Oh look, cheap books...

Somehow, the annual Adult literacy Council booksale snuck up on me. Some notable finds:

1. Lots of Rex Stout and Ellis Peters books. A handful each of Jeeves and Wooster and Rumpole of the Bailey books.

2. Cybill Shepherd and Katharine Hepburn's memoirs, both of which I've been wanting for ages.

3. Virginia Hamilton's The House of Dies Drear which I believe more than one person here has recced to me.

4. The Percy Jackson tie-ins The Demigod Files and The Ultimate Guide, even though I haven't read any of the second series yet and am sure they have little new content.

5. The Lives of Muses by Francine Prose. Potentially interesting, potentially boxing women into existing within the male gaze, possibly both but hopefully mostly the former, nonfiction about women who are considered to be the muses of various famous male artists, and their relationships with the artists.
6. A medievalist apparently cleared out some bookshelves:

A little decorative book from "The Little Wisdom Library" titled Chivalry: The Path of Love.
Uppity Women of Medieval Times by Vicki Leon. (At the top of this pile. Brief biographies of 200 women of the middle agesfrom all over the world.)
Sources of the Grail ed. John Matthews. Giant book of Grail Quest literature and essays.
The Medieval Reader ed. Norman C. Cantor. Collection of medieval texts.
The National Geographic's The Age of Chivalry. I mostly looked through it and liked the pictures?
Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages by Frances and Joseph Gies. (Self explanatory?)
(There was a lot of medieval non-fiction that I either already have or wasn't interested in that I didn't get.)

7. Alison Weir and Anne O'Brien's fictographies (actually, I think the Weir is nonfiction) about Eleanor of Aquitaine. (I also have but have not yet read Margaret Ball's, and I think I have at least one other somewhere.)

8. Sandra Gulland's trilogy about Josephine Bonaparte

9. A few George MacDonald books whose titles I forget ATM and they aren't where I can see them.

and...

10. people captitalizing on Jane Austen:
Just Jane by Nancy Moser: Sounds like a "Becoming Jane" typething? Dunno.
Mr. Darcy, Vampyre: by Amanda Grange: a romance novel which retells P&P with Mr. Darcy as a vampie. Excuse me, vampyre. YOU KNOW YOU WANT IT.
The Man Who Loved Jane Austen
Come to think of it, I've acquired a fair number of Austen riffs over the last couple years, but haven't read a single one. I could fix that?


And then some standard romance novels (trad. Regencies become increasingly rarer at these, sadly.) myseries and fantasy novels.

Lost Girl, Grimm, Once Upon A Time

Lost Girl 2.5: BAH to Dyson and his angsty backstory. I still enjoy the actor and his voice, but does anyone actually still LIKE this character? TBH, I kind of miss liking him. WOOT to Bo/Lauren and Kenzi/Lauren time and LOLOLOLOL to Lauren attempting to be domestic (of choice/to keep busy, not because of "should" or it being expected) and taking the fun out of things with SCIENCE.

Grimm 1.1: In the first minute, the big Bad Wolf kills Little Red Riding Hood. (Ok, not really, but blatant symbolism. And then for the rest of the episode, we lovely bits with women/girls in red being stalked by something sinister. On their way to Grandma's.) Less than 10 minutes later Grandma the hero's aunt show's she's badass but still gets rescued by the hero. But see, it isn't faily because she's DYING and has come to tell The Hero about His Epic Destiny. Of coursem she spends most of the episode in a coma, and it's actually a guy who gives him most of the information.)

The trailers made it look like a fairy tale version of Supernatural, which I was willing to give a chance, if not thrilled about. But this episode actually actively removed women from having active roles in the story, and conscious decision or not, I don't think that it was any accident that Little Red Riding Hood was the story they kicked the series off with.

Also, It was kinda boring.

Once Upon A Time 1.1: Yay for leaked pilots? This was exactly what the trailers promised: cheesy, overacted (well, in the Fairy Tale Kingdom part, the real world part not really) and really really fun. In essence, Snow White's Wicked Stepmother (Or rather, the Evil Queen-not sure about the stepmother part in this one.) cursed the kingdom at their wedding, and 28 years later in the real world, she's the mayor, Snow White is a nun, and Prince Charming is a coma patient. (Snow White did all the decision making in the Fairy Tale Kingdom and he, like, fought people. I figure he'll wake up when it's time for some fighting.) And Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother run a B&B, Rumpelstiltskin owns the town, etc. and now one (except maybe the queen and Rumpelstiltskin) knows the truth. Our Heroine is Emma Swan, an orphaned bounty hunter who is dragged to town by the Queen/Mayor's runaway son who tells her she has to fix things. The backstory and Emma's connection to the town are all covered in the first episode, instead of trying to drag things out and trying to surprise us with a reveal we all guessed ages ago down the line, and I think/hope I'm really goin to like what they're doing with destiny's, heroic roles and family legacies. Lived up to expectations.

And wasn't boring.