First Review Is In!

And it's a good one! :) I have to admit, this time around I'm really, really afraid of the reviews because I had only such a short time for revisions (and I would've wished to have more!). So imagine my delight when I've just found out that I've got a 4-star review from RT! Whee! Here are the important bits:

Enchantment and romance abound in Schwab's captivating tale of a spell gone wrong, a love potion gone right, deceit, revenge, black magic and redemption. Her romance captures the aura of the Regency and the essence of a paranormal, which should make it a surefire hit with fans.

Here comes a seminar!

Last week the registration for my seminar on Thackeray began, and as always it was amazing to see how many people in their early twenties still haven't managed to grasp some sort of basic etiquette of "How to Write an E-Mail to a Teacher":

• "Hello Ms Schwab" (or simply "Hello") is not necessarily a proper form of address.
• Please, don't address me as "Mr. Schwab" -- I'm not (and have never been) a man.
  
• Proofreading your e-mail is always, always a good idea. Really.*

* Example:
"hello,
i wud like to sign up for the seminar"
=> Does not create the best of first impressions....

Even more critics with a sense of humour

I'm still working on that dratted parody chapter for the PhD thingy (the end-of-semester hell is really bad if you want to get some other work done apart from corrections and exams ... *roll eyes*), and now I'm reading Northrop Frye's (btw, "Northrop" is not included in the Oxford University Press's CONCISE DICTIONARY OF FIRST NAMES) ANATOMY OF CRITICISM (with a new foreword by Harold Bloom). While leafing through Frye's "Polemical Introduction" I was happy to note that here again is a critic with a sense of humour:

Most critical efforts to handle such generic terms as "epic" and "novel" are chiefly interesting as examples of the psychology of rumor. Thanks to the Greeks [i.e. Aristotle], we can distinguish tragedy from comedy in drama, and so we still tend to assume that each is the half of drama that is not the other half. When we come to deal with such forms as the masque, opera, movie, ballet, puppet-play, mystery-play, morality, commedia dell'arte, and Zauberspiel, we find ourselves in the position of the Renaissance doctors who refused to treat syphilis because Galen said nothing about it.

Tee-hee. :-)

~*~

I've been thinking for some time now about doing a podcast for my courses at uni. But -- would anybody other than my students be interested in a British-history-in-9-weeks class? Or in a series of lectures on Thackeray?

And what about the name for such a podcast?

PodLit

Literature for Everyone

Books, Cats, and Me

*scratching my head*

Cranford -- P&P it ain't

True, there are many charming and downright funny scenes in CRANFORD (kitty devouring the lace collar -- priceless!); the cast is brilliant; the costumes are lovely; the producers are the same as for that famous 1996 BBC adaptation of P&P (wet shirt scene, anybody?): Sue Birtwistle and Susie Conklin. Even some of the actors are the same! (Wow, that was strange: to see Julia Sawalha, the Lydia of P&P, playing a spinster approaching middle age.) In addition, there's Greg Wise, who played Willoughby in the 1995 S&S, Simon Woods (Mr. Bingley in that other P&P version with Keira Please-Feed-Me Knightley), Imelda Staunton (she was also in the 1995 S&S adaptation), the wonderful Judi Dench, regal Eileen Atkins, and the sweet Julia McKenzie.

BUT!

In each and every episode of CRANFORD somebody drops dead. That's a bit depressing, if you ask me...

Author vs Reviewer -- It's All Old News

The Newcomes Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family By William Makepeace Thackeray

Next semester I'll give a seminar on Thackeray, and thus began reading THE NEWCOMES yesterday evening -- and couldn't help grinning when I reached page 2 and the author starts dissing critics. Not because he is dissing criticis, but because we thought the often-present friction between authors and reviewers was something new and had worsened with the growth of oneline review sites and blogger reviewers. Not so, I say, if the following is any indication:

I think I see such a [critic] --a Solomon that sits in judgement over us authors, and chops up our children. . . . If author's [sic] sneer, it is the critic's business to sneer at them for sneering. He must pretend to be their superior, or who would care about his opinion? And his livelihood is to find fault.

Wow, that's what I call one bitter author! The snippet nicely serves to show that neither the "The Book Is My Child" metaphor nor the "Reviewers Are So Mean & Just Love To Rip Books Apart" wail are new. Instead

[t]here may be nothing new under and including the sun; but it looks fresh every morning, and we rise with it to toil, hope, scheme, laugh, struggle, love, suffer, until the night comes and quiet. And then will wake Morrow, and the eyes that look on it, and so da capo.

