not be surprised to find that I saw this film within 24 hours of it going on general release (I would have been at the previews had it not been for a sister’s 18th getting in the way… damn her!)....
June 2010
1 post
A Treatise on Apple
So, a week ago, I joined the dark side and purchased an Apple MacBook Pro. Not that the spec means much/anything at all to a member of the technically challenged, but this laptop sports such features as a 2.4GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 4GB RAM, 250GB hard drive, 2 USB ports, 1 Firewire port, a “13.3 inch (diagonal) LED - backlit glossy widescreen display with support for millions of...
May 2010
1 post
Twenties Girl - Sophie Kinsella
From the onset I was apprehensive about this book. Who wouldn’t be, when the cover of the book they are about to open is branded with a review by Heat magazine, the most trusted of literary critics, describing the contents as “Wonderfully witty… as fabulously funny as Sophie’s other gems”. I could review that statement in itself rather scathingly. Do Heat know...
April 2010
3 posts
My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult
I have no idea really where to start. I did not like this book, but I can’t outright name a single thing I found wrong with it, and somehow, I was unable to put it down.
Much like The Time Traveler’s Wife, My Sister’s Keeper is written through split narrative. But not just two voices; this novel features a total of 7. That’s right. 7. And none much different from the...
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
I always find it somewhat difficult to write about something I actually really enjoy. It is so much easier to be negatively critical than it is to shower an abundance of praise on something. And this, The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, is a thoroughly enjoying read.
I won’t pretend I wasn’t without my reservations before I started reading the book; I always am...
Clash of the Titans - released 02/04/2010
Last night, my lovely boyfriend and I saw Clash of the Titans, in 2D, rather than the apparently somewhat infectious 3D people seem to be raving about these days, because we both stand firm that 3D gives us a headache. Upon leaving, we both had the same kind of puzzled expression on our faces and decided that if we had to describe what we’d just seen in one word, we’d go for...
February 2010
2 posts
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
So, today, on the train back from Sheffield, I FINALLY finished reading American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis. Having read The Rules of Attraction last summer and enjoyed it, I thought the same would be true of this. How much more wrong could I have been.
I started American Psycho feeling quite positive about it. I found the attention to minute detail quirky; the way Bateman, the protagonist,...
Fox in a box - an introduction
So.
Hello.
I’m new to this blogging lark. I have never previously been enough of a nerd to indulge in such oddities, but since technology and society seems to demand this sacrifice of me, and also because I aspire to one day write professionally in some form and need the practice, here I am. I suppose this “entry” is to act as a sort of introduction to what is to come.
So,...