So in my day job, one of my roles is to produce the quarterly digest for my college. I work with an amazing team of writers and designers and what we’ve done has really grown over the past couple years. I just wanted to share this with the interwebs, because I am proud of my team and their work.
Cover art by Brad Carroll.
As anyone who follows my blog knows, I usually do book reviews. However, I recently watched a short film, discovered because of my unabashed infatuation with Jason Isaacs, called Medusa’s Ankles. It was directed by Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley of Harry Potter fame), adapted from the short story of the same title by AS Byatt. You can read it here. You can, and should, also stream the film for free here on Vimeo.
Medusa’s Ankles shows Susannah, a middle aged Classicist, who is concerned about signs of aging. She wanders into a salon, owned by Lucian, because she’s drawn to the Matisse painting in the lobby. She becomes rather infatuated with him over the months she comes to his salon, eventually coming unhinged and wreaking havoc on his newly remodeled salon when she hates the style Lucian’s assistant gave her.
There was so much character development in this tiny little film. It was about 20 minutes long and in that time, we see Susannah evolve from a meek and retiring woman to someone a little bolder, and eventually to an hysterical basketcase. Of course, her fit wasn’t really because of a hairdo. It was years of worrying over her aging and feeling out of place in her own skin as well as in a society which seems to be gearing more and more towards the younger generations. She feels left behind, unattractive, unwanted, and scorned. That Lucian, the object of her fixation, is another source for these emotions contributes to her snapping at the end.
Unlike Susannah, Lucian is flighty and temperamental, never landing on one thing for long. He is essentially her complete opposite, and yet he comes to be a person she relies upon in some ways. She goes to him to help her see a younger version of herself, which will never happen, and when she realizes this, she snaps. Lucian helps her to see that younger self but it is, of course, illusory, as is his interest in her as a person. He is vain and shallow, telling Susannah that he is leaving his wife because ‘She’s let herself go. It’s her own fault. She’s let herself go altogether. She’s let her ankles get fat, they swell over her shoes, it disgusts me, it’s impossible for me.’ He is too self-absorbed to realise that his comments hit home for Susannah, who also has fat ankles now, and his comment serves as a catalyst for her destroying his salon.
The link to Greek myth is interesting. At first, it isn’t clear what Medusa has to do with anything, but it becomes clear that she – and her ankles – are a proxy for women and being weighed down by the expectations of men. Medusa was once beautiful and then she was transformed into a monster. Susannah seems to view herself in this way as well, acknowledging that she was never beautiful but was attractive, then remembering a day spent with an Italian lover when she was young. Her body, which doesn’t feel like she remembers or wants it to, brings her back to present with a jolt when she realizes that her reflection is like her mother’s had been, all fake and unreal and trying entirely too hard to look young again.
Her fit and destruction of Lucian’s salon may be a catharsis, but Lucian himself gives her permission and tells her it’s ok, the insurance will pay for it and he kind of wants out anyway. When she gets home, her husband really sees her for the first time in a long while and kisses her neck. Are both these instances freeing for Susannah, or do they reflect more of the control men have on society? Lucian essentially pats her on the head and sends her home when he should have rightfully been pissed off. Is her husband’s approval something she desires and feels good about, or is it effectively Perseus cutting off Medusa’s head? It raises a lot of interesting questions. I would love to analyze this in a proper literature course.
Also, I just want to say that I think Jason Isaacs is a seriously underrated actor. I don’t say that just because I’m currently in love with him; it’s because he can inhabit the lives of so many different people in a totally convincing way. Not all, or even most, actors can do that. Actors like Harrison Ford or Tom Cruise might be famous and popular, but they all generally play the same kind of character. Ford is usually a dorky hero, whether he’s playing Han Solo, Indiana Jones, or the President of the United States; Cruise is generally an arrogant hero. Not so with Isaacs. He has played a wide range of characters including a racist, aristocratic bully (Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies); an Irish-American mobster from Rhode Island, complete with the heavy accent (Michael Caffee in Brotherhood); an arrogant and disinterested charmer (Lucian in Medusa’s Ankles); and a morally questionable, warmongering Starfleet captain (Gabriel Lorca in Star Trek Discovery). And he doesn’t just play villains in everything. He was a super dorky yet sexy dad in The Chumscrubber, a possibly mentally ill cop in the TV series Awake, an elegant ambassador in The State Within, and a beleaguered detective in Case Histories. He is utterly believable in every single role, and not one of his villainous roles, of which there are many, are at all similar to one another. I think he is in no danger of being typecast.
It’s been a loooooooooooong time since I wrote a ‘favorite lines from…’ kind of post. I can’t think of a better one to start back up with than Madeline Miller’s CIRCE
Another year down the drain. Where did the time go?? I must be getting old or something because it seems like 2018 was just beginning. I had a busy year but managed not to do a ton of things. I do have a few highlights, though. I am going to be better about doing a year in review post from now on, mostly to keep myself on track and see what I actually did and what I need to do better in the future. Might as well share it with the interwebs. 🙂
Things that I didn’t actually do:
My sweet girl started 3rd grade. She goes to a school that teaches a grade level ahead and she’s killing it. Math isn’t her favorite subject, but she does a good job with it. Better than I EVER did. And she loves reading, which delights me to no end. She reads wayyy above her grade level. Her favorite books are the Wings of Fire series. We also just read the first Harry Potter book and now she’s obsessed. She loves Star Trek, Dr Who, and Star Wars, so I feel like maybe I’m doing something right. She’s so smart, funny, pretty, and kind. She is also stubborn and defiant and challenging and headstrong and brave. She’s my little Viking and as frustrating as she can be at times, I wouldn’t change one single thing. She is stronger than I am in a lot of ways and I try hard to foster her individuality and teach her that it’s ok to speak up and use her voice in ways I was never allowed to do when I was little. I am so proud of her and I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next. Right now, though, she has a super gross cold, so I imagine what she comes up with with be some form of snot…
My mom started going to an all-women’s boxing gym in early spring and loves it, which makes me super proud of her. With the exception of probably Amy, my mom could most likely kick every one of my friends’ asses without too much trouble. That’s handy, since most of my friends could use a good ass kicking. 🙂 She got me started in on it as well, and so I’ve been going since May. I can throw some hard punches now for a little girl and am getting in pretty good shape. Thanks for talking me into trying it out, Mom!
