(no subject)

Ok, so I'm reading a book with a main character by the name of Anatole. How the deuce do you pronounce that? The character is Cornish, and my first instinct would be Anna-TOLE (rhyming with mole). But then I looked it up and found it was from the Greek, in which case perhaps it's uh-NA-to-lee, which sounds far too much like the feminine Natalie for my taste (which doesn't mean it's wrong). Then I do a little more digging and find that it's generally considered a French name (despite the Greek derivation) and I have no idea how that would affect the pronunciation.

So, anyone have any ideas? And yes, it drives me nuts when I can't hear a character's name in my head and be reasonably sure that I'm pronouncing it right.

(no subject)

In other news, I really need to come up with a name for the collective entity that is Finnegan-and-Fiona other than "the kittens" which doesn't really fit them any more. They've gotten *so* big. Finnegan has definitely outgrown his status as the runt of the litter, and is at least the same size as Fiona, maybe a bit bigger. They're both, at 6 months, almost as big as Fionnuala, who is the smallest of my full-grown cats. And they have about 6 more months of growing left to do. I figure they'll end up somewhere around Robin's size (size-wise the adult cats are, in order, Fionnuala, Siobhán, Robin, and Ciara).

Currently, Fiona is in the metaphorical dog-house for constantly digging the broccoli from my beef-and-broccoli Chinese dinner last night out of the trashcan (I'm not a big fan of broccoli), licking the sauce off, and leaving the actual vegetables on the floor for me to step on. After the first time I buried it further down, but then she only knocked over the trashcan to get to it.

Those two are complete terrors, I tell you. They neither of them have any shame. Last night I found Robin and Ciara with their noses in the bathroom cabinet (which had been closed initially). I asked them in a stern voice what they thought they were doing, and both had the grace to start guiltily and trip over each other in their impatience to get away from the scene of the crime. A moment later, Finnegan sticks his nose *out of* the cabinet, looks at me, and then calmly steps down to go twine around my ankles. No shame at all.

Daily post

Sleep: 8pm to 9:30pm, 11:30pm to 3am, 4am to 5am, 6am to 9am

Pain: 5

Weather: clear, 84F, 66% humidity, high 88F

Daily BPAL: VIPRALABDA

Daily Tarot: 3 of Wands, Reversed: Beware of help offered. Wealth may slip away. There may be treachery and disappointment.

Reading:
The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast by Douglas Brinkley
Another Country by James Baldwin
The Bride Finder by Susan Carroll
Coyote Road ed. by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

50bookchallenge, 15000pages

Book #121 -- Susan Carroll, The Bride Finder, 400 pages.

A loose retelling of Beauty and the Beast and a relatively stereotypical romance novel I felt like I should cash in my feminist card after reading this one, particularly because I thoroughly enjoyed it. Madeline, the daughter of bankrupt London socialite, agrees to marry a country Lord sight unseen in return for a very handsome bride-price to be paid to her family. Madeline arrives at his estate with some rather romantic notions of a well-bred young country gentleman only to find that her new husband is overly tall, massive, uncouth, and decidedly rough in his advances. Practical Madeline resigns herself to a loveless marriage, never realising that her new husband's family are the keepers of a dangerous secret, nor imagining that she would find herself falling in love with such an uncivilised mate.

I picked this one up for my book on re-told fairy tales, although I found that the resemblance to Beauty and the Beast was tenuous, more of an allusion than a retelling. There are hints of Bluebeard as well with the forbidden wing of the castle and other such events, although the plot certainly leans more to the first than the second. Overall it was a singularly well-written example of the Romance genre with a little Fantasy thrown in, different enough for me to like it, but stereotypical enough for me to feel guilty about it. The whole 'beast with a heart of gold' has been done many *many* times before, but the heroine was at least likeable and non-flighty and the fantasy elements provided an intriguing twist.

Progress toward goals: 277/365 = 75.9%

Books: 121/150 = 80.7%

Pages: 34923/50000 = 69.8%

2007 Book List

cross-posted to 15000pages, 50bookchallenge, and gwynraven