lirazel | your randomness of the day

Y'all, I have so many problems with Catholic theology and the institution of the Catholic church, but monks and nuns are consistently the best (like, seriously, if I was Catholic, I think I would make such a great nun).

Oh, My Hand: Complaints Medieval Monks Scribbled in the Margins of Illuminated Manuscripts

New parchment, bad ink; I say nothing more.

[You don't need to, really. A dull pencil is the worst.]

I am very cold.

That's a hard page and a weary work to write it.

Let the reader's voice honor the writer's pen.

[which I choose to read as: APPRECIATE ME, DAMMIT. I PUT A LOT OF WORK INTO THIS.

This page has not been written very slowly.

[translation: forgive me my typos. Either that or it's sarcastic]

The parchment is hairy.

[Gross.]

The ink is thin.

Thank God, it will soon be dark.

Oh, my hand.

[I feel you, bro.]

Now I've written the whole thing: for Christ's sake, get me a drink.

St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing.

[I will be using that phrase ALL THE TIME.]

While I wrote I froze, and what I could not write by the beams of the sun I finished by candlelight.

[Frankly, that sounds like poetry.]

Writing is excessive drudgery. It crooks your back, it dims your sight, it twists your stomach and your sides.

As the harbor is welcome to the sailor, so is the last line to the scribe.

This is sad! O little book! A day will come in truth when someone over your page will say, ‘The hand that wrote it is no more.’

And

upupa_epops, if you would like to talk about LM Montgomery in the comments, I would approve of that most heartily.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Somebody needs to make icons of a bunch of those. "Writing is excessive drudgery," "Deliver me from writing," and the first one.

LM Montgomery! The Blue Castle! That was one of the first things we bonded over, wasn't it - the fact that I got Blue Castle fic for Yuletide one year?

The Blue Castle is my favorite. A Tangled Web is flawed - far too many characters to do any of them justice - but I love the premise (if not the *#&% ending), and every Montgomery fan should read it once. It's her love of huge rambling squabbling families, writ large. Magic for Marigold made me sad - like those kind of books usually do that depict the sadness of leaving behind childhood without depicting the joy of embracing adulthood - but the first chapter, in which everyone squabbles over Marigold's name, is classic. Oh, and Jane of Lantern Hill! That one and TBC are my two favorite standalones.

I never really connected with the Pat books or the Emily books - I don't think I read the final book in either series - but when I was little, I wanted to be Anne (although this was based as much on Megan Follows as on the books).

OTOH, Kilmeny of the Orchard is really better left unread. The magical muteness cure is... :P And Montgomery was better at novels than short stories; a lot of those got repetitive after a while (especially when put into collections by theme, as was done fifteen years ago or so) and depended rather a lot on coincidence

They do just seem made for icons, don't they? I wonder what those monks would think about that....

the fact that I got Blue Castle fic for Yuletide one year?

I remember that!

I've never read Magic for Marigold, actually or the Pat books. I'll probably get around to them at some point. But I did love Jane of Lantern Hill, and the movie.

I can definitely see why you wouldn't connect with Emily. She's much harder to get along with than Anne. I think she's probably pretty polarizing--love/hate kind of thing. I love her lots.

although this was based as much on Megan Follows as on the books

That first movie was so flawless. And such great casting!

OTOH, Kilmeny of the Orchard is really better left unread. The magical muteness cure is... :P

Yeah, I think I've only read that one once.

A Tangled Web is flawed - far too many characters to do any of them justice - but I love the premise (if not the *#&% ending)

OOOH, THAT ONE. I distinctly remember my copy of A Tangled Web falling apart, I must have liked it enough to re-read it. I'm pretty sure it was Dark And Scandalous?

I... don't think it was terribly Dark or Scandalous. I mean, there's the ongoing question of swearing, and also there's the one gal who left her husband on their wedding night because she'd fallen in love with a cousin she'd never seen before and hasn't seen since, but I'm not sure those count. I don't think Dark and Scandalous was a flavor Montgomery wrote.