The Squeee

... But no sign of Richard Armitage, Spooks , Strike Back ... or anything else half-decent. :( Here's the link, anyway: Vote in the TV Choice Awards 2010 Shortlist Voting's open until 9 July 2010.

As I posted the Twilight Saga: New Moon review earlier today, I thought "hey, let's have a poll about it" - so what'll it be? Team Jacob or Team Sparkles? Or, perhaps Team Bella if you can't decide. ... Or there's always the other option ... There's always the other option. Especially regarding this. And no, I refuse to call Sparkles by his real first name, because Stephanie Meyer nicked it off Charlotte Brontë and there is only ONE man who can live up to that name and Mr. Cullen, it ain't you. I'm Team Rochester all the way!

Question posed a while back was: who's your preference, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy from Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice , or Mr. John Thornton from Elizabeth Gaskell's North & South ? 1. John Thornton - 39 votes - 88%  2. Fitzwilliam Darcy - 5 votes - 11% Thank you to the 44 voters, the results are perhaps not that surprising, considering I'd say the majority of the readers of this blog (love you all!) are fans of Richard Armitage. ;) On the other hand, Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy, he was the first introduction I had to the wonderful world of period drama, and my first cravat crush. (The 2005 version of P&P just doesn't work for me at all. Colin Firth is and always will be the perfect Darcy.)

Here's my list of things I wish to accomplish during the DH Lawrence Challenge 2010 , which kicks off on Thursday 1 July 2010! :) Lady Chatterley's Lover (book) The Captain's Doll (novella) The Ladybird (novella) The Man Who Died (short story) The Virgin and the Gypsy (novella) Love Among the Haystacks (short story) The Lovely Lady (short story) Rawdon's Roof (short story) The Rocking-Horse Winner (short story) The Man Who Loved Islands (short story) Visit DH Lawrence heritage! I hope to be able to track down some adaptations as well, such as the 1993 version of Lady Chatterley , with Sean Bean and Joely Richardson. We shall see. If so, I'll add more to the list as they come along. But this is my starting point! :) Oh, I nearly forgot: As part of the challenge, I also aim to visit DH Lawrence Heritage in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire . Don't know when exactly, but hopefully at some point this summer! Learn more about the author: DH Lawr...

"Why does Ms. Bailey say I burned down Thornfield?" "Because she got all the characters wrong, Adèle." "And what of Ms. Tennant? She says I hate you!" "Hush; do not speak of that crime against fiction." Cashing in some Amazon vouchers, I'm now waiting for these babies to be delivered to my doorstep: Adèle, Grace, and Céline: The Other Women of "Jane Eyre" by Claire Moise Jane Eyre's Daughter by Elizabeth Newark Jane Slayre by Sherri Browning Erwin and Charlotte Brontë

Here be Chapter 2 of The Squeee production of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre ! Go to listen/download the second chapter from Jellycast! In Chapter 2, Jane has been shut in the Red Room, where once her uncle Reed died, and she's not a happy bunny. Neither am I, I need to check the microphone settings better for next time. Kh. The whole Jane Eyre audiobook can be found at Jellycast: Jane Eyre Audiobook by Traxy

'What the deuce!' came the cry from out yonder. 'It wasn't like that earlier today, I'm sure of it! Something's broken the poll!' I'll get Hercule Poirot, Jane Marple, Tom Barnaby, Kurt Wallander, Nancy Drew and all the rest on the case and see if I can fix it, or if the poll has to be re-made. 'Stoopid bleedin' thing,' Traxy muttered under her breath, going to the layout page, pressing "Save" just to see if it does anything. 'There,' she says, casting a suspicious eye at the blog front page. 'I think I fixed it.' Possible culprit? A very cute gremlin if she was. :)

Woke up this morning (which was, by the time of posting, in January) to find I had not just received one award, but in fact three! I've never had a blog get an award before. :) Many thanks to Avalon for these - if you haven't already, do go and have a look at her wonderful blog! I'm trying to pass them on to people who have not received the award(s) before, but if any of them have... well, have another one. :) For this, you need to list ten things that make you happy, so here goes (and I'll seriously try to not just fill up the list with actors, movies or books *cough*): Cats, particularly my darling Daisy Stationary - a brand new notebook or notepad and a pen and I'm in heaven! Going to the cinema Good food Getting surprise flowers from my husband Heck, my husband in general! :) Snow - this winter has been fab in that respect! Animals in general Writing, of course! Random acts of kindness This one, I'd like to dedicate to my friends: isdock...

