Things in Print Thursday :: a play-by-play of how many SparkNoted titles have female narrators (A-B)

Or central protagonists.  This is easy, because I can go by who’s listed first in their Character List section.  (Oh, SparkNotes.)  I was going to do it A-E, like my previous SparkNotes list, but the SparkNotes website is acting up, so I’m just doing these first two letters.  Smaller groups!

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (with the titular Alice; this is about a child in the 1800s)
All But My Life by Gerda Weissman Klein (with, well, Gerda Weissmann Klein, who wrote it)
All’s Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare (well, they list Helena first, so whatever)
American Dream by Edward Albee (with, apparently, Grandma?)
Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver (with, apparently, Codi)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (with the titular Anna; this is a romance of sorts from the 1800s)
Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery (with the titular Anne; this is about a child in the 1800s)
Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid (with the titular Annie)
Antigone by Sophocles (with the titular Antigone)
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard (with Thomasina Coverly)
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (with Addie Bundren; I feel weird counting this, but she is first listed)
As You Like It by William Shakespeare (with Rosalind, hell yeah)
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (with Dagny Taggart)
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines (with the titular Jane)
The Awakening by Kate Chopin (with Edna Pontellier; this is about the 1800s)
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver (with Taylor Greer)
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (with Esther Greenwood)
Beloved by Toni Morrison (with Sethe; this is set in the 1800s)
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (with, well, Anne Lamott, who wrote it)
Bleak House by Charles Dickens (with Esther Summerson; this is from the 1800s)
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (with Pecola Breedlove)
The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan (with, well, Christine de Pizan, who wrote it)
The Book of Margery Kemp by Margery Kemp (with, well, Margery Kemp, who wrote it)
A Border Passage by Leila Ahmed (with, well, Leila Ahmed, who wrote it)
Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska (with Sara Smolinsky)
Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat (with Sophie)

26 titles.  4 of which are autobiographical.  Several of which have appeared on analyzed lists previously. 15 of which have female authors.

–your fangirl heroine.

Things in Print Thursday :: a play-by-play of how many of someone else’s 100 books to read before you die have female narrators

Or female central protagonists.  Groups of multiple protagonists don’t count unless the group is strictly female.

Antigone by Sophocles (with the titular Antigone)
A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollestonecraft (well, I’m counting it anyway)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (with Lizzy Bennet; this is a romance from the 1800s)
I’ll count Grimm’s fairy tales, I guess (…sigh, yeah, fairy tale princesses and stuff)
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (with Hester Prynne; this was written in the 1800s)
Bleak House by Charles Dickens (with Esther Summerson; this is from the 1800s)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (with the titular Anna; this is a somewhat a romance from the 1800s)
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (with the titular Emma Bovary; this is a romance from the 1800s)
Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (with the titular Tess; this is apparently sexual, and is from the 1800s)
The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov (with Madame Lyubov Andreievna Ranevskaya)
I’m also counting Flannery O’Connor short stories (with a variety of women)

11 out of 100 titles.  6 of which are from and/or about the 1800s.  But considering how many of these were nonfiction, religious or philosophical texts, I’m not wholly surprised.

–your fangirl heroine.

Things in Print Thursday :: a play-by-play of someone else’s list of 100 books to read before you die

This week, the list comes from Literary Workshop at Blogspot.

Italicized titles are ones I’ve read.  Bolded italicized titles are ones I liked.  Underlined italicized titles are ones I read for school.

The Bible (ish)
The Odyssey by Homer
Oedipus, Antigone by Sophocles
Beowulf by Anonymous
Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Lear by Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night by Shakespeare
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (I read… parts.)
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (again, parts.)
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (again, the blasphemous explanation)
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
and I’ve read like… two Flannery O’Connor stories.
14 out of 100 read.  4.5 out of 100 sincerely enjoyed.  10 out of 100 read for school. 

–your fangirl heroine.