:-)

Done ... sort of ...

moar humorous pics

I spent the past four hours finishing the preparations for the oral exams tomorrow -- and realized there aren't all that many questions I can ask my students about Henry VIII. This winter Henry VIII and the Tudor Age were among the most popular topics for oral exams, as well as the Development of Christianity and the Development of Parliament (no surprise there!). By Wednesday evening I will no doubt feel the urge to throttle stupid King John for ever signing the Magna Carta, and to kill off the whole lot of Palladius, St. Patrick and St. Augustine for ever bringing Christianity to the British Isles. *g*

Whee! Whee! Whee!

Only three more exams to go before I'm finished with the 26 I need to correct before the oral exams next week. And so far, only one person has failed. Not too bad.

When I'm done with the correcting (at about 9 p.m. I should think), I'll plop down on the couch and watch the next episode of the brandnew BBC adaptation of Gaskell's CRANFORD -- it's brilliant! More about the mini series soon!

Play.com currently offers the DVD at a reduced price. :-)

Interrim Report

14 exams corrected -- 12 more to do tomorrow -- 52 more to do all in all -- 9 hours of oral exams to do next week.

[Note to self: Who cares about Weight Watchers? Buy chocolate! :-) ]

The picture above was one of our "picture prompts" -- the students have to place them in their historical context -- in this case: Crystal Palace, erected for the Great Exhibition of 1851, which was organised by Prince Albert.

Harlequin's Valentine

Today you can download Sherryl Woods's THE VALENTINE WEDDING DRESS, a Harlequin Mini, for free. :-)

End-of-Semester-Hell

The end of the semester is always awful: there are 1001 meetings to attend, forms to fill in, plans to be made for the semester after next, umpteen updates of the departmental homepage to be put online, and, last but not least, exams or research papers to correct.

So at the moment I'm buried underneath a huge pile of exams I need to correct. Yippie-yay!

Chapter 14 of BETRAYAL is now online. This podcast episode also includes even more ramblings on the subject of 19th-century guidebooks, for example, why Baedeker's guides are a better choice than Murray's HANDBOOKS FOR TRAVELLERS, and what you've always wanted to ask a hackney-coachman. (In addition, I make lots of funny noises, which should add to the general entertainment value. *g*)

Enjoy! :)

Mechanical Hermits Did Exist After All!

Sometimes you pick up rather fantastical bits of information -- so fantastical in fact that afterwards you're never quite sure whether you've actually read about it somewhere or whether you've made it up. In my case, one of these tidbits of information was the mechanical hermit: in the course of the gothic revival, not only fake medieval castles or ruins in your garden became all the rage among the rich and powerful, but also installing a hermit in a fake grotto or in an equally fake chapel in your park. But as hermits, real or fake, tend to need food and as the British climate makes living in a grotto not really jolly experience, a lot of flesh-and-blood hermits were eventually replaced by mechanical ones.

And lo and behold, I really didn't make this last bit up: I've just done a search in Google Books and here's what I've found:


 About this book Read this bookAn Encyclopædia of Gardening: Comprising the Theory and Practice of ... By John Claudius Loudon

Guide-Book Obsession Continued

Today the first two guide books from the recent batch of orders at abebooks arrived: Baedeker's Northern Italy (beige covers instead of red ones) and THE TRAVELLER'S MANUAL OF CONVERSATION IN FOUR LANGUAGES (1878), also published by Baedeker. The latter is just fantastic: it doesn't only cover vocabulary concerning the universe, the earth, the human body, kitchen and cellar, servants, etc., but also contains "Short Questions" (on topics such as "On board a steamboat", "At an inn", "Concerning lodgings") and even "Dialogues" (this particular section starts with "Of the weather" - teehee!) as well as "Letters and Notes."

So in honour of Cissy's journey up the Rhine, let's have a look at "On board a steamboat": of course, the very first and most important question is

Which is the best cabin? - Welches ist der beste Platz? - Quelle est la meilleure place? - Qual' é la miglior piazza?

And here we already encounter the first problem: English cabin is not really German Platz, and doesn't the Italian word piazza normally refer to a town square? Hmm. But let's continue with

What o'clock is it? [???] - Wie viel Uhr ist es? - Quelle heure est-il? - Che ora è?
[...]
Which is the best wine? - Welches ist der beste Wein? - Quel est le meilleur vin? - Qual è il miglior vino?
Which is the strongest? - Welches ist der stärkste? - Quel est le plus fort? - Qual è il più forte?

Isn't this just hilarious? It's is the 101 of How to Get Drunk on Board of a Steamboat in Four Languages! :)

Other lovely questions include:

Steward, will you assist this lady to go on deck, she is very unwell.
Sir, be so kind as to move a little to that side, I have not room enough.
Where is my dog?
Have you given him any thing to eat, steward?
I wish him to be taken care of.

