La Vie En Rose for 2006 October 24

I like to have a little book that I can read in the bathtub, on my breaks at work, or before bed when I simply can't take anymore of the Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire. A few days ago I finished Persuasion which I picked up for $.50 at the SF Friends of the Library bookstore after having been influenced by a viewing of "The Lake House" in Belgrade. Movie-watching in Belgrade is actually a very satisfying experience because it is invariably either hot or raining, and you are invariably tired with sore feet from sightseeing. Sitting down in a cool, dry theatre is a very pleasant way to spend two hours. It only costs $3, and you can get popcorn and drinks for about $1 more, because the movie theatres have not yet comandeered the concession business, and they are instead provided by little guys with carts outside. Unless the movie is for children, it has subtitles instead of dubbing so you can pratice your Serbian and at the same time understand the movie!

Anyway, I was enchanted with the climax of romanticism that only Jane Austen seems to be able to pull off (though Charlotte Bronte does not do too bad for herself) and when I had finished with it I felt almost betrayed that it was over. I read over my favorite parts a few times, and it was all I could do not to dig through the boxes of books in the garage until I came upon that treasured inheritance, the Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen, to satisfy my need for more Austenness.

Now I am reading The Story of an African Farm. I first learned of this book (and relatedly started to want to read it) in my first post-graduate run-in with women & colonialism. Then the book & its themes were beat mercilessly against my head, over & over again, when I read Testament of Youth. My battered dover thrift edition of this book travelled with me across the Balkans, but the journal-writing, out-of-train-window-watching, Serbian-learning traveller will find but little time for reading on a trip, and Dracula seemed more appropriate at the time. Now I am studying women and colonialism again, african farms seem more appropriate, and I finally beginning to understand V.B.'s obsession with Lyndall... I meant to have some quotes, but the book is at home, and I am at the library, and I will be here some time.