landofnowhere | wednesday books are all over europe (Reply)

Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen. Still fun, still funny, still feels a bit anticlimactic at the end. Some of that is the pacing -- it's also interesting to see where my memory of the book has been overwritten by the 2007 TV adaptation. I'd forgotten that the scene where Catherine has the really awkward conversation with Henry where he chides her for having imagined that his father might have killed his mother isn't immediately followed by Catherine being ungraciously sent home with no idea why, but instead she gets to hang out with the Tilneys for another week or so and be reassured that Henry still likes her. Also somewhat charmed but not convinced by Catherine's being reassured by Henry that "murders and Gothic stuff might happen in other parts of the world, but certainly not in the middle of England!" Generally feeling confirmed in my theory that at its core Fire and Hemlock is riffing on Northanger Abbey, in particular with subverting the "nothing terrible could happen in the middle of England!".

Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land, by Jacob Mikanowski. Recommended by

skygiants And now we move to the parts of the world where Gothic stuff stereotypically might happen -- although Mikanowski wants to let us know that originally, vampires just wanted to get on with everyday life (or un-life -- I was reminded of The House of Aunts). I wish I'd had this when I was studying for AP Euro -- it's a good historical overview of a large region, with fun anecdotes. Only about halfway through, we'll see how the rest is.