Dusty, dusty, toil and trouble.
Swirling particles, room is dusty.
ACHOOO!

– Tara-Chan from “1001 Ways to Butcher Shakespeare“

On Saturday night, around 11:00 pm, I decided to clean my room out thoroughly. Actually, I’ve been thinking about doing it lately, so why not do it over Columbus’ Day weekend? Normally, I don’t do this major cleaning until December (Christmas + Relatives = Gathering at TC’s place), but I decided to do it a bit earlier this year. I stayed up until Sunday morning at 3:30 am, and then in the afternoon, I finished the rest.

Well, after about three garbage bags full of trash, several piles of wet and dusty rags covered with about five years worth of dust, and one exhausted room owner, here’s the visual result of the room. Be glad I didn’t take pictures of the messy one. I decided not to traumatise my readers.

Random Facts

• Under the piano, I have at least seven bags of books that doesn’t fit in my bookcase.
• On top of the DVDs/CDs/video tapes cabinet are all bags of stuffed animals.
• I decided to get rid of the stereo, which used to be on the vanity set because I don’t use the bugger.
• See those piles of books and mangas on the thing next to the bookcase? Those are all my to-read piles.
• I still need to read those Death Note mangas, its boxset sitting neglected on the piano.
• The display on top of the piano is only 1/4th of the stuff I want to display. The rest of it are in boxes, packed away.
• I discovered my best friend’s AP Statistics assignment on top of the DVDs cabinet. I can’t remember how it came into my possession. O_O;;
• I found plenty of books Grumpy — my bunny — had chewed on. I wonder if she finds paper and cardboard to be that appetising.

Honestly? Another reason why I cleaned and threw stuff away? I’m slowly starting to pack things up for when we move to a smaller place next year. I’m not looking forward to it. I’ll miss this apartment and my huge room.

Anybody who knows me should already know my love for homosexual media, especially if you look in my room and my computer. I have files after files of Harry Potter slash fanfiction, many zip files of yaoi manga scanlations, over 150 volumes of actual hard copies of yaoi mangas, several gay cinemas, and a few homosexual literature in my bookcase. With that said, it is safe to say that I have a strange sort of fascination in that aspect of literature and media. Simply put, I’m an aficionado. Now let’s add another sub-branch into that group, my newest interest: gay historical fiction.

You see, I read a few novels that are original gay fiction, and while most struck my fancy, I read one that really turned me off. It was horribly written; actually it was bad fanfiction, and because I was burned by that book (just some random detective/police force novel thing), I avoided original fiction for a while, including the ones I actually wanted to read. I finally took the plunge, and I decided to finally check out a few books on my wishlist, where a couple were gay historical novels. One of them happened to be Standish by Erastes.

The Book’s Synopsis
The summary is from the author’s website:

A great house, a family dispossessed. A sensitive young man, a powerful landowner, and the epic love that springs up between them.

Ambrose Standish is a studious and fragile young man with dreams of regaining the great house his grandfather lost in a card game, but when Rafe Goshawk returns from the continent to claim the estate, their meeting sets them on a path of desire and betrayal which threatens to tear both of their worlds apart.

Set in the post-Napoleonic years of the 1820’s, Standish is a tale of these two men, and how the relationships they make affect their journey through Europe and through life.

Painting a picture of homosexuality in Georgian England, illegal as it was and punishable by death, at heart it is a simple love story and the tale of one man’s discoveries of his sexuality and his true feelings for the man who released it.

I admit, the synopsis didn’t really struck my curiosity that well, which might be also another reason why it took me forever to get around to reading this. However, in the end, I read it, and here’s my review.

The Goods
- The characters were great. Ambrose, Rafe, Fleury, Constance, Christopher, Sebastien, and heck even Achilles and Trenberry were actually likeable to a point! But the way Erastes described them and brought them to life, they felt real. I could actually connect with them, feel for them, and love and hate their actions. They were all imperfect human, with flaws and mistakes that reminds us that no one is perfect.

- The plot wasn’t really anything original, but it sure felt different. The way Erastes told the story, the way she wrote made me want to know what was going to happen. I would read a chapter, and then I’d continue on for five more chapters because I couldn’t put it down. I wanted to know what was going to happen. I was kept on my toes the entire time I read it!

