hejjhog

Okay, so, long story short, I'm tired of having two live journals, neither of which I feel like anyone is reading.

1. Hence, this LJ will be deleted sometime in the near future, since there are 2 communities with closed membership I still need to join via my galadriel_dpv account.
2. I tried to add all the people who know me via this journal to my friends at galadriel_dpv. If i forgot, it doesn't mean I don't like you; I'm just overstressed and exhausted. Please feel free to add me there; I'll add you back.

Yes, galadriel_dpv will become bilingual in the near future, not to worry!

"A novel that brilliantly illuminates some of the darker interconnections between politics and sex....Just as the world of Orwell's 1984 gripped our imaginations, so will the world of Atwood's handmaid!"
The Washington Post Book World

Synopsis:

First published in 1985, The Handmaid's Tale is a novel of such power that the reader is unable to forget its images and its forecast. With more than two million copies in print, it is Margaret Atwood's most popular and compelling novel. Set in the near future, it describes life in what once was the United States, now called the Republic of Gilead. Reacting to social unrest, and a sharply declining birthrate, the new regime has reverted to — even gone beyond — the repressive tolerance of the original Puritans.

 

3/5 stars

( My review )

 

 

Tania James is Indian and studied at Harvard and Columbia. In Atlas of Unknowns, she uses her obviously brilliant education to draw on her cultural background and write an absolutely dazzling novel about the human condition. Atlas of Unknowns is the story of two Indian sisters, how they come of age and search for their place in life. Linno, the eldest, is traumatized by her mother’s untimely death and an accident that led to her losing her hand. Anju follows in her mother’s footsteps, searching for a way to help her family immigrate overseas, to the fairytale land that is America. ( Read more... )

The Secret Ministry of Frost
This is an odd book, one that tries to combine Inuit folklore, a coming of age story and somewhat of a thriller plot. Sounds exciting? You bet it does! Does it work? Not really. ( Read more... )

So, I've been busy as heaven knows what with exams and my course project (I have 2 more exams to go,if anyone is still curious). However, that's not what I wanted to write about.

Instead of studying, and during short breaks, I've been browsing different architecture sites. As a sample, here are two proposed buildings: one beautiful, and one bizarre.
The beautiful: ( Read more... )

So, what do you think about modern architecture? What do your favorite buildings look like?

I haven't posted in ages, as I've been really busy with my lab project. "Science is challenging" takes on a whole new meaning when you slave away every day, for six months straight, working 12-16 hour days, several days a week (yeah, up to 7), and a month before the due date STILL have nada in terms of results. It takes more and more to crawl to the lab every morning...
The odd thing is that I have become virtually addicted to make-up, nail polish, shower gels that smell really nice and other stuff that makes one feel good and is considered a prerogative of not-very-intelligent women. Oh, and, yeah - I now read Cosmo instead of the philosophy books I've longed to study for ages and that sit gathering dust on my shelf.
Usually, I don't even have the energy to watch anime or movies when I get home. So there probably won't be any reviews posted here anytime before April 14th. Cheers.
Di.

At one of the movie showings in Krasnovidovo, I saw "Prestige", a british film about magic and illusion.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571/
I enjoyed watching the movie. First of all, the director assembled a very talented cast, (Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Cain and Scarlett Johansson) each of whom was playing just the right role. Also, the plot is well developed, rounded and does manage to take just the right amount of twists and turns that keep you on the edge of your seat during the entire film.
And anything styled 19th century intelligent steam punk is a hit with me.

The only drawback, I guess, is that the film is merely entertaining (and it doesn't and shouldn't be anything else, really). I've just gotten used to watching so many serious movies lately that the good-ole made-for-fun movie leaves me slightly unsatisfied. Plus, a somewhat similar, albeit more dramatic and less obsessive-compulsive, film (the Illusionist) was made quite recently, so the material really isn't that "original".
But, what the heck, Hugh Jackman and Michael Cain in dramatic roles are always fun to watch!

Okay, so I'm back from Krasnovidovo, but more about that later.
For now, glavny_oboltus has assigned me the following words:
1.Salinger
At one point in time, my favorite author. Even though his teen rebellion classic "The Catcher in the Rye" is more popular, I loved "Franny and Zooey" a whole lot more. The characters were better developed, the plot less linear and *especially important for me* the ideas were richer and more profound.
This book also led to the my interest in Indian philosophy. The quote from the Bhagavad Gita led me to read the whole Mahabharata.
2.biochemistry
A very interesting subject, though only formally the title of my major.
3.grandmother
THAT's a tough one. Well, someone with whom I currently live, and whom I try to take care of, especially since the accident. Also, however, probably the cruelest person I know, and the most "perfect".
Her behavior has taught our entire family tons about the manifestations of neuroses and depression, and me personally about how sheer hatred of the world can keep a person alive through numerous physical hardships.
4.classic CYBZ forest fire
A "lovely" Briansk memory, which taught me a lot about how to behave in critical situations, not to panic etc
5.cranberry alcohol
Hmmmph... Well, this is the traditional drink at our department, hand made by our profs. Very delicious, if you ask me
6.Ancient Egypt
All through middle school I was fascinated by the art, culture and technological advances of this period, especially since I had access to the amazing collection at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. I even tried to learn heiroglyphics.
Now, however, my interest has slightly waned, since I've come to appreciate European art and the collection at the Pushkin museum is so poor and boring.
7.Preening
Well, I'll admit to having a slight addiction to always being clean and neat, to the point of seeking out ways to bathe even in the harshest field conditions. =)

To continue on DH Lawrence's ideas, in Women in Love he has an amusing passage in which Gudrun and a minor character, Loerke, play God:
They played with the past, and with the great figures of the past, a
sort of little game of chess, or marionettes, all to please themselves.
They had all the great men for their marionettes, and they two were the
God of the show, working it all. As for the future, that they never
mentioned except one laughed out some mocking dream of the destruction
of the world by a ridiculous catastrophe of man's invention: a man
invented such a perfect explosive that it blew the earth in two, and
the two halves set off in different directions through space, to the
dismay of the inhabitants: or else the people of the world divided into
two halves, and each half decided IT was perfect and right, the other
half was wrong and must be destroyed; so another end of the world.
It got me wondering on the extent that we all, in making conversation, use the "Greats" for our benefit. I mean, do most people really care what Einstein of Marx did, so long as we can discuss their ideas, in our interpretation of them? And I wonder whether I would like to be remembered in such a fashion?..