Things in Print Thursday :: my success as an English major measured by how many SparkNoted titles I’ve read (A-E)

Yep, this is just a list and some numerical analysis, part 1 of several.

Bolded titles are ones I enjoyed.  Plain italic titles are ones I feel neutral about.

A:
1984 by George Orwell (this is conditional; I read part of it and saw the movie.  I fail, yes.)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Charles Dickens
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Angels in America by Tony Kushner (holy Christ, do I love this play; I wish I could double-bold it)
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Antigone by Sophocles
As You Like It by William Shakespeare
8 of 44 titles.  4 of 44 were sincerely enjoyed.

B:
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Beowulf
Bible: The New Testament (another conditional; I’ve read pieces, ish?)
Bible: The Old Testament (likewise)
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (yeah… when I was like ten, but still.)
5 of 31 titles.  1 of 31 was sincerely enjoyed.

C:
Candide by Voltaire
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
The Chosen by Chaim Potok
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
8 of 46 titles.  1 of 46 was sincerely enjoyed.

D:
Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Ambroise Laclos
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
Dubliners by James Joyce (conditional; I’ve read like two of the stories; I enjoyed them, but am not bolding as I’ve not read all of them)
5 of 27 titles  .5 of 27 were sincerely enjoyed.

E:
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton.
1 of 12 titles.  0 of 12 were sincerely enjoyed.

I… have strange taste in literature, I suppose.

–your fangirl heroine.

Fictional Friday :: Top 10 fictional women I’d like to punch in the face

I won’t be including anything too obvious here (Bella Swan, anyone?) as that’s not particularly sporting or interesting.  But I’ve got this theory that if you could punch people in the face who really did deserve it without there being any real consequences, the world might be a less annoying place.  This isn’t about punching people who just deserve it because they’re evil and need to be beat up or something.  Nor do I… actually intend on punching anyone in the face, ever, unless it’s in self defense or something I guess?  No, these people are just sort of annoying and insufferable.

10. Celia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins, Weeds)
Well, she’s sort of an evil bitch, but not in too serious of a way.  More she’s just really conniving and a terrible wife, mother, lover, friend, local official, pretty much a terrible person.  And no amount of bad that goes on in her life seems to really change that.  I’m sort of sad that the most recent season just sort of dropped her and Isabelle, mostly because I rather fancied the idea of Isabelle being totally the brains of their newly founded operation (maybe that’s one of the reasons Celia is on this list.  I just really adored Isabelle, and anyone who was as bitchy to their adorable funny daughter as Celia was deserves a good punching).

9. Ismene (Antigone)
Yeeeep.  Although I’ve mentioned before the various reasons that I despise her, it needs said again, because, well, she’s a terrible role model.  And I hate her for that.  Deeply.  She’s just… wussy.  And submissive.  And far too involved in molding herself to someone else’s idea of what’s socially acceptable.  Not cool.

8. Lucy Danziger (Paz de la Huerta, Boardwalk Empire)
Sweet God, this woman is frustrating.  I’ve never seen her in anything else, but (and I’m assuming they wanted Lucy to be an obnoxious twit) she plays annoying really, really well.  From her obnoxious pouty lips to that infuriating Kewpie-doll voice she puts on, man.  The a-hem scene between her and Van Alden (Michael Shannon) may be the squickiest thing I’ve ever seen, and that includes the time we accidentally left Cinemax on when we left the house and came back to a-hem surrounded by woodland critters and unicorns and things when I was thirteen.  We didn’t take the time to learn her name for several episodes, and for a while just referred to her as “Nucky’s bitch.”  It’s pretty fitting.

7. Rachel Berry (Lea Michele, Glee)
Lea Michele as a performer is beautiful and talented (sort of chart-topping in both of those categories, really).  But Rachel?  Well, I honestly think a good socking in the face would do her a world of good.  For one thing, she’s exceptionally naive about the way people actually relate to each other on a human level.  For another, she’s spectacularly mean to, well, to mostly everyone, especially the people she really should try to be nice to.  For another, she’s a total spotlight hog and the other girls really do need to get more solos, period.  She isn’t the best thing since sliced bread.  She’s got a sickly amazing voice, but that does not really a good person make.

