A Damsel in Distress

A Damsel in Distress by P. G. Wodehouse was recommended as summer reading on the GirlTalk blog. So, since it is no longer summer and I have tons of work to do, I thought "what better time to start reading it?" It was especially useful in avoiding writing that Wall Street Journal summary and later my Materials Science lab report. But besides being useful for procrastination, it was well worth the read.

A happy English family is introduced to us in the first chapter. Oh wait, no, they are not really very happy. Well, Lady Caroline might be...
But not for long.
Her step-son Reggie Byng has not proposed to her brother's daughter after all like she had been hoping.
Lady Caroline is the chatelaine of Belpher Castle and sister to Lord Marshmoreton with whom she stays along with her step-son Reggie. Lord Marshmoreton is a widower with a son, Percy Marsh, Lord Belpher, and a daughter, Lady Patricia Maud Marsh (but she goes throughout the book as Maud). Lord Marshmoreton's chief delight is to garden roses. Lady Caroline's chief delight is to make everyone do as she thinks they ought to be dignified and live up to their social and historical position. She has Lord Marshmoreton working on a book about his ancestors. She is also urging her step-son Reggie to marry Maud, despite Maud having fallen in love with a penniless man in Wales. Reggie personally is in love with Lord Marshmoreton's secretary Alice.

And thus we are introduced to everyone all at once and get all their desires and the obstacles to them as well.

Now on to George.
George was usually a happy man, but one day he woke up feeling lousy. But that could have been owing to the fact that he had gone to better very late that night(or early...in the morning) because there had been a party for the opening of the new play in London for which he had composed the music. But whatever the case, he was feeling lousy. And some friends of his said his problem was that he needed to get married. So he started to run some errands feeling very down and lonely and depressed.

And then suddenly a girl hopped into his cab as it was paused in traffic and asked him to hide her.

And the adventure begins at last.
And what fun it is indeed!
Maud, for it was she who hopped into the cab, was out on the sly to meet with her man from Wales whom she heard was back from a cruise with his employer. But she saw her brother, Percy, and hopped into the strange cab. George promptly falls in love.

The story continues with much hilarious misunderstanding as everybody mixes everybody else up and confuses Lord Marshmoreton for a gardener and etc...

And of course it must all come out right in the end, or else I wouldn't be so happy about it. So now you must all go read it right away too. You can find it on Project Gutenburg as A Damsel in Distress.

Surprised By Joy

Introduction

Surprised By Joy is a book by C. S. Lewis. It discusses his early life and childhood, and the evolution of his faith. But it's primary focus is:

The "stab of Joy"
It was beauty that inspired Joy. It was this Joy that Lewis sought.

The lack of beauty, and therefore Joy, as he grew up in a Christian home, made him think that Christianity wasn't enough. Because of this thinking, encouraged by several of his teachers in various boarding schools he attended, he slowly abandoned the Christian faith. He sought after the poetry and writings of ancient Greece and Rome, and the songs of Wagner and others that revealed to him a "stab of Joy".
In C. S. Lewis's own words, the stab of Joy

"....[I]s an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure" (Surprised By Joy, p. 17-18).

The book weaves in and out of Lewis's outer life and inner one, a sort of "dual plot." In the very end, Lewis comes to realise that the Joy he was seeking all the time was merely a sign, pointing to something better all along: to Jesus Christ Himself.

Literature
It is fun to note certain areas in which Lewis's experiences later led to characters in The Chronicles of Narnia. I have pointed out a few below:

The "New House" he moved into at age 7, he describes as large and full of all sorts of alcoves and rooms. Books of all kinds were scattered here and there, on bookshelves and in tall piles in the attic. The "New House clearly helped along the construction of: the Professor's house in the country (in the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe).

Lewis describes driving to his first boarding school: "Now I am choking and sweating, itching too, in thick dark stuff, throttled by an Eton collar, my feet already aching with unaccustomed boots (Surprised By Joy, p. 22)." Where else was that collar? "In those days, if you were a boy you had to wear a stiff Eton collar every day, and schools were usually nastier than now" (in The Magician's Nephew, p. 1).

Perhaps the most obvious allusion made is with Professor Kirk. Professor Kirk was one of Lewis's old and best loved tutors. He was very much into logic. Of course this can only be one man: "'Logic!' said the Professor half to himself. 'Why don't they teach logic in these schools?' " (The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, p. 45). We later learn that this character is named "Digory Kirk," or just "Professor Kirk."


Recommendation
I highly suggest reading this book for yourself. I enjoyed the humorous stories told about Lewis's absent-minded father, and the thorough explanations of English boarding schools (seeing that I am not English, I was very grateful for being introduced to English culture). It was also encouraging to have someone relate to my thoughts and feelings (or, rather, I relating to Lewis's) in a way more closely than I have found in other books.

I can guarantee that you will not regret the time spent in reading this book, or the amount of "intellectual stimulus" it will provide.

The cookies

I whip out the recipe
my grin betraying glee
I have a huge smile
that stretches a mile
That those far away can see.

I opened the flour bag,
and watched that flour sag,
while a powder went floating
Like snow that is gloating
Oh! And I opened that flour bag.

I poured out a cup of milk,
That looked like watery silk,
It splashed impressively,
splattering, sadly
on the counter; wasted milk.

I pulled out an egg that was fat,
and promptly it fell with a splat;
Oh, egg you are gone!
This recipe was so long!
But at last I got through all that.

