Women in Fictional Diners

My article “The Whistle Stop Café and Luke’s Diner: The Village Café as Utopian Space for Women in Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café and Gilmore Girls” is out now!

It was a lovely experience to work with the brilliant editorial staff of the Digital Literature Review to make this article the best it could be. The article began as a paper for the course Just Food: The American Literatures of Food and Social Justice, which I took as an elective in my research MA Literary Studies last year. I am very happy with the end result; please give it a read!

In case you need a little more encouragement, here is the abstract:

My Reading in 2020

2020 wasn’t a good year for a lot of reasons that I don’t need to tell you about because you already know them if you haven’t been living under a rock. But for reading, 2020 was an excellent year. After all, many people, myself included, had little else to do. If you’re interested in hearing about my reading habits over the last year, or if you want some tips on things to read, read on!

What I Read in 2019 (and some thoughts on failure)

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know that I set myself a yearly goal of reading 52 books: one book a week. In 2019, I did not achieve that goal. In fact, I missed by a single book (sniff). Here’s a list of all the books I did read in 2019:

March

1. De Verwarde Cavia – Paulien Cornelisse

2. Language Change: Progress or Decay? – Jean Aitchison

3. Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace  (this book is to blame for me reading so few books between last summer and now.)

The Difficulties of Jane Austen on the Big Screen

Love & Friendship: A Successful Movie Adaptation Of Lady Susan

When making Jane Austen’s classic, much-loved writing into films, a key aspect of her style is often overlooked. No matter how much I love them, many movie adaptations of Austen are longwinded and static to the point of being boring. As is often the case with books we consider ‘classics,’ audiences have an awe for the source material that prevents them from being amused. And you should be in awe. I am in awe. It is decidedly awe-inspiring that a woman of Austen’s economic and social standing wrote such brilliant, insightful and lasting works. But these works also happen to be hilarious.

Love & Friendship, the movie adaptation of Austen’s epistolary novel Lady Susan that came out earlier this year, gets the comedy of Austen exactly right. The film is fast-paced, modern, and as a result laugh-out-loud hilarious. Yet around the time that it came out I read and heard many complaints. People seemed to think that this was not “the real Austen,” whatever that means. They were of the opinion that something had been diminished, some injustice had been done to her original works. I wholeheartedly disagree.

Read In 2017 & 2018

Once again I did it: I read 52 books in 2017. For your pleasure, I have listed them here once again, together with the short stories I’ve read. By far my most-read author this year was Lemony Snicket with 19 (!) books. Titles I particularly liked are in bold, and the list also states which books went with a particular challenge.

I participated in the Dumbledore’s Army Readathon this January. A post to view my progress can be found here.

I also hosted the Mental Health Reading Challenge and participated in Femividual’s Feminism Reading Challenge. Her Bingo Card is at the bottom of this post.

January

1. Grief Is The Thing With Feathers – Max Porter

2. The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison (bingo square: black feminist)

3. The Bad Beginning – Lemony Snicket

4. Girl, Interrupted – Susanna Kaysen (Mental Health Reading Challenge) (bingo square: book about being a girl)

Turtles All The Way Down Review

Today was the release of John Green’s long-awaited new novel: Turtles All The Way Down. I wouldn’t be a Frenzied Fangirl if I hadn’t immediately run to the nearest Waterstone’s to grab myself a copy, and I’ve just finished reading it. Here are some thoughts. Please be warned that this review contains SPOILERS. Although it does not go into the plot very much, if you want to approach this book without any prior knowledge of its subject matter, leave now.

Here’s a picture of our cat, the book, and the awesome t-shirt and bracelet I also got.

A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad)

I’m still raising money for suicide prevention everyone. You can donate here. But I’m also doing something that is equally as important, if not more so: raising awareness. You should all be aware that thousands of people all over the world are struggling with their mental health everyday. If there was more understanding for their struggle, the world would be a better place.

What I’m about to do now is going to be super-frustrating: let me recommend a play to you. It is a play you can only see if you can manage to travel through time, and it is called A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad).

I saw the play at the Edinburgh Fringe this August, and it means a lot to me. I won’t wax lyrical about life-changing experiences or some such, because of course the real life-changing experience was my depression itself. But to see my illness recognized, understood, and performed so brilliantly and accurately on stage was a huge relief.

The play is accurately named. Its presentation, full of glitter and singing and chorus lines, is super happy. It’s subject matter, ranging from alcoholism to depression and suicide, is anything but. The writers and performers have managed to unearth the comedy inherent in anything that is bleak or sad, and made use of that comedy without devaluating the terrifying experience that is mental illness. Bravo.

I always tell people that no one is alone in their fight against mental illness, but I don’t always believe it. Jon Brittain and Matthew Floyd Jones made me believe it, and that felt incredible. Of course you can’t travel back in time to see this play, but you can do the next best thing: read it.  Paperbacks and ebooks are available from Amazon

Happy International Kissing Day

Oscar Wilde: “the curve of  your lips rewrites history”

You got that right. Today, July 6th 2017, is International Kissing Day. The perfect time for Frenzied Fangirl to list some of her favorite kisses in pop culture. Why? Well why the hell not?

For a fuller experience, check out the playlist I made of all my favorite songs about kissing.

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS MY BEST FRIEND LILA TO ENTER THIS BLOG POST. IT HAS MANY WONDERFUL SCENES IN IT THAT SHE STILL NEEDS TO EXPERIENCE IN THEIR FULL GLORY, NOT CHOPPED UP INTO GIFS.

Lila, love, the first one is Dean & Rory – Gilmore Girls. You know it already. Do not click the “Read more” link!

Becky’s Bookshelf: Required Reading For Fangirls

I haven’t done much with the Character’s Bookshelf series lately, but it is still a concept very close to my heart. So today, let me offer you Becky’s Bookshelf. Becky Rosen, of course, is the fangirl from within the Supernatural universe, the Mary Sue made flesh, the ultimate defiance of the fourth wall. She is a fan of the same characters every Supernatural-fan is a fan of: the Winchesters. And here’s what she, and any other fangirl, should have on their bookshelves.

Fic by Anne Jamison

Fic is an incredible book by an incredible author. Anne Jamison is a professor of English at the University of Utah. She holds a PhD from Princeton, and she’s written an entire book about fanfiction and the way it’s changing the landscape of literature and culture. Apart from a number of surprising insights into the world of publishing and internet fandom, I also got an endless list of to-read fics from this book.

Get your very own copy here:

Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World

 

Harry, A History: The True Story of a Boy Wizard, His Fans and Life Inside the Harry Potter Phenomenon by Melissa Anelli

Prospects & Presumptions: The Ebook

Ladies & Gents,

My 2014 novella Prospects & Presumptions is now available as an ebook. You can buy it through Amazon here.

As a special treat I’ve decided to publish an excerpt on this blog. Enjoy!

Part I: Northing Cottage

It is generally considered rude to wake people with bad news. However, like most unpleasant things, bad news usually has unpleasant timing. That is why Mr Porter came to Northing Cottage that night. He dismounted, wiped the rain from his brow and knocked on the door. Northing was a small house that could, with a great deal of cramming and good manners, lodge five people at most, and so it often did. This particular evening, however, it housed only three.