Five Questions
Jul. 10th, 2011 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cremainsI love both being asked and asking questions, so if you have anything you want to know or if you desire to be interviewed yourself, please say so. Less or more than five questions is also fine.
1. Do you still watch TV? If so, what are you watching?
I don't really still watch TV. Sometimes, for H's sake, I watch the show "Medium," but to my mind it is an evil show: in its universe, good and bad are states in which human beings exist, rather than descriptions of their actions. Thus we see an episode where a character does literally nothing but good, but he is so irredeemably evil "on the inside" that the protagonist is justified in trying to destroy his life. Meanwhile, the "good guys" get away with some bizarre and at times morally indefensible behaviour, because their goodness does not rest on any behaviour whatsoever - it is some sort of inner quality. The storylines are also push the death penalty in a way that disturbs me.
This is an essay more people should read explaining similar moral weirdness with the novel Ender's Game. You don't need to have read the book, and the critique is useful in thinking about many other works of fiction.
2. Read any interesting novels recently?
Summer is secular-book-reading season for me, so I actually have two:
I'm re-reading The Lord of the Rings, and the experience is very sweet for me. When I was working up the nerve to come up here, which was very hard to do, one of the things that gave me a little courage was thinking about the Hobbits leaving the Shire. I'm not a very Hobbit-like person, but it's a moving part of the book.
Also read and re-read recently is the book Fingersmith, a pea-soup, Dickensian (kinda?) novel with quality thievery and gloom. There is such a variety of fascinating female characters, some of types that you just don't ordinarily see women play. Imagine Oliver Twist (which haunts the narrative as it plays in the crappy community theatres of London), but with less class essentialism and magic-fix fantasies, way more lesbianism, and the best plot twist I've read. I'd really love some more people to read it in order to discuss it.
3. Have you read any Bible-based or Jewish-history-based novels that you like?
No. I have only read ones which made me vomit a little in my mouth.
4. Someone who has never been to Canada asks you to cook for them a Canadian dinner. What do you make?
I suggest instead the much more ethnically distinct Canadian breakfast: bilingual cornflakes/flocons de maïs for the first course, followed by French toast with maple syrup (didn't really believe maple syrup was such a Canadian thing until I left).
5. Do your stepchildren live with you? If not, how much time on average do you spend with them?
They alas do not live with us. We pick them up for a visit twice a week, for four and a half hours each time. It's a very awkward time slot: not long enough simply to do ordinary things, yet almost too long to sustain excitement (though we try). We do not get them for any religious days, since according to the religious court, we are secular Jews, satans, or possibly Reformim. They think that because they are heretics.
1. Do you still watch TV? If so, what are you watching?
I don't really still watch TV. Sometimes, for H's sake, I watch the show "Medium," but to my mind it is an evil show: in its universe, good and bad are states in which human beings exist, rather than descriptions of their actions. Thus we see an episode where a character does literally nothing but good, but he is so irredeemably evil "on the inside" that the protagonist is justified in trying to destroy his life. Meanwhile, the "good guys" get away with some bizarre and at times morally indefensible behaviour, because their goodness does not rest on any behaviour whatsoever - it is some sort of inner quality. The storylines are also push the death penalty in a way that disturbs me.
This is an essay more people should read explaining similar moral weirdness with the novel Ender's Game. You don't need to have read the book, and the critique is useful in thinking about many other works of fiction.
2. Read any interesting novels recently?
Summer is secular-book-reading season for me, so I actually have two:
I'm re-reading The Lord of the Rings, and the experience is very sweet for me. When I was working up the nerve to come up here, which was very hard to do, one of the things that gave me a little courage was thinking about the Hobbits leaving the Shire. I'm not a very Hobbit-like person, but it's a moving part of the book.
Also read and re-read recently is the book Fingersmith, a pea-soup, Dickensian (kinda?) novel with quality thievery and gloom. There is such a variety of fascinating female characters, some of types that you just don't ordinarily see women play. Imagine Oliver Twist (which haunts the narrative as it plays in the crappy community theatres of London), but with less class essentialism and magic-fix fantasies, way more lesbianism, and the best plot twist I've read. I'd really love some more people to read it in order to discuss it.
3. Have you read any Bible-based or Jewish-history-based novels that you like?
No. I have only read ones which made me vomit a little in my mouth.
4. Someone who has never been to Canada asks you to cook for them a Canadian dinner. What do you make?
I suggest instead the much more ethnically distinct Canadian breakfast: bilingual cornflakes/flocons de maïs for the first course, followed by French toast with maple syrup (didn't really believe maple syrup was such a Canadian thing until I left).
5. Do your stepchildren live with you? If not, how much time on average do you spend with them?
They alas do not live with us. We pick them up for a visit twice a week, for four and a half hours each time. It's a very awkward time slot: not long enough simply to do ordinary things, yet almost too long to sustain excitement (though we try). We do not get them for any religious days, since according to the religious court, we are secular Jews, satans, or possibly Reformim. They think that because they are heretics.