My favorite books of 2018:
Favorite podcasts I discovered:
Movies I saw in the theatre:
Favorite new shows I discovered:
Wherein I use my thinking part:
Speaking of reading, I did pretty well with my reading goals this year. I topped out at 97 books, not counting ones I DNF’d. In total, I read 21,131 pages and listened to 246:45 hours of audiobooks. I averaged 8 books a month. I read 59 books by women (60%) and 38 by men (39%). I read 24 books by authors of color (not quite 25%). In 2019, I’d like to bump that up to at least 30%. I read mostly SFF (33), historical fiction (25), and literary fiction (16), with other genres falling in here and there. I didn’t finish the Read Harder 2018 challenge, but I got 19 out of 24 tasks:
And, really, the biggest thing of 2018 is that I was approached by an editor at Pen and Sword Books to see if I wanted to write a book about a couple medieval queens for them. Umm, YES? I’m waiting for the contract, which has been approved but not sent to me yet, so I’ll wait to share more deets, but that honestly about blew me away. I’m so excited and I am looking forward to the process.
In 2019, some goals I have, other than writing the book and doing what I can to help the Resistance put 45 and his tribe in prison, are:
We’ll see how things pan out. 2019, let’s do this.
If you’re anything like me, books and scent go hand in hand. There is nothing like the smell of a new book, the crispness of the pages and the sharpness of the ink. I take a deep breath every time I enter a bookstore and instantly feel better about everything, no matter what. There is a special way new books smell, and it’s the same no matter where you go, and it is a comfort to me. If I am traveling and get homesick, a bookstore will still smell the same wherever I am as it would at home, and I feel more steady.
I’ve always associated places with scents, as well, and used books, too, have their own scent. Some, like ones I order from England, smell of old musty buildings and flowers, reminding me of centuries of people walking over the same stone floors and seeing much the same view as perhaps I have seen when I have visited. One, and I don’t remember where it came from except that I ordered it from one of the sellers on Amazon and it was listed as “very good condition,” reeked of cigarettes and smelled up my entire house in a matter of hours. Even setting it out directly in the heat of the desert sun didn’t kill the stink of it and I had to throw it away. That bookseller got a strongly worded email regarding the definition of “very good condition.” If only it was as strong as the stench emanating from the book they sent to me. Holy shit.
My point, of course, is that books and scent are inextricably linked for many of us. But to take it further, for me, books often make me wish I could distill the scents from the story and bottle them as a perfume. As a bit of a perfume junkie – I have dozens of bottles of perfume from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab – I would just love to be part of a project to translate some books into scents. BPAL already is literary in the extreme, and has entire lines of scents devoted to books and characters from them, so this isn’t an unrealistic dream. Maybe I should hone my networking skills…
Some books that are simply begging to be made into perfumes right now are:
The Night Circus. Rose, ice, and sugar. Caramel and autumn leaves. Roses, dew, moss, and dirt. The language of the book was full of scent-filled imagery.
Uprooted. What does a Heart tree smell like? Sickly sweet and woody? Green leafy? And Agnieszka’s spell she chants with the Dragon? She needs a scent of her own, as does Sarkan himself.
When Christ and His Saints Slept. Eleanor of Aquitaine must have something rich and complex, yet subtle. Maybe something somewhat exotic, jasmine and sandalwood with a topnote of lemon. Henry would be all male, leather and salt and perhaps a touch of cypress and lavender.
The Mists of Avalon. The Princess Bride. The Dragonriders of Pern. Just about anything written by Holly Black or Francesca Lia Block. I could go on all day long with this.
What perfumes would you make based on books you’ve read?
Recently, my daughter needed to cull her books, because, at five years old, she is a very good reader and has long outgrown many of the board books and younger story books that cluttered her bookshelves. So together, we sat down and went through them, using it as a wonderful opportunity to teach about giving to others because not everyone is as fortunate as we are to have a small home library of their own, and that some other child might really love getting her board book versions of Jane Eyre and Dracula or the 48 point font version of Pixar’s Brave. She had long since mastered those. Then we came across a book that she hadn’t read in ages, but could technically have kept but decided she wanted to get a new book instead, so she opted to part with it in return for a new one. It was The Poky Little Puppy. Before it went into the pile for Goodwill, she wanted to read it again one last time because she loves puppies. Fair enough. We settled onto the couch for a reading.
I remembered then why I never read that book to her.Read More »
I felt like writing a Star Trek something, but didn’t want to go all-out, nor did I feel like writing an actual fan fiction. So I did a drabble, and challenged myself to write only 100 words. No more, no less. It was kind of fun. Here it is.Read More »
I was at a big meeting at work, wherein the room was full of lots of people I didn’t know, when my brain honed in on the woman in front of me and piped up. This is never a good thing.Read More »
Her Grace's Library 