How to Build a Girl: In Which We All Wanted to be Dolly Wilde

Aaaaaand we're off! Not in quite the same way as the first section - AHEM - but moving along plot-wise. Get your minds out of the hairbrush and deodorant-filled gutter.

SO! Johanna Morrigan is dead, long live Dolly Wilde! Let us pause for a moment and fondly recall 1992, when we were in our early teens and the third wave of feminism was - I say in retrospect - just getting off the ground. Grrrrls were rioting, grunge was happening, and my mother was Distinctly Unhappy with the amount of Angry Lady Singers caterwauling from my bedroom. It was an abrupt shift from the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Rodgers & Hammerstein that were previously issuing from the CD boombox I got for my birthday. I had just begged for my first set of pointe shoes and was fantasizing about choreographing a full ballet to Little Earthquakes.

What I'm trying to say is that it's hard for me to stop relating for long enough to have a coherent thought about this book.

I have maybe a lot of feelings about 1992.

I love Johanna and her Dolly Wilde persona. I love how she likes music whose creators she could probably take in a fight, her vulnerable relationship with her father, and her initial terror and then love of a mosh pit. I love that she thinks Smashing Pumpkins are too mopey. I laughed hysterically at her opinion of band security, having talked myself backstage a few times and thought the same thing.

So, in conclusion,

and if you're beginning to feel the same way too, you can pre-order it right here from Odyssey Books, which is where our lovely host Emily works! Thanks for putting this shindig together, madam!

I luf you.

How to Build a Girl: In Which it Takes 28 Words

Remember last week when we didn't know about Johanna's preferred masturbatory equipment?

It was a tenser, yet simpler time.

Actually, Johanna's self-exploration is something I'm a little envious of. I grew up in a very religious household and believed with every fiber and nerve ending of my being that Jesus was watching me all the time, so needless to say I didn't discover the finer points of - well, anything really - until after I left home.

But with that one exception, Johanna is speaking my language. She lives in a world where most of her information is gathered from books. She researches things like Spiritual Midwifery. She is pragmatic and hopelessly naive and mixed up and more than a little in love with Gilbert Blythe. 

You can start by removing that shirt...

And woven in between those moments of hilarious contradiction that is a byword for adolescence, there are moments of gut-piercing truth about the pressures of growing up in an unstable home: 

In later years, I can always recognize someone else who received this shot of fear at an early age... Children raised on cortisol. Children who think too fast. (41)

That is all I have to say publicly about that. 

Because I've read the back of the book, I know that this is all leading up to Johanna's transformation into the Self that she thinks she wants to be. And because she is an odd bird, I am very much looking forward to seeing what that Self is. 

You should most definitely preorder this book from this handy link right here! Thanks to Emily for hosting this online shindig - once we meet up in the Caribbean, 

How to Build A Girl: In Which We Introduce Ourselves

Sup?

There's an embarrassing amount of internet dust on this blog. I haven't posted since Bleak House; how did THAT happen?!? I don't know what to say about The Goldfinch and Frog Music, you guys. And I read along with Lady Audley's Secret (mostly), but I just... didn't post.

Well, if there's any book that can make me want to blog again, it'll be the new one by Caitlin Moran that you can preorder from Odyssey Books right here. And huge thanks to Emily for hosting this online shindig!

I wanted those Docs so bad when I was in high school.

I've written about Caitlin on this blog before. In fact, I bought How to Be A Woman new with actual dollars at full price and not bookstore credit because I liked it and her and her Twitter feed that much. Her writing makes me want to stand up on the train where all the Silicon Valley techies are dicking around with Snapchat on their phones and say, "THIS is what feminism is! Sister Suffragette, I support you! ALAS FOR MRS. PANKHURST HAS BEEN CLAPPED IN IRONS AGAIN!" 

and then I would read sections of it out loud - or declaim it from memory - until they're all laughing and have also learned something, just like on Sesame Street but with feminism and wanking. 

ANYWAY. A bit about me to begin: 

- By day and sometimes by night I'm an executive assistant at a Silicon Valley start-up you've never heard of because we do investment banking... stuff. Bankers need startups too. Apparently.

