Monday, April 18, 2011

What day is it again?

Well, I found the party all right. It turned out to be held in a little canyon nearby that overlooks the ocean where I and a past boyfriend used to go hang out at night. It was a really awesome event. There were two DJ setups and we spent the night running up and down the hill connecting them dancing like little sprites in the light of an almost full moon. I saw my dear friend Artemis who gave me my name Luna at my first party. He was tickled pink that our little family circle (named The Lunar Circle) was all together at this full moon party.

And so we ran around, and danced, and laughed, and saw light shows and had an amazing time until the red and blues showed up. I was down on the lower level when a guy came running down the hill saying "Cops! Stay down here! Cops!" And all of us on the lower level hushed up like little field mice. There was quite a bit of contraband present, so we were all a little freaked for a few moments. Fortunately the cops weren't interested in giving us anything more than an eviction notice and a slap on the wrist. Our little van of people loaded up and headed back to our buddy Apollo's apartment. Everyone except Apollo himself stayed up through dawn. I myself didn't lay down until sometime after noon.

Yesterday was spent doing laundry and sweeping up the dirt that Bruce and I accidentally tracked home, and now I'm finally feeling back to normal, albeit a little sore still from dancing and running up and down the hill. I'm really looking forward to today being a normal boring day with nothing to do (although, knowing Bruce and myself, we'll find some kind of mischief to amuse us). I'm planning on washing our sheets and folding up the clean clothes, and doing some knitting, and curling up with some tea and my book. I'm currently reading Sense and Sensibility and really enjoying it. I love Jane Austen, but up until now I have only read Pride and Prejudice, listened to Emma as an audio book, and read about half of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Let me just take a moment to say something in the defense of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It is, in my opinion, a very funny book. It is not, as many elitist farts have tried to tell me, a stain on Austen's work, but a creative and hilarious re-imagining. Furthurmore, the author keeps Austen's tone while incorperating the undead very, very well. If zombie fiction were popular in Austen's time, she could very well have written this book herself. Quite unlike another P&P spin-off I read, Mr. & Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy: Two Shall Become One. I found this book randomly at the library one day and the flap description lead me to believe that this picked up the story of Darcy and Elizabeth where Austen left off at the end of P&P. It does, in a sense, but it was so horribly written that I could not get more than 6 pages in. I skimmed through other chapters to see if it got any better, and sadly it just got worse. My issue with the book is not that the author's imagining of what happened to Darcy and Elizabeth is disagreeable, it's how she wrote it. It reads like a glorified fan-fiction turned into a novel (actually turned into a series of novels). Austen's tone and style are completely gone, and now her beloved characters are moaning about in modern (albeit not explicit) sex scenes that make you wonder if this author attended a writing course given by Stephanie Mayer (I am also not a fan of Twilight, which is also glorified fan-fiction, though obviously not based on anything existing). Obviously when one takes a classic and writes a spin-off or a continuation of the story, it's going to be the new author's story, it's going to have their flavor. The thing is when you take a classic author like Austen, part of what makes her writing so great is her actual writing, and when you completely disregard the carefully crafted language you lose half the charm.

But I digress. Now is not the time for ranting on bad authors, it's time to make some breakfast!

3 comments:

  1. The party sounds like it was a ton of fun XD

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  2. What an interesting party of free spirits!

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  3. I too have read P&P&Z (i just like to call it that, really).

    It was fun! But I liked Dawn of the Dreadfuls better. I think because it was a new story, so I didn't know all the little twists.

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