Lazy Lazy Days
Aug. 13th, 2006 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjWell, what have I done with my free weekend. Month's accounts? Check. Research and answer e-mail questions? Check. Sleep in? Check. Catch up with week's housecleaning? Well, three outa four ain't bad. I did a really good job on the "sleep in" one, although it wasn't as useful as it would have been if I hadn't added "stay up late".
Café review: I've been meaning to check out Rudy's Can't Fail Café for quite some time. It's on the corner opposite the gorgeous old Emeryville town hall, kitty-corner from Pixar and a block over from my favorite bakery, so I've had many chances to contemplate it but was always a bit daunted by the number of people hanging around waiting to be seated. As it turns out, there's a lot more seating inside than it looks like there would be from outside, so the wait isn't that long -- especially for a single person willing to sit at the counter. Next time I'll wait for a table outside, though, since the music inside is a bit loud and the shrieking children echo a bit much. The café seems to be a favorite with the stroller-pushing crowd. The menu is exactly what I look for in a weekend brunch place: a nice variety of egg based dishes, including several items in the eggs benedict family, interesting omelets, and an insert with specials, implying some regular variation in the menu. I picked a Mediterranean omelet (onions, sun-dried tomatoes, goat cheese, spinach) with the usual accompaniment of oj and mocha. The mocha was too sweet and syrupy -- I suppose some people like it on that end, but I'm more fond of the Starbucks end of the scale for mocha balance. The omelet seems to default to whites only -- I hadn't asked for it specifically and hadn't noticed any mention about it on the menu. Not a problem, but a bit odd. And the omelet filling was simply stuck inside the cooked egg, rather than being incorporated in any way. This meant that trying to get a bite of egg and filling was quite an exercise. The entrée was filled out with fresh hashbrowns and toast. It didn't look like all that much food, but I ended up feeling uncomfortably full even though I lingered over the meal with a newspaper. Conclusion: I'll give it a second try -- probably with one of the eggs benedict variants -- and hope for a different experience.
Book review: One of my deep dark secrets is that I have something of a fixation on Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice". Not sure why (other than it being a well-written classic) -- it's one of those stories that is the literary equivalent of mac-and-cheese for me. It's comfort food that I can go back to almost any time and enjoy as much as the first time. (Burnett's "A Little Princess" is another book in the same category -- that should shock some people.) Lately, as Austen has been enjoying a new fashionability, there have been a number of novels reviving her characters or, in one case, Austen herself. I've been enjoying Stephanie Barron's Jane Austen mystery series, although I don't know enough about the author's life and character to know whether historical damage is being done. I'm a bit more undecided about Carrie Bebris's Mr & Mrs Darcy mystery series, mostly because I find the supernatural elements out of place -- as if two entirely different mystery series had been grafted together arbitrarily.
I imagine that a woman reading P&P -- or watching any of the various film versions of it -- is intended to identify primarily with Elizabeth. She's a surprisingly modern-thinking woman, which makes her more accessible than some other protagonists of the day. And the plot is pretty much the quintessential 'Regency romance' story with the spunky but socially disadvantaged heroine first disdaining then captivating the wealthy, handsome, and independent hero who -- while he must overcome various social obstacles -- is in the happy position of not really having to please anyone but himself. Now me -- I end up identifying primarily with Darcy, for a variety of reasons which needn't concern us here. So when I spotted Janet Aylmer's novel "Darcy's Story", intended as a retelling of P&P from his point of view, there wasn't much question of buying it or not. Alas, the book fails to hold to its promise. Or rather, it fulfills exactly that promise and nothing more. The book reads like the first draft working notes for a novel telling Darcy's side of the story. All the scenes that intersect with the original novel have been carefully laid out (complete with word-for-word matches of dialogue), and the author has meticulously worked out what Darcy's movements must or could have been in his "off stage" time in the original novel. The events and interactions are set out in clear and competent prose. But there's no there there.
The book feels like an academic exercise in point of view, but the author neither adds much in the way of original insights, scenes, or character development, nor manages to capture Austen's descriptive style in a way that could make the new angle as rich as the original work. I was never caught up and sucked in. And more damningly, I came out of the end of the book feeling that it was little more than a work of moral plagiarism (if not technical -- due to the age of the original). If you're going to re-write an existing classic with a new twist, you should leave the reader feeling that they would also have enjoyed reading something of yours that was entirely original -- otherwise you're just writing hack fan-fic. (Note that this is not intended to imply that all fan-fic is hackwork. Barbara Hambly's "Ishmael" is an excellent example of what a talented writer can do with fan-fic.) And in the end, Aylmer hasn't demonstrated to me that she has an interesting book's worth of talent.
