I LOVE this book. But as they say here in Oxford: Term is short, Middlemarch long. I can’t bring pleasure reading on that scale with me or I’d never get any work done. But one of my Midsummer Treats will be to go home, pick it up and finish it. Yea!

Not as good as the previous two, but still enjoyable. I found myself increasingly longing for the cosmic silliness of the comic book though. It’s a bit of a cop-out to try and keep galactic empires out of the plots when they’re still flying a Shi’ar plane. And a Freudian Phoenix… PUHLEAZE…

Good introduction and, obviously, great book, I don’t think she’s mocking the Gothic at all. Or rather, I don’t think she’s exclusively mocking it – it’s pretty clear she loves entertainment novels. Gotta read through the crit at the end of the book to see what others have been saying though and, already having written my essay, I’m not sure when I’ll get around to it.

The first 200 pages are very slow-paced and filled with vast descriptions of awe-inspiring, sublime mountains. I would recommend reading that section over a day or something, and not get stuck in it. The rest of the book is very enjoyable and the fairaly random-seeming structure comes together neatly at the end.

This was the third time I’ve seen the film and I’m still spellbound by every scene. It’s so raw, so interesting; about what the art form of the rock song requires, about what it’s like to grow up in a close-knit collective, about the selfishness of alcoholics (recovering or not). About how Lars Ulrich has great, Danish taste, and about his dad, and about how James H considers a very sad, deeply uncool therapist called Phil an angel and a father figure, and about how Kirk just wants to be a model of egoless living and ends up invisible, and about how you replace a musician and a friend who died when you were all just babies with big hair really.

I was at the gig at the end of the movie and I remember the gratitude Metallica expressed for our loyalty was a little bit embarrassing. I didn’t really want to see James Hetfield with tears in his eyes. And of course this movie explains why that was, and it turns out it wasn’t goody-goody spirituality or oversharing at all: it was necessary and humble.

It’s deceptively simple, but the more you think about it, the more subversive it becomes.

Mos Def is AMAZING in this movie. The first half hour the whole film seems pretty shit but Def brings it around with sheer hard work and personal charisma. He is shaping up to be one of the most interesting actors of this generation. Once Bruce Willis snaps out of the heaviest wino mannerisms they actually get some decent interplay going too.

I actually just watched the DVD commentary, without having seen the film before. Research on Sharon Stone’s acting method no less. She’s not very eloquent but I think I got it. Film looks good, will try and see it properly later.

Today I read the Book of the Duchess. The kind of close reading, with attention to variants, that essay work requires takes about a million years. But I can’t deny that even this early work stuff is actually quite good.

I read most of book I of Troilus yesterday and it just strikes me again how great this stuff is. Entertaining, funny, brilliant, acerbic. And it’s not actually 1000 pages, it’s more like seven hundred if I don’t read the notes. I have two essays due on Chaucer like, now, so I gotta remind myself I actually like this stuff. Gotta do some dream poetry and a goodly chunk out of the Canterbury tales the next three days. Two essays in three days is doable… right?