I fought my laptop and my laptop won.

I'm not being metaphoric. I picked up the cord to plug it in and dropped the black box but kept hold of the cord. This caused the plug to swing up at high speed and hit me hard in the mouth. It actually cut my lip. Almost five years of karate, and the only thing that's ever given me a fat lip is my own computer.

This is why I like Freddy in Cotillion so much. He's one of the few romantic heroes who I could imagine getting KO'd by a piece of household equipment. I haven't read Dorothy Dunnett yet, but I get the impression from hearing her hero talked about that this sort of thing would never happen to Lymond.

I fought my laptop and my laptop won.

I'm not being metaphoric. I picked up the cord to plug it in and dropped the black box but kept hold of the cord. This caused the plug to swing up at high speed and hit me hard in the mouth. It actually cut my lip. Almost five years of karate, and the only thing that's ever given me a fat lip is my own computer.

This is why I like Freddy in Cotillion so much. He's one of the few romantic heroes who I could imagine getting KO'd by a piece of household equipment. I haven't read Dorothy Dunnett yet, but I get the impression from hearing her hero talked about that this sort of thing would never happen to Lymond.

Today's cool links

From sdn, who is also asking questions about people who changed their name-- boy do I have an answer for that-- a charming interview with fab sf writer China Mieville.

From Dueling Modems, two reviews of anime master Hayao Miyazaki's adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle.

And finally, a new trailer for the extended edition of Return of the King. Yay Faramir and Eowyn!

Also, misia has been particularly funny lately.

Today's cool links

From sdn, who is also asking questions about people who changed their name-- boy do I have an answer for that-- a charming interview with fab sf writer China Mieville.

From Dueling Modems, two reviews of anime master Hayao Miyazaki's adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle.

And finally, a new trailer for the extended edition of Return of the King. Yay Faramir and Eowyn!

Also, misia has been particularly funny lately.

Boarding school books for girls

While doing rewrites on my memoir, I looked up some bibliographies of boarding school books to refresh my memory on ones I read as a child.

It's scary how many I read: Enid Blyton's St. Clare's and Malory Towers series, Elinor M. Brent-Dyer's Chalet School series, which was set in Switzerland and was full of local color, and many more. It is my theory that the popularity of Harry Potter has less to do with fantasy than with the introduction of the traditional British boarding school story to an American audience. They're wish-fullfillment fantasies in which the wish was that school was fun.

Boarding school books for girls have uniformly female casts, and so offer girls the chance to occupy every school story archetype: the brave one, the sensible one, the dreamy artist, the bully, the hero, the dummy, the actress, the jock, the horse-crazy girl, the shrinking violet, the snob. Competitive sports play major roles, and performing arts a slightly smaller one. Midnight feasts are frequent.

Macho girls, who may go by male names like Bill, often become best friends with very femme and timid girls with names like Mary-Anne, and fantasize together about never marrying and living together in a small cottage, where Mary Anne can keep house and Bill can break horses. In light of this, I enjoyed seeing the title, which was apparently translated from Phyllis Matthewman's original Swedish, The Queerness of Rusty.

Other sample titles: The Turbulence of Tony, Jill's Jolliest School, The Darling of the School, The Chums of Study Ten, Miss Prosser's Passion, 'Play Up, Buffs!', So this Is School!, and Gay from China at the Chalet School.

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