Café review: I've been meaning to check out Rudy's Can't Fail Café for quite some time. It's on the corner opposite the gorgeous old Emeryville town hall, kitty-corner from Pixar and a block over from my favorite bakery, so I've had many chances to contemplate it but was always a bit daunted by the number of people hanging around waiting to be seated. As it turns out, there's a lot more seating inside than it looks like there would be from outside, so the wait isn't that long -- especially for a single person willing to sit at the counter. Next time I'll wait for a table outside, though, since the music inside is a bit loud and the shrieking children echo a bit much. The café seems to be a favorite with the stroller-pushing crowd. The menu is exactly what I look for in a weekend brunch place: a nice variety of egg based dishes, including several items in the eggs benedict family, interesting omelets, and an insert with specials, implying some regular variation in the menu. I picked a Mediterranean omelet (onions, sun-dried tomatoes, goat cheese, spinach) with the usual accompaniment of oj and mocha. The mocha was too sweet and syrupy -- I suppose some people like it on that end, but I'm more fond of the Starbucks end of the scale for mocha balance. The omelet seems to default to whites only -- I hadn't asked for it specifically and hadn't noticed any mention about it on the menu. Not a problem, but a bit odd. And the omelet filling was simply stuck inside the cooked egg, rather than being incorporated in any way. This meant that trying to get a bite of egg and filling was quite an exercise. The entrée was filled out with fresh hashbrowns and toast. It didn't look like all that much food, but I ended up feeling uncomfortably full even though I lingered over the meal with a newspaper. Conclusion: I'll give it a second try -- probably with one of the eggs benedict variants -- and hope for a different experience.
Book review: One of my deep dark secrets is that I have something of a fixation on Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice". Not sure why (other than it being a well-written classic) -- it's one of those stories that is the literary equivalent of mac-and-cheese for me. It's comfort food that I can go back to almost any time and enjoy as much as the first time. (Burnett's "A Little Princess" is another book in the same category -- that should shock some people.) Lately, as Austen has been enjoying a new fashionability, there have been a number of novels reviving her characters or, in one case, Austen herself. I've been enjoying Stephanie Barron's Jane Austen mystery series, although I don't know enough about the author's life and character to know whether historical damage is being done. I'm a bit more undecided about Carrie Bebris's Mr & Mrs Darcy mystery series, mostly because I find the supernatural elements out of place -- as if two entirely different mystery series had been grafted together arbitrarily.
I imagine that a woman reading P&P -- or watching any of the various film versions of it -- is intended to identify primarily with Elizabeth. She's a surprisingly modern-thinking woman, which makes her more accessible than some other protagonists of the day. And the plot is pretty much the quintessential 'Regency romance' story with the spunky but socially disadvantaged heroine first disdaining then captivating the wealthy, handsome, and independent hero who -- while he must overcome various social obstacles -- is in the happy position of not really having to please anyone but himself. Now me -- I end up identifying primarily with Darcy, for a variety of reasons which needn't concern us here. So when I spotted Janet Aylmer's novel "Darcy's Story", intended as a retelling of P&P from his point of view, there wasn't much question of buying it or not. Alas, the book fails to hold to its promise. Or rather, it fulfills exactly that promise and nothing more. The book reads like the first draft working notes for a novel telling Darcy's side of the story. All the scenes that intersect with the original novel have been carefully laid out (complete with word-for-word matches of dialogue), and the author has meticulously worked out what Darcy's movements must or could have been in his "off stage" time in the original novel. The events and interactions are set out in clear and competent prose. But there's no there there.
The book feels like an academic exercise in point of view, but the author neither adds much in the way of original insights, scenes, or character development, nor manages to capture Austen's descriptive style in a way that could make the new angle as rich as the original work. I was never caught up and sucked in. And more damningly, I came out of the end of the book feeling that it was little more than a work of moral plagiarism (if not technical -- due to the age of the original). If you're going to re-write an existing classic with a new twist, you should leave the reader feeling that they would also have enjoyed reading something of yours that was entirely original -- otherwise you're just writing hack fan-fic. (Note that this is not intended to imply that all fan-fic is hackwork. Barbara Hambly's "Ishmael" is an excellent example of what a talented writer can do with fan-fic.) And in the end, Aylmer hasn't demonstrated to me that she has an interesting book's worth of talent.