So, I haven't posted here in ages. There are quite a few reasons for this, the most prominent being that I have been up to my ears in lab work, school work and attempts to relax after the former two.
I have no idea why, but every time exams roll around, which happens every December-January and April-May, I end up reading more, sleeping more (and then less, when I cram) and thinking more than during the regular school year.

I finished My Antonia last night, and was totally unimpressed. Now I admit I was too lazy to borrow a copy from the library in English and hence read it in translation. However, the whole thing seemed so lifeless to me. Bland, banal descriptions, the use of cliche adjectives and plot development, the hopelessly boring happy-end-for-all, the aggravating success of minor characters being compared to the "misery" of Antonia, uggh!

I recently read DH Lawrence's Women in Love (ahh! The agony of translating that title!
And O God what translators have done with it! Arrgh!:
Женщины в любви... Влюбленные женщины
Okay, so the first completely ignores all the rules of Russian grammar, and the second totally changes the degree of passion. While walking Gosha today dad came up with a better title:
Женщины любят
I wonder why no professional interpreter thought of that? It's so close to Lawrence's original meaning....
Women in Love was a lot of fun to read, which was all the more unexpected since I'm not much of a Lawrence fan. I could go on endlessly, deconstructing the thing to classic (albeit wonderful) plot development, truly interesting, rounded, developed and dynamic characters, that evolve in the course of the novel (especially the leads: Ursula, Gudrun, Gerald and Rupert), but my heart was won over by the absolutely majestic descriptions of everything: faces, emotions, rooms, nature, cars, feeling -literally, everything!
I want to try reading The Rainbow.

I mused a lot about the cold today. I hate it. I've seen lovely LJ entries in many European communities lately about how cute and fluffy the snow is, how fun it is to play outside and all that... However, I want to
- wear clothes that look good and are light, that I can feel the breeze in, not 20 layers of stuff in which I look like an almond in a fancy chocolate candy and still freeze to death
- not have to cover my face in layers of cream, which makes me feel like a damn frying pan. And if I don't, yes, my skin comes off
- AND not have both my hands all numb, read and puffy after walking the dog, simply because I wore gloves instead of mittens!
I want to live where it is WARM. And sunny. Because the endless twilight of Moscow's getting to me too.

Even so, the huge moon, striking through soft low clouds, the hard and yet flower-like crystals of freshly fallen snow on our balcony, the soft crunching of snow under my boots - yes, they do make winter special even here.

Today at the LIBFL I picked up an anthology of prose poems.

I was surprised to find that the genre  was created in the early XIX century by Aloysius Bertrand, of Italian birth, Belgian origin and French resident, who used it as a means of re-creating the atmosphere of Medieval French and Flemish life. A google search both in English and Russian yielded very little, his work can be found almost exclusively in French. Also, it usually comes up in conjunction with Ravel, who based his Gaspard de la Nuit on it (incidentally, this  is also the title of Bertrand's magnum opus).

Reading some of the poems felt like looking at an ivory cameo: the details were so intricate, so clear-cut and lacy- it was as if though I had been magically transported into the canvas of Van Eyck or Durer.

My personal favorite, The Lepers, hasn't been posted online yet. Maybe I'll type it up. For now...

Translated by Michael Benedikt

The Master Mason: "Come look at these bastions, these buttresses;
they seem to have been built for all eternity."--Schiller, William Tell
 

The Mason Abraham Knupfer is singing, trowel in hand, scaffolded up so high that, as he examines the gothic inscription on the great cathedral bell, even the soles of his feet stand high above the flying buttresses of this church--all thirty of them, in this town of thirty churches.

He sees gargoyles spewing water from the roof-slates down into the entangled abyss of stone galleries and stained-glass windows, pendants, pinnacles, and spires, rooftops, turrets and timberwork, which the falcon's hovering wing punctuates with its one still point.

He sees the star-shaped outlines of the fortification-walls, the citadel sticking out like a hen's head from inside a piecrust, and the monastery cloisters, where the sun throws shadows that revolve around the pillars.

The imperial guard is quartered at the edge of town. Look!--In the distance, a soldier's drumming! Abraham Knupfer can see his tri-cornered hat,  his epaulets stitched with bright red yarn,  his cockade crimped with a rosette, and his pigtail tied with a bow.

The next thing he sees are some other soldiers who, in a far-off park surrounded by dense foliage, and standing on broad emerald lawns, are firing with some blunderbusses at a wooden bird nailed to the top of a maypole.

And towards evening, when the echoing nave of the cathedral falls asleep, stretched out with its arms flung out in the shape of a cross, he sees from his lofty ladder an entire village set afire by troops, flaming like a comet in the deep-blue sky.

Also, I picked up the collected works of Allen Ginsberg and started reading them.
Watched the Doors. Eerie movie. I'm too tired to comment on it now.
And hooray! Фуфик ate a piece of apple all by himself, holding it in his hands like a normal squirrel!!! =)