Mirkwood Reflections

I didn't read too many books in September, but I did write 13,000 words on a short story, so hopefully that counts for something! Mansfield Park by Jane Austen - 09/14/08 Excellent - Romance Fanny Price is sent to live with her aunt, uncle, and cousins at Mansfield Park, but she is never quite part of the family. Took me a long time to get through this, but not because I didn't enjoy it. I really did! I think I'm getting the hang of reading Austen, actually. The love story is not the important theme in Mansfield Park, though. The Keepsake by Tess Gerrittsen - 09/20/08 Good - Suspense A murderer preserves his victims according to a number of grotesque ancient customs. I enjoy reading Gerritsen's novels. She's a doctor turned novelist and she writes crisply morbid novels. What does that say about me? lol Seducing Mr. Darcy by Gwyn Cready - 09/23/08 Good - Romance Funny but bawdy story of Flip Allison, who travels back in time and inadvertently ruins the love story...

Doesn't every woman long for a group of girlfriends she can laugh and cry and indulge with? These women are the ones you can be silly with, the ones who you can confide in, these are the ones who will even make you a cake on your birthday and sing to you! Well, I am blessed to be part of just such a fabulous group of ladies - it's our Rollicking Readers book club. For the past four months now, we've been meeting every few weeks to eat and discuss one of Jane Austen's books. This month, our selection was Mansfield Park . Those in attendance vary from session to session, but we usually have eight or nine women on any given date. I enjoyed Mansfield Park more than any of the other Austen works I have read thus far, save Pride and Prejudice . However, I am beginning to think that it's because I am learning to read Austen and becoming more comfortable with her language and style, rather than the plot and characters of Mansfield Park itself. Fanny Price, the insipid and...

A truly hilarious spoof of the Twilight trailer . (If you haven't seen the trailer, this will really not make any sense to you, so go watch it first! Click on videos and watch all of the trailers.) Thanks, Jen, for (FINALLY) telling me about it! lol

I FINALLY got to watch Speed Racer tonight. If you've been reading here for any length of time, you'll probably remember that for some odd reason, the Speed Racer trailer really caught my eye. I watched it repeatedly and had every intention of viewing the film in the theatres. Why? Do I remember the Speed Racer cartoon? Only a little . Am I a racing fan? Not in the least. Am I a preteen boy? Um, never have been . Then why would this movie entice me? I never have been quite sure. Maybe it has something to do with the directors - the Wachowski brothers, who also directed The Matri x , which you may know to be one of my favorite movies of all time. But now I know. It definitely has its faults, but there is plenty positive about Speed Racer and I really wish I had been brave enough to ignore the bad reviews and go see it when it came out - on the big screen, as it was intended. First, what is there to pick on? Well, if you wanted to, you could pick it all apart. But couldn...

I've been writing. I found out about a short story opportunity for publication and I decided to jump on it. I have to have a completed story with 10,000-15,000 words. My count so far? 7351! I am really pleased with my story as far as it goes. About half done, is what I'd guess.

Ooh, the month is almost half OVER and I haven't finished a book yet. Yikes, I'd better get reading!!!

Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series rocks! When I was pregnant with my last baby in 2001, I overheard a librarian recommending Outlander to another patron. I sidled over, feeling like an eavesdropper, and discovered what they were talking about. I devoured the first four books in the series within just a few weeks, and that's all that existed then! Fiery Cross came out the following spring, if I recall correctly and I actually went out and bought that big heavy hardcover book brand new - first time I can recall doing that ever! Since then, I've re-read Outlander several times and re-read Dragonfly in Amber , Voyager , and Drums of Autumn . I'm saving the re-reads of Fiery Cross and A Breath of Snow and Ashes for this upcoming year, in preparation for An Echo in the Bone , which is set to release in the fall of 2009. If you like historical novels, especially really long ones, and even more especially romantic ones, this series should please you as much as it does me! ...