Happy Chinese New Year
大家，新年快了！心想事成！
Happy Chinese New Year everyone! May all your wishes come true!
2011 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,200 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 37 trips to carry that many people.
My Top 10 Movies To Watch At Halloween
- Dracula 2000 (Gerard Butler)
- The Covenant
- The Sixth Sense (Bruce Willis)
- The Grudge (Sarah Michelle Gellar)
- The Phantom of the Opera (Robert England,1983)
- Constantine (Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz)
- What Lies Beneath (Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford)
- Carry On Screaming
- A Chinese Ghost Story (Hong Kong, 1987)
- The Mummy (1999)
My Top Ten Movies To Watch On A Lonely Valentine’s Day
Alone and loveless on Valentines Day? If you’re anything like me and like to curl up with a bowl of popcorn in front of the television when you’re lacking that special someone in your life, you might enjoy these comedic and bittersweet romances.
- The Lake House (Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves)
- Ghost (Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze)
- You’ve Got Mail (Meg Ryan and Tome Hanks)
- Sleepless in Seattle (Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks)
- City of Angels (Meg Ryan and Nicolas Cage)
- Bewitched (Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrel)
- Sabrina (1995 film with Julia Ormond, Harrison Ford and Greg Kinnear)
- Return to Me (Minnie Driver and David Duchovny)
- Ever After (Drew Barrymore)
- Pride and Prejudice (2007 film with Kiera Knightley)
Happy Chinese New Year!
In this year of the Rabbit I would like to wish you all a Happy Chinese New Year!
新年快乐！[xin nian kuai le]
恭喜发财，[Gong xi fa cai]
心想事成。[Xin xiang shi cheng]
龙马精神，[Long ma jing shen]
一帆风顺。[Yi fan feng shun]
Congratulations on your wealth,
May you gain your heart’s desires.
May your spirit be like the dragon and horse,
May your ventures be like smooth sailing.
Note: Please excuse me if the translations aren’t quite accurate.
Review: Vampire Darcy’s Desire
This is the third Pride and Prejudice reinvention, and second ‘vampire Darcy’ book that I’ve read. And I have to say that it comes in a close second favourite to Amanda Grange’s Mr Darcy’s Diary.
Unlike the only other two adaptions I have read, this version of Pride and Prejudice has almost been completely rewritten from start to finish, although pieces of the original masterpiece are scattered throughout the book. In particular, in the first two chapters where Elizabeth is first introduced to Darcy.
In this version, Darcy is placed in the role of a dhampir (half-vampire, half-human). Elizabeth, has been kept as a human. Also, most of the minor characters have been missed out, such as Mr Colins, and Lady Catherine and Anne De Burg.
As with many books of the vampire genre, there is a dark, brooding hero, Mr Darcy is cast in this role; and Elizabeth Bennet as the inquisitive and determined heroine. Mr Wickham has been written as the villain of the story, a centuries old vampire with a ancient and deadly grudge against Darcy’s family.
Although the writer attempts to imitate Austen’s style the end result is completely different. Some of the more modern words and phrases used with the addition of indirect quotes to Jane Austen’s style of writing causes minor clashes between the two styles.
The most significant difference between Jane Austen’s work and Jeffers’ rewrite is the tone. Whilst Jane Austen’s could be seen as being very detached, and not as emotionally involved as Jeffers’ version. But one has to consider that during Jane Austen’s time, if one had a passionate nature they could be seen as not being emotionally or mentally stable.
In keeping with the original storyline, Darcy struggles with his feelings for Elizabeth, though for slightly different reasons in this version; his human side is falling in love with her, but his vampire side wants to drink her blood. Here, Darcy accepts his feelings for Elizabeth much more easily and quickly than he does in the original ‘bookverse’ but still tries to keep his distance, mainly because of dangers to her life from Darcy’s association with Elizabeth, as well as his vampiric nature. And the turning point for Elizabeth’s feelings is set during her time at Hertfordshire when she had been tending to her ill sister, which had been written into the plot of the story, as opposed to the original where Elizabeth begins to rethink her impressions of Darcy during her stay in Kent.
Woven into the story are pieces of folklore and myths, particularly of Scottish Celtic or Scandanavian origin, some pertaining to vampires.
The book includes a bibliography of online sources used for the novel, so anyone who in interested in out more about vampires, Scottish traditions and old folk songs is able to go and look at them.
I really enjoyed reading this book, more so than the other ‘vampire Darcy’ book that I read, titled Mr. Darcy, Vampire by Amanda Grange. This version of Mr. Darcy reminds me a little of the character Angel, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel television series. Always ready to help, especially when he feels that he is the cause of what happened to the person who has a great misfortune befall them, usually either being killed or turned into a vampire, because of what his ancestor did to ‘George Wickham’. Mr Darcy also makes me think a little of Edward, espeicially where he attempts to turn Elizabeth away from himself, as he feels he doesn’t deserve her because he sees himself as a monster. But despite all this, like any woman hopelessly in love, Elizabeth stands by him through thick and thin. Even after they are forced to destroy her youngest sister, Lydia, who in this version was turned into a vampire by Wickham.
I really liked that Jeffers takes pieces of mythology and molds it into something a bit different from the usual portrayals of a vampire. It may not be the most creative of vampire stories, but it’s still an enjoyable read.
2010 in review
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.
Crunchy numbers
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,900 times in 2010. That’s about 5 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 4 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 6 posts. There were 21 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 2mb. That’s about 2 pictures per month.
The busiest day of the year was August 12th with 77 views. The most popular post that day was How does Jean Rhys explore the themes of identity in ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’?.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were WordPress Dashboard, google.com.my, facebook.com, twitter.com, and google.com.au.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for wide sargasso sea identity, identity in wide sargasso sea, wide sargasso sea identity theme, wide sargasso sea theme identity, and theme of identity in wide sargasso sea.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
How does Jean Rhys explore the themes of identity in ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’? February 2009
2 comments
Review: Mr. Darcy’s Diary January 2010
About February 2009
Review: Jane Austen’s Guide to Romance August 2010
The Constellations May 2010
