I like to have something on in the background while I work on a sewing project, whether it's a movie or the Doctor Who episodes I'm woefully behind on. Last weekend I decided to try out The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, which I've meant to look into for months. I wish I'd done it earlier, because it took a few hours to watch all of these. Thankfully I had quite a bit of sewing to do. The only problem is, I sometimes found myself stopping to watch Lizzie instead of sewing.
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries are a modern take on Pride and Prejudice. Lizzie and her friend Charlotte are college students producing Lizzie's video diary as a way to put their studies in film production and mass communication to use. Most of the book's characters find their way into Lizzie's videos, especially her sisters Jane and Lydia (I think this is my favorite portrayal of Lydia I've ever seen). Sadly, Kitty is an actual cat and Mary is now a cousin, but the story doesn't suffer for their relative absence. (For some time with Mary, check out Lydia's short series of videos.) Mr. Bingley is now Bing Lee, and he only has one sister, Caroline (Is it just me, or does Louisa, and therefore also her husband, get dropped out of 90% of the adaptations?). We haven't seen much of Mr. Darcy yet, and nothing of Wickham (though there has been texting!). The idea of Lady Catherine as a venture capitalist is a hoot.
I'll stop going on and on and let you watch.
In preparing this post, I discovered so much more to this story: Lizzie's site has a listing of all the videos with Twitter conversations inserted into their appropriate spots in the timeline. Tumblr is also listed at the top, but none of the random links I clicked showed me Tumblr posts. Sadly, I haven't had time to work my way through all the links, but that will be a weekend spent in bliss when I do.
This is a really interesting way to tell a story. I'm certainly going to keep following (I think they're only about half way through the events of the book at the moment.)
"This week you will stun the world with your vision, buoyant energy and creative brilliance, or you will bore us to death. The choice, as always, is yours."
"The greatest writers are great, not only because they have a way with words and not only because they have great ideas, but more importantly, because they carefully craft their writing into a final draft that reads better than the first ever possibly could. They’re great writers because they’re great rewriters."
Julia Child would have been 100 years old today. Though I don't cook (well, I can do a bang-up breakfast: pancakes, eggs, omelettes...basically anything done in a single pan or on a griddle), I've always admired Julia Child and dreamed of cooking like her. And that admiration stems less from what she cooked than how at ease she always seemed in the kitchen - something I have never accomplished even during my best Saturday morning fry-up. I tend to resemble the most hapless contestant on "Hell's Kitchen" far more than I resemble Julia, even when I'm just frying an egg.
I think I enjoy watching Julia, and other chefs, the way many people enjoy the ballet. It's not something you ever think you'll be able to do yourself, but you like to bask in the beauty and grace of the truly skillful performance.
One of the best books I read last year was My Life in France. This was one of those books that makes you scold yourself with "Why have I never read this before. What took me so long to get to it?" It even inspired me to try making crepes one day last summer. They turned out edible, if not beautiful. If you have any interest in Julia, food, or France, I highly recommend it.
"Once, I had a job working for a publishing house where my job was to edit classic novels, because classic novels fall into “public domain” and are free to publish. The novel I got to edit was Moby-Dick and my job was to re-write it and make it “reader friendly.” It was not a good job. I quit after three days. Confronted with Melville’s wall of brilliant text, my heart and my nerve gave out. What should I do with the first sentence, even? “Hi. My name is Ishmael”? So I gave up. Great books should not be fucked with."
I love this image! The rest of the post is pretty cool, too, but once you've seen this image...I mean, I almost couldn't go on. I had to stare at it for awhile. Awesomesauce!