- I like books and read them a lot. I like knitting and spinning and I do those things a lot too. I have serious opinions about the State of Handcrafts in this Country.

- Feminism, man, I swear to god. The more I think about it, the more I want to be independently wealthy so I can become a modern-day Alice Paul. She probably knitted, right? 

Okay, Cat-lin. Here we go. 

BleakAlong - Post the Finalmente

Every time we finish a readalong, The Doors "This is the End" plays in my head the whole time I'm writing my final post. It's very distracting, especially because for most of my young life I was pretty sure that Val Kilmer was Jim Morrison and that is a very handsome movie poster, I tell you what. Have I mentioned this before? Possibly.

Anyway. Part of the reason I was behind most of the readalong is that I was listening to the audiobook, which is approximately 548 hours long. I enjoy audiobooks immensely because they allow me to pursue two hobbies at once (reading and knitting, or reading and spinning, or reading and eating...), but they do slow down my Goodreads challenge. Last night I went to bed with 3 chapters (two hours!) left, so I gave in and read the last ~50 pages in the paperback that Amanda sent me for our Secret Santa, and I am SO glad I did because the afterword to this edition is delightful. Elizabeth McCracken is a Dickens fangirl whose first sentence to her afterword apologizes to the reader for encountering an afterword at all following roughly 1000 pages of novel.

Not to mention that the splash page on her website is delightful.

Salute the McCracken.

How are we feeling now that mostly everyone we didn't like ::cough Skimpole cough:: and a few people we did - POOR JO - are dead?

They had nothing to do with it.

I had a shouty moment when Esther turned Woodcourt down and I was prepared to be Very Upset Indeed, but Jarndyce made the right decision - some might say unlike Dickens himself later in life - and while I dislike the idea that Esther was his to reward Woodcourt with, I support the final outcome of Esther being happy and loved for who she is.

You know who never calls Esther "Dame Durden"? Woodcourt.

We're gonna circle back to the birdcage theme for a second - remember that one from way back when? - to just mention that Miss Flyte names all her birds and probably has to recite them in order every night like Arya Stark, and with all the Ashes and Penitences and Wards in Jarndyces, she has a bird named Spinach. Bless you, Miss Flyte.

And bless YOU, Charles Dickens, on behalf of all the Volumnias of the world, with our spare little drops and feeble prismatic twinkling. You rapscallion, you brimstone bogtrotter, you brilliant and ginormous tool.

It's not your fault that sometimes in my head I get you mixed up with Charles Darwin.

BleakAlong - Post the Fifth: There Be Italics Ahead

Against all odds, the Oscars Movie Party on Saturday, the Oscars themselves on Sunday, and a dear friend's breakup today which necessitated an hour-and-a-half phone call to get all the details and express an appropriate amount of "what the fuck is that guy's problem?!?," I have caught up on Bleak House you guys.

And boy am I glad I did, because what the what is going on right now? NICE WORK ALICE in choosing where we've been ending up.

Until the fateful lack of clocks warning Tulkinghorn about his impending doom,

way to go, pal...

I spent most of this week's chapters thinking about who in this story are the villains and who are the heroes. Which ones are the worst/best, respectively? This ended up being mostly made up of a list of Who I Like Best in descending order. Dickens is doing an admirable job of directing our attention toward Ada and Richard, who at the outset seem to be the heroes of the piece. Ada is obviously the ingenue and Richard (can I call him Dick? Yes let's do) is the person who thinks he loves her so he must be the hero, right?

No. Primarily because we I don't like Ada in any role except Esther's darling and that Dick is... pigheaded and stupid, shall we say. I submit to you instead that the true heroes of the piece are Esther and Alan (Allan? I'm listening to the audiobook). While I know in my Tumblr-addled soul that Esther and Ada need to end up together, I was pleased by Alan comforting Esther about her looks when no one has done that yet areyoufuckingkiddingme?!?

Villain: Harold Skimpole.