I grasped the vanilla tightly,
And adjusted the lid slightly;
The vanilla was poured,
And relieved I toured
The pantry, nicely and kindly.

I mixed with a spoon,
And hummed a tune,
The cookies were coming out fine,
I shaped them with a cutter of mine,
They would be done soon.

I held in my hands a tray,
With the cookies all looking my way,
And I opened the door
and saw the interior
Of the oven, and - O, I say!

The oven was hot,
and I was not,
And I stood contemplating heat,
With those cookies I wanted to eat,
Unsure of what I sought.

The cookies were finally baking,
And oh, so long they were taking!
At last they were finished,
And not diminished,
As I took them out, hands shaking.

But, alas, for my fate
(and how that word I do hate),
Was to trip on a ball,
And to promptly fall,
Dropping the cookies on plate.


(I know, I know, Kirk! The meter isn't right! :P )

After the Odyssey 2

The previous post introduced a blog which claimed to have serious articles posted on it. This is not actually so. They are posts of an unusual nature masquerading as serious. Everyone knows Miss Ell can't keep the normal serious type of blog. It just doesn't work. But anybody who hops by this should indeed go read it nonetheless.

After the Odyssey

Since this blog is in one of the remotest corners of the blogsphere, I feel more comfortable about introducing my new blog, SpaceyHead. It is the typically dry blog with serious articles on it, written for school purposes. And there you have it!

The Odyssey

This years schoolwork assigned me the reading of the book the Odyssey, by Homer. Here is my review of it:

The background information: Ulysses leaves his wife Penelope and their infant son, Telemachus, in Ithaca, and journeys to Troy. His men are lost after a series of misfortunes and he alone remains. The goddess Minerva has made him her pet, and she has managed to preserve him. Ulysses is being held captive by a beautiful goddess, who wishes to make him immortal. Minerva has just convinced her father, Jove, to let him be released, and has managed to get him started on the way home.
He has been gone for twenty years when the story opens. Here we see their son a young man, and Penelope, the grieved wife, convinced of her widowhood. Ulysses estate is being squandered by a group of young men. These young men are in the "prime of life," sons of prominent people in the city. They are trying to convince Penelope to marry one of them, and are plotting to kill Telemachus and divide the estate amongst themselves.
Penelope has succeeded in fooling them for several years, but will not say whether she will marry one of them or not. In the meantime, the men are eating the best cattle, drinking up all the wine, and making a general havoc of the estate.
Minerva comes to Telemachus, and convinces him that he must go and search for news of his father. So Telemachus leaves the scene for a short time.
Through many trials and things, Ulysses arrives home again, but he is disguised (by Minerva) to appear as a poor old beggar. He is received by his faithful swineherd who rambles on about the sad misfortunes that befell him after his dear master, Ulysses, left. In the middle of their conversation, in which Ulysses declares he shall tell the truth of his history and proceeds with a dreadful lie, Telemachus enters, just returned from his journey. He has learned enough to expect that Ulysses is alive, but in captivity.
When the swineherd leaves the room, Ulysses reveals who he is to his son, and the two plot about their revenge on Penelope's suitors.
The long and short of it is, Ulysses and his son gather a few faithful servants, and sneak into the house where all the suitors are feasting. They kill all of the suitors, and succeed in convincing Penelope that Ulysses is, in fact, Ulysses.
The problem now, however, is that the suitor's parents are all mad that their sons were suddenly wiped out of existence. They wage war against Ulysses. Minerva and Jove make plans to have the war go on for a few hours, so that some, but not all of the suitor's parents are killed. The war ends with Ulysses making peace with them, and thus the book ends.

This book was hard to read in that the noble characters were not so noble. Ulysses is hard and bitter of heart towards the suitors, and sleeps with any number of women. You are left wondering if he is really great and strong, or if Minerva is the strong one who keeps helping him out because he is too weak. When in disguise, he tells people he is going to tell them the truth, and rambles on in a fearsome lie, in which, he has always met Ulysses and finds him to be the greatest man on earth.
Penelope is sly and deceitful, yet in, comparison to her husband, is a nicer character.
The gods and goddesses are stupid and confusing, always changing shape, and acting very immorally. Minerva is convinced Ulysses heart needs to be hardened considerably more against the suitors, until you are quite annoyed with her.
Telemachus and two of his friends, I think, are in all the best of all the people, in that, they merely followed Ulysses around and helped him with his scheme. They were not exactly plotters themselves.

The hopeless attitude of the story makes one weary and at last, when the story is done, you feel quite like throwing the book out the window; the gruesome descriptions of the hacking off of noses and thrusting through with spears of the battle against the suitors, and the seemingly total normality of seeing and smelling blood that Ulysses has is ugly.
I would advise avoiding the reading of this book unless you have to.

Christmas! Whoa, that came fast!

I sit in the living room and hear,
A joyous shout and yell....
I sigh, it's that time of year,
When store begin to sell:

Millions of plastic, glass and wood,
Cardboard, paper, scissors rocks;
Anything worthless they could:
A host of printed, colorful socks.

My sister decided to come to me,
Jumping around; They've got a bed,
A doll-bed! White! Look, see!
In this catalog," she said.

I take the catalog with a sigh,
We go through this every year,
And now I'm wondering, "why?"
The answer falls on my inner ear:

If all is in vain, like the Preacher said,
Yet, he urges us to toil with joy,
We can rejoice in doll beds,
And take delight in many a toy;

Yet let us not lose sight this year,
Of why we can have delight;
'tis because Christ was here,
He who was the true Light.