Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Wine Glasses, Summer, Zombies, and Laughter

1) My twenty-first birthday is rapidly approaching-it's only 64 days away. Thusly, I have started looking for wine glasses online. I really want to have some stunningly beautiful wine glasses. I like these, these, and these.
2) Summer...yes, I finished my finals and am free for the summer. Now I need a job.
3) Zombies...A few days ago, I was on Facebook and I needed to send a message to my good friend, Ben. I was also looking at his favorite quotations because being a philosophy major and good Catholic boy, he has many good ones from JPII. And then I found this: "'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you'd actually want to read.'
-Product description on amazon.com of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies." My initial response was to tell him that I didn't approve of "this Pride and Prejudice and Zombies garbage." But then I thought of Donal and his many rants about his attempts to read the book. I talked to Jenny Pink about it. And I came to this conclusion: "With regards to your quotation about "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," check this out. If you dig around on the blog, you'll find Donal's notes from when he read "Pride and Prejudice" (without zombies) and did not enjoy it.
It's okay; I don't think guys should a) read that book or b) enjoy it." And then I directed him to The People's Republic of D. Cous to read Donal's perspective on P&P&Z. I also recommended that if he had time (which I assume that he doesn't as he has two finals tomorrow) he could dig around the site to find Donal's reflections from his readings of P&P.
And in the process, I came to the previously mentioned conclusion, of which I later informed Ben. Pride and Prejudice is a girl book; men/boys do not need to read it. One of the primary attractions of that book is Colin Firth. If it weren't for this man, women, while we'd still love the proud and prejudiced Mr. D, we wouldn't adore him nearly as much.
In all honesty, Mr. Darcy isn't even my favorite Austen-Man; Mr. Knightley and Colonel Brandon both outrank him.
When informed of all of this, Ben laughed and said that he THINKS he understands now. He still doesn't know about my seven page masterpiece about how Charlotte Lucas represents the status-quo relationship between women and the marriage market in the late 1700s and early 1800s. But that's okay. He doesn't need to know about that or completely understand me; it's not like he's going to marry me or anything.
4) Laughter...I've laughed a lot lately. It's good.

3 comments:

D.Cous. said...

So, you're saying that a not insignificant portion of P&P's appeal is that there was a film of it starring Colin Firth, and now as women read it they can imagine his face as Darcy's? Fascinating.

I still haven't managed to get a copy of P&P&Z, but I do hope to read it at some point.

Cecilia said...

I'd like to read it as well someday.
But yes, I at least partially blame Colin Firth for the Darcy-frenzy.

DaWheeze said...

I disagree with the "men shouldn't read and enjoy P&P" comment. Totally.