Back of the House

Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani.

So I finished Murder Comes to Pemberly  the other night. It was... odd. You see, it's not a mystery, as most mystery readers and enthusiasts think of the term. It's not a procedural. P. D. James walks us through a situation. She provides the reader with all the clues he or she would need to figure out the solution, but the characters, from the master of Pemberly Mr. Darcy himself to his retired coachman have really no interest in investigating the crime. The reader is a silent voyeur peeking over various shoulders, seeing reactions, but the pace is slow and the book seems somewhat aimless without a character for whom it is imperative that the mystery be solved. To be sure, we're pretty much sitting with the Darcys and their friends and families waiting for the whole dreadful business to be over. So, if you're interested in a return to the world of Derbyshire, Elizabeth Bennet Darcy, the Wickhams, and Lady Catherine, this is a pretty good read. But if you're expe

I wrote about Evangelical bloggers on the religion blog. Go look!

About four years ago, he contacted me out of the blue. I am still friends with several people I dated before I got married, but only one is, well, not. We are not friends. I called to check on him in the aftermath of September 11, and I ran into him about a week later, because we lived in neighboring buildings. But aside from that we've had no contact since. So, four years ago I get a phone call in the middle of the day from the woman who was my best friend in college, and who is still a very good friend today. Now, at the time, I was a stay-at-home-mom with a sideline in adjunct and online teaching, but I did remember that it's odd to get personal phone calls in the middle of the day from people with office jobs. "Who's dead?" No one, she assured me. But she had a Facebook message from Jeff 1 . Jeff? Jeff Who? Bridges? Goldblum? The guy with the puppets? Who? Nope. Jeff. She paused to let it sink in. Jeff Jeff. Ohhhh.  Jeff.  Crap. He had asked her fo

Those of you who know me pretty well know that I am an inveterate Jane Austen fan. I can recite whole swathes of the books, I'm a complete pain the backside to see a film adaptation with (unless you've got the 1995 BBC Pride & Prejudice  miniseries on DVD or the 1999 Mansfield Park  with Frances O'Connor), and I am a horrendous pedant when writing about her work. I wince to call the woman "Austen." She should be Miss Jane Austen, and never just Miss Austen, as her older sister Cassandra never married, and thus never relinquished the title. I have read sequels. Some are all right, some are horrendous; Mansfield Park  sequels seem to go better than Pride and Prejudice  or Emma  sequels for some reason. Perhaps it's because everything in those two books wrapped up just so perfectly. There are no loose ends for a sequel to attach itself to. That being said, I am currently about a third of the way through P. D. James's Death Comes to Pemberly . I'm fi

Yay, I have a job! No, I'm not going to blog about it, because I'd like to keep it, thank you so very much. But it's a good fit, and I'm very, very happy and fulfilled But that's not why I'm here today. I followed a link on Facebook tonight to one of those Crunchy Mama blogs . Now, I'm not a Crunchy Mama. Hell, there are days I'm barely Cream of Wheat Mama. But this woman spent a whole post speaking at length about how just because she was pro-baby wearing, -breastfeeding into toddlerhood, anti-vaccination, -rice cereal, etc., it didn't mean that she was putting anyone else down. I don't agree with her parenting philosophy much. Who am I kidding, I don't agree with her parenting philosophy at all. But the fact that she felt the need to spend 1,500 words apologizing for speaking her mind on her own blog is just wrong . A writer's blog is his or her castle. It's the one place you never have to apologize for being yourself. It's