6. …kind of a lot of Shakespearean heroines
Not all of them, mind you.  Some of them are thrilling female characters.  More of them can become such if played properly.  But some of them?  Well, let’s take Isabela in Measure for Measure. (Yes, I saw this play tonight.)  Baby girl really, really needs to just get her head out of the holy clouds and learn a thing about the world.  She’s too naive to apparently recognize a man as being the same man she’s just conspired with and hugged and things just because before he was wearing glasses and a bald wig.  And I’m all for having principles, but I’m pretty sure that God would forgive her if she just went ahead and did it to save her brother, then repented immediately.  It isn’t like she’d taken her nun vows yet.   Olivia in Twelfth Night?  Is sort of a whiny emo beeyatch at first, then all frustratingly lovesick and apparently incapable of recognizing a woman when she sees one.  Helena in Midsummer?  I generally like her, but she needs to know that boys aren’t the end-all be-all.  Actually, most of them need to learn that particular lesson.  And until they do?  Punching should really take place.

5. Nini Legs-in-the-Air (Caroline O’Connor, Moulin Rouge)
That is really how her name’s listed in the credits, at least on imdb, I’m not even kidding.  For those of you who didn’t compulsively attempt to memorize the names of the various whores in Moulin Rouge, she’s the main one that isn’t Satine, the dark-haired one who dances a lot and is a spectacular bitch always.  She, too, is evil.  She, too, just would be better off never opening her mouth because she ruins everything with one sentence.

4. Dawn Summers (Michelle Trachtenberg, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
I can’t say for season seven or comic-canon Dawn, as I’m kind of not there yet.  But at least baby Dawn, season five Dawn and… well, I’ve seen five episodes of season six so far, but those too… well, maybe a slapping, not a punching.  She’s just impossibly whiny, she rarely thinks logically, and I sort of understand that season five is about rescuing her, but she needs rescued from the dumbest things sometimes.  I don’t know.  Seasons 1-3 it was Cordelia.  Season 4 it was… well, not really anyone, exactly.  It was kind of always Joyce secondarily.  But by season 5, it was Dawn who played damsel in distress.  And she didn’t even really have the grace to do it with a hint of bitchy snark or maternal love or anything.

3. Tara Thornton (Rutina Wesley, True Blood)
For the exact same reasons as Dawn, basically.  Because she always needs saving, and she doesn’t even have the convenient excuse of being a mystical personification of an interdimensional key.  She’s just an idiot and she gets herself into way too many stupid situations.  And that just isn’t okay.  Every other female on True Blood has something to bring to the table.  Sookie has her fairy powers, Pam has her bitchiness and practicality, Jessica has her cuteness and enthusiasm, Sophie-Anne has her power, Lorena and Maryann (had) their evil, Gran (had) her grandmotherliness, Arlene has her blowsiness, Amy (had) that hippie-dippy conviction, even Crystal at least has a demented sense of what she thinks is right sometimes.  Tara just has the fact that she’s annoying and argues with everything ever.

2, 1.  Lydia and Mrs. Bennet (Pride and Prejudice)
I’m not sure which of them I’d put first, but they deserve to top this list because I thought it up while witnessing their BBC incarnations.  I loathe both of them.  Mrs. Bennet is shrill and cloying.  Lydia, as her father often said, is foolish.  She’s flirty and terribly, terribly immature.  She’s obsessed with marriage for marriage’s sake (not that I’ve got anything against marriage, but I believe it should be for love, not for status or pretty clothes or something).  Actually, so is Mrs. Bennet.  They’re just heinous characters with no redeeming qualities.  And that never changes.

–your fangirl heroine.