potentialities

What I've been reading

I read Ancient Lives: The Story of the Pharaoh's Tombmakers. I read several other excellent books about the Deir el-Bahri workers when I was researching my NaNoWriMo project but somehow missed this one, and wish I hadn't, because it's really vivid. In addition to painting pictures of daily life, it also works its way chronologically through the succession of chief workmen at the tombs the way you would expect to read about the succession of kings.

I read The Professor, which was published posthumously after Charlotte Brontë had already cannibalized it for Villette, so unsurprisingly it reads like a first draft of Villette in many ways. Now, I found Villette intensely frustrating in that I really enjoy Charlotte's writing but hated nearly everything about the actual story, so another book that is basically Villette but with a male protagonist and also less assured as a piece of writing did not seem like a great prospect, but it's not like there are so many books by Charlotte Brontë to choose from.

Anyway, I perservered through what seemed like a million pages about how stupid people, primarily girls, of Flemish extraction are, and how you can tell by their faces, the shapes of their heads, and even their figures. (It's actually not a particularly long book, but it felt like it.) The romance between William Crimsworth, the male version of Lucy Snowe, and his colleague is creepier than the one in Villette, because Frances is his pupil, trying to improve her English so she can get a better job. You might think that the student-teacher thing might be sexy, but mostly William is just incredibly cold and withholding for whatever reason. But then, surprise! Things got interesting at the very end!

( spoilers for the end of The Professor, more comparisons with Villette )

I love their dynamic so much, briefly as it is sketched here, that I'm seriously tempted to ask for The Professor fic for Yuletide, except it feels dickish to request a canon when you don't actually like most of it.

I reread, or just read, Persuasion. I can't remember if I actually put it down or just read the last two-thirds without properly connecting with them back when I was fourteen or possibly fifteen, but I more or less effectively saved it until now, when I am much closer to Anne Elliot's age, and in fact older than her. ( spoilers )