- The pacing was actually really good. I’ve read stories where people quickly jump into having some sort of a rendezvous, but Erastes took some time to develop the characters and the relationship before bringing in the smut.

- The smut was actually nice. It was nice reading smexy scenes that didn’t use modern languages obsessively like today! I mean, I like profanity and the vulgar language, but it wouldn’t have fit in the setting of the book, and it wouldn’t have fit most of the regal characters, actually! This is one situation where euphemisms are a great tool to use in the literary world, and the author used it beautifully.

- The relationships between humans, the way love can be a complicated issues, and the way humans like to succumb to our own demons were all written into this book. The themes of this book, on one hand, are quite simple and uncomplicated, but if you look at it deeper and from a different angle, it’s quite complex and can make you ponder on the message the novel wants to tell you.

- One word: FLEURY!!!!! *LOVES* ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

The Bads
- The antagonists of the novels at some point felt a bit two-dimensional. They felt bland. Kind of like Tom Riddle in the first book, but then as you read the rest of the series, you see who he is and see where his motives come from. I didn’t really feel that with the antagonists in the this novel, but most were minor characters. However, I still would have liked to see something that made them a little more fleshed out instead of a cardboard cut out!

- The ending . . . I’ll say it right now, I am not a fan of ambiguous ending. The ending in the last book of Animorphs is a great example where it’s a series that I adored and loved, but upon reading the ending, I grew furious. Now this book has one, and while I want an ending that ties everything up for me, this is one of those rare stories where the author does not need to tie up any missing strings! I wish for a better confirmation, but I’ll live with this one.

- The length of the book. It was actually decent, but I somehow found myself wanting more because of the ambiguous ending, I suppose! I would like more backstory of some of the characters. Especially Fleury. *hint hint hint*

- As someone who is incredibly unfamiliar with European history of the 1820s, I kind of felt a bit lost at certain times. Not lost in the plot, but more like lost as in, “Wait! Who the heck was Duke of Wellington and what was his purpose in the Napoleonic Wars?!” or “What the fudge is Newgate?!” kind of things. I blame my own ignorance on that part, though. I kind of daydreamed through that part of history class, apparently. At least this book taught me some new European/British historical facts, hence it being a historical novel.

The Uglies
- Considering that I’ve been reading either first person POV or third person limited POV these days, to read third person omniscient was a bit of a throwback. While I do not have a problem with that POV, I didn’t really like the way the author used it. I know this POV explores more than one character’s minds and thoughts, but to jump from Ambrose, to Rafe, to a dog, back to Rafe, to Sebastien, and back to Ambrose . . . it was disorientating. It’s a good thing I have either a good concentration skill or fast reading skills — otherwise I’d probably get frustrated at this book for its POV pinball match!

Conclusion
All in all, I really enjoyed this book. I loved the characters and their relationships, both sexual and non-sexual. I liked how the plot was paced and told. I find myself wanting to know more about the Regency/Georgian/Pre-Victorian-eras, and I want to read more well-written gay historical novels! Would I recommend this particular novel? Yes. Would I re-read it in the future? Most definitely. Do I really love Padraig Fleury? YES I DO. ♥

I finally received an invite code to Dreamwidth, and whoah, it’s bloody nifty! I haven’t been this excited about a new Internet “toy” since when I discovered Facebook several years ago, haha! Despite it being in beta stages right now, I’m liking it so far! I’m glad I got that invite code! I’ve been wanting to try it (and snag my username, muhahaha), and I certainly do not regret it!

Aside from this discovery, nothing exciting is happening to me, unless you count office drama and BS, which is not something I shall be writing about here (at least on this blog). Aside from that nastiness, I’m re-reading The Lord of the Rings, hanging out with friends, and am trying to fill this entry up with nonsense. XD Honestly, I only wrote this entry up so I could test JournalPress onto both LJ and DW.

Enough babbling from me. Time to click “publish”.

For those who are unaware, Amazon is being cuntastically uncool about stripping off ranks and eliminating GLBT-themed literature from their global search engines. Not to mention, when you do the “All Departments” search for “homosexuality”, the results are horrendously appalling!