And in case you're going up or down the Rhine:

What is the name of that ruined castle?
Do you know in what century it
was built?
Did it belong to any celebrated family?
What is the name of the
present owner?
What is the name of that place?
What is the name of that
mountain?
[...]
Is the wine produced here good?
[...]
Do you know the name of that gentleman?
Is he an Englishman?

Rosenmontag

Well, it's that day again when millions of Germans wear funny hats, red noses, and throw sweets and itty-bitty pieces of paper to litter the streets. :O) Helau!

New Podcast Episode

I'm so thrilled to announce that there's a new episode of Sandy's Podchatter today -- complete with a reading of Chapter 13 of BETRAYAL! I thought this might be a nice early Valentine for you all. Enjoy!

Guide-Book-Obsessed

I'm sure I've mentioned my obsession with 19th-century guidebooks before (well, I most certainly did in last week's episode of Sandy's Podchatter! Talk about being lost in France! *g*), and among the "Secrets of CASTLE OF THE WOLF" on my website there's a lengthy article on travels on the Rhine, which also contains a section on guide books and another with excerpts from MURRAY'S HANDBOOK FOR TRAVELLERS ON THE CONTINENT: NORTHERN GERMANY (1845).

As I said in the aforementioned podcast episode, I find guide books incredibly helpful when it comes to everyday facts and details, e.g., things like how to obtain a passport, where to go shopping, or how much taking a hackney costs. Therefore it can come as no surprise that when I plan a new book, I try and get a guide book of the city/area which will act as the main setting. Thus, for the two paranormal historicals I'm planning to write after BETRAYAL, I've already got two guide books of Paris and in the past two days I bought two guidebooks for Northern Italy. Furthermore, I also ordered Baedeker's TRAVELLER'S MANUAL OF CONVERSATION and a guide book of Yorkshire (well, it was sort of cheap -- and who knows whether I might not want to set one of my future stories in Yorkshire! You have to be prepared, right?).

The beginning of BAEDEKER'S PARIS AND ITS ENVIRONS (1884) certainly sounds promising:

Travellers with luggage-tickets have usually about 10 min. to wait till the baggage is all arranged for distribution on the long tables in the Salle de Bagages. This interval should be employed in engaging one of the fiacres or cabs which are in waiting outside the station. (The cabs in the first row are generally pre-engaged.) After receiving the driver's number and telling him to wait for the luggage ('restez pour attendre les bagages'), the traveller may proceed to superintend the examination of luggage [...]. Hand-bags and rugs should not be lost sight of, or deposited in the cab, before the traveller is himself ready to take his seat, as there are numerous thieves on the look-out for such opportunities.

As soon as the traveller is released from the custom-house examination, he should secure the services of a porter (facteur, 25-50c.), telling him the number of the fiacre engaged. The fare from the station into the town during the day is 1 1/2 fr. for a cab with seats for two, and 2 fr. for one with seats for four persons; at night the fares are 2 1/4 and 2 1/2 fr. respectively. The charge for each trunk or other large article of luggage is 25c. [...]. When the driver has had to wait more than 1/4 hr. the fare per hour is charged.

The Omnibus de Famille is a comfortable conveyance for families or large parties, and may be ordered by letter the day before arrival, either from a hotel or from the Chef du Bureau des Omnibus at the station where the traveller is to alight.

What was that?

WO WAREN DIE HOFSÄNGER???? I don't believe this: I stayed up late to watch the Hofsänger at the end of "Mainz bleibt Mainz" and they weren't there. This must be the first time ever that this event ended without a performance by the Hofsänger...

Second Degree Lit

Have I ever mentioned that I don't particularly like literary theory? For the PhD thingie I have to write a chapter on parody, and what seemed to be relatively easy at first -- give a definition of parody -- turned out to be a walk through a field of quicksand. At the moment, I'm reading Gérard Genette's PALIMPSESTS: LITERATURE IN THE SECOND DEGREE, and while I was sort of fine in chapters 1-7, he sort of lost me shortly thereafter. It does not really help that his examples are mostly taken from French literature, of which I know about zilch, nor that he is so, so fond of transgressions, nor that he is also fond of the phrase "We will come back to this point" / "More about this later" (argh!). It probably doesn't help either that I'm reading Genette's own work in translation. Look here: "For serious imitations we may borrow from ancient usage a term that is more or less synonymous with pastiche or with apocrypha but is also more neutral than its competitors. That term is forgery." (???)

At least Monsieur Genette has got a sense of humour: in chapter 7 he gives a rough outline what he'll be doing in the rest of his study, and finishes with: "Then it will be time to conclude and to put away our tools, for nights are chilly in this season." :)

Sweet.