For I am such a child, don't you see. AND CHILDREN CAN'T BE TRUSTED.

Lord he's just so awful and managed to snow everyone into believing him and I'm screaming internally like Leo at the Oscars (don't get me started but also Glenn Close and Gary Oldman have also not won Oscars so a little perspective please tumblr). Arrrggghhhhh.

And then there's Jo and I couldn't help but picture Dickens chuckling to himself about how affecting this death scene will be and how the ladies would just cry buckets of tears over poor Jo and his caaaaaa-*sniffle*-aaart.

There's a lot of death in this book, you guys. At least Lady Dedlock's secret is safe! Who shot Tulkinghorn? It definitely wasn't me, although I did harbor a suspicion that Tulkinghorn had a frisson for our Lady.

Poor Esther. I want to shake her and yell that NOTHING in this book is her fault and WHERE ARE THE ACTUAL ADULTS this book is peopled by children much like Frozen (also don't get me started). And then I will stride around London and Chesney Wold and administer slaps. To everyone. Asking Esther to marry you, indeed. BAH.

BleakAlong - Post the Fourth

Well well well. Here we are in week FOUR, which if you all recall was originally when we were supposed to be completely finished with this amazing Bleak House readalong.

I have a few things I'd like to discuss. Firstly, as much as I like Charley and want her to have a good life, I'm really supremely unhappy that it was Esther who got the ugly end of whatever mysterious illness they both came down with. Did she really deserve that, Dickens? No she did not. So why does it happen to her? I don't think necessarily that Dickens would have been on board with our working "so Woodcourt wouldn't love her and she would be free to live with Ada for the rest of her life" theory. But you never know.

(Also, 1850's germ theory: the era of We Haven't Quite Figured This Out, Have We?)

And then Boythorn is super-awesome and offers Esther his house to rattle around in, which is not at all a plot device to get Esther closer to Lady Dedlock, nosiree. It's just him being cheerful and nice and not at all creepy like the other jolly fat guy who likes animals.

Plot twist!

So last week I was really behind and missed the spontaneous combustion bit, and Alice and I discussed it yesterday and there's the moment where Guppy and Weevil nee Jobling are falling all over themselves to get out of Krook's room, and I couldn't stop picturing them as these two:

Guppy and Jobling, respectively.

which led to a conversation about dream casting for Bleak House. Shall we have at it to cover up that I'm STILL three chapters behind? YES LET'S DO.

Who would you cast?!?

BleakAlong: Post the Second-and-Third

I can't even believe you guys are still reading this book. I mean, the characters are all bland and the story is boring. Also Lolita needed to go further into the "juicy stuff."

Can we talk about the SUPREMELY DISMAL parenting going on in this book? I am fairly sure that it's on purpose, given Dickens's first examples of motherhood are 1) the horrible godmother/aunt 2) Mrs. Jellyby and 3) Mrs. Pardiggle.

And then we have Mr. Turveydrop, whose deportment is the envy of us all I am sure, but sir,

Although while he's a trial to everyone around him and will expect Caddy and Prince to wait on him hand and foot until he expires in a cloud of lavender water, he's not as emotionally manipulative as the horrid Mrs. Jellyby being snide and ridiculous and so dismissive of her daughter and the things she wants. PARENTING, you guys. I know it's not easy but seriously, get your shit together. And you, Rick. Yeesh.

Mrs Rachel from back-in-the-day is Mrs. Chadband? Ugh he is so gross and his utterly nonsensical "sermons" give me the giggles.

"When this young heathen now among us - who is now, my friends, asleep..."

Hah. But I love how Dickens just throws the detail of the Chadbands in as if it's not important - she just walks up in the middle of an unrelated chapter and is all, "hey, remember me? I made your childhood a living hell. Also I married a guy you don't yet know you hate. Peace."

I'm sure that won't come back around later. Anyway, the bird imagery continues, have you noticed? And Hortense comes in and begs Esther for a job but does it in a very interesting manner. The kind of manner where she promises to do anything... she's very hot-blooded being from France, you know... she'll take care of Esther better than anyone could ever...