Basically, any gay eroticas (apparently straight eroticas included, too), any YA books that have GLBT themes, are being discriminated upon. Not all are being discriminated upon, but a lot of them are. Some of the authors contacted Amazon directly about this, but they were basically told that adult-themed literature were being taken off of the global search and not ranked any longer. However, later, after many people contacted them, they said it was a “glitch” in the system . . . Glitch my arse. People can be stupid, but in this case, we know it’s not a freaking glitch.

Here are some links about the situation for those who are in the dark about it.

* Here’s a nice LJ entry that explains the start of it all.
* Here’s an entry — after you scroll down a bit — that has a compilation of major articles that are floating around the web about this whole #amazonfail situation. Also the entry has a link to a petition.
* Here’s an interesting theory about what may have happened with Amazon’s so-called “glitch”. Now whether it’s true or not, it is an interesting angle, but I don’t think it’s really true.
* Twitter’s storm about this whole thing. The real-time updates are — WOW. Talk about hard to keep up.
* List of books that are affected in this “glitch”.

As a long-time, loyal customer of Amazon, I have to say that I am pretty miffed about this. I depended on them to get stuff I could never get here, and I depended on them for the fact that they are one of the few online retailers to be NICE about shipping to US military addresses — which I have. To read and hear about all this is really disappointing. I do hope they fix all this!

ETA: So an explanation pops up. Great. That’s something. I can accept that it’s a glitch. What I can’t accept are the facts that this started in February, and that the authors received notification about their works being targeted because it was deemed “adult”. Bah.

Just give us a formal apology, especially to the authors/writers affected, and make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again!

In about a week, I went from being some video game nerd to the following: a Tolkien nerd and a Holocaust nerd.

How that happened was simple. About a week and a half ago, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers was on TV, and I ended up watching the last hour of it at work. That fuelled me to wanting to re-watch the extended version of all three movies, and that I did! Except my video tapes that have the copy of the extended edition are kind of in poor quality . . . so it was a bit of a pain to watch. Oh, and during that process, I received a new second-hand VCR. See, I was so afraid that my old VCR would actually eat my tapes, so I asked Daddy if there’s another VCR around the house. There was. A Panasonic one, with a remote! After not having a VCR remote for years, I am happy! On the flip side, though, now all my electronics — minus my game systems — are Panasonics. O_O;; I guess my parents like that company.

Anyway, watching the trilogy encouraged me to wanting to re-read The Hobbit and the first two books of the trilogy (I never finished the third one). However, I wanted a new copy of The Lord of the Rings — no thanks to my rabbit chewing parts of it up, oops — and so I scoured Amazon for a copy that wasn’t the crappy Del Rey’s mass market paperback. I ended up choosing to buy this edition along with two mangas. Yay! While waiting for it, I decided to re-read The Hobbit, but upon this reading, I found so many typos; thus I came to the conclusion that I needed to find a new (or second hand) copy of that book. Again, a copy that’s not the Del Rey’s mass market paperback version!

That’s what led me into a second-hand book store yesterday. I looked for about a half an hour, but they didn’t have what I was looking for. Instead, they had this gem, The Hidden Life of Otto Frank for 6,000 won = $4.50. That made my day. As a Holocaust junkie, a self-proclaimed expert on Anne Frank, I’ve been dying to read this, and now I am! I was a few chapter into the book when I took a break and surfed Wikipedia about the Frank family and their helpers. I stumbled upon Miep Gies’ official home page, where I was surprised to see that she’s 100 now, and that her book, Anne Frank Remembered has been through a revision for her centennial birthday. WAH! Now I must get that revised edition — never mind the fact that I have the original that I read practically every year!

In the end, though, I’m trying to figure myself out on whether I’m that flighty and easily distracted because of my short attention span, or that’s just how I deal with things when I have such varied interests. I know, for sure, after I read that book about Otto Frank, I will move onto Angels in America — it came in an Amazon package with the book, the DVD adaptation of the play, and a new DS game.

Yes, apparently, I have plenty to keep myself occupied with — although next thing I know, I will be jumping onto the 1920s mafia bandwagon or something. Merlin knows what I’ll be interested in next!