This was something I posted as a comment on Avalon's Blog a few weeks ago, on the subject of why we love Guy of Gisborne of BBC's Robin Hood . Well, here's my reasoning behind loving the Man in Black: In a show where he was just meant to be a one-dimensional baddie, he turned out to be the hero. The transition from stereotypical goon, the sheriff's evil sidekick who leaves babies in the woods to die to lovestruck puppy - and later on very wounded puppy, and then fierce puppy - and angst-ridden emo to Man with a Tragic Past and then redeems himself... That range of emotion is very compelling to watch. A show where you don't root for the supposed hero (because the hero is a stuck-up brat) but for the guy you're supposed to hate - it's a bit confusing, but an interesting change to normal proceedings. A lot of the appeal of Gisborne is RA, though, that can't be forgotten. If someone else had played him, I doubt the show would've had the fanbase it n...

(I did start writing this on the eve of the actual final... not that I got around to finishing it then... *cough*) The annual spectacle that is the Eurovision Song Contest has concluded. This year, Norway was the host, and they seemed to do a good job. We didn't watch the whole show, as we decided to pop to Blockbusters just before it started, but we heard a little of the broadcast on the radio in the car. It sounded like Terry Wogan had got back to his old job, but then we decided it wasn't, and opted for Radio 2 presenter Ken Bruce - who sounds 98% like Terry Wogan! The songs were their usual Eurovisiony selves, the hosts spoke their normal English with heavy accents... Then there was the voting, and in those 15 minutes between the end of the singing and the end of the voting, aside from the normal medley of songs to remember which numbers to call, were a couple of guys and some attempt at a flashmob around Europe. Surprised to see Gothenburg there - would've thought...

There's a reason for pitting these two men against each other. Essentially, because P&P and N&S are similar in many ways. Just because a lot of you are fans of Richard Armitage and thus biased toward Mr. Thornton... well, it doesn't mean everyone is! Or does it? Read And Find Out! :D Okay, yeah, so I still haven't got over the fact that Darcy beat Rochester in the previous poll (14 vs 7). Y'all are just WRONG on that one. *sniff* :P No, really. Darcy might've been what got me into costume dramas, but Rochester and Thornton are what's keeping me hooked. And a bunch of others too, admittedly, but I need to get to bed and if I were to list them all, I'd be up all night!

"Will you be following the World Cup this year, Miss Dashwood?" "Indeed I will not, Mr. Ferrars. I find football most disagreeable." Any football fans out there? (Soccer fans if you're American.) I couldn't give a stuff about the World Cup personally. Apparently, Sweden's not even in it - nor did we make it to the Eurovision final, gasp! At present, England is at a standstill, because they're playing the USA. So far, it's 1-1 and it's about 15 minutes to go. It being the World Cup means "but now there's nothing decent on telly for ages !" - or is there? Actually, there is. The channels are exceedingly agreeable, as it happens! One channel's showing Sense & Sensibility '95, another one's showing Pride & Prejudice '95. Another one is showing Notting Hill . It's chick flick heaven! And it'll go on during the World Cup so that all of us who give a collective yawn at a bunch of blokes chasing...

Okay, because I've recently downloaded an audiobook ( Villette by Charlotte Brontë) from LibriVox - and signed up to volunteer at the same site - I decided to try out the recording facilities of Arthur (my laptop - considerably newer than Marvin, my desktop, on which I made my last attempt - which didn't have very good sound quality and the reading was pants too). And boy, they are AWESOME! Windows 7 have better microphone settings (proper gain!) and this computer seems to have a decent onboard soundcard too. And the audio editing software recommended by LibriVox - open source project Audacity - has a good noise reduction tool. It makes my voice sound a bit warbly sometimes, but not a lot. I can live with it. So here we go, a second attempt. This time, I've at least tried to not talk quite as quickly. But umm, still a bit quick maybe? Can't help it. I'll try to slow down in chapter two... Go to listen/download the first chapter from Jellycast! The whole Jan...

You know when you have a dream, think it's the bees knees, and then you wake up again an hour later and have completely forgotten about it? Until a couple of hours later when something reminds you and you go "oh hang on, I dreamed that..." but then you've forgotten all the details and just have a vague recollection of having dreamed of something that you had to blog about, but you can't quite recall what it was about. Well, guess what? I am happy to announce that last night, I met Richard Armitage! :D Uh, and that's about all I can remember. Moo. :( Okay, the only details I recall is that I met him and he seemed uncomfortable. For the record, I'd like it to be made perfectly clear that I wasn't running after him yelling something ridiculous like "RICHARD, I LOVE YOU AND I WANT TO HAVE YOUR BABIES!!!" or even just letting out the occasional squee at him. I might have been slightly awestruck, but I was acting perfectly sane, thank you. ...

So, the golden popcorn have been delivered... and like I predicted last month , Twilight won everything they were nominated in. Crud. We'll get to that in a bit. Christina Aguilera's performance, with the cogs in the background, would've been so much more interesting if she had been dressed up in a Steampunk style. I have no idea who the presenter was. But he was kinda funny. At least this year, we were spared Brüno going down on Eminem... ugh. (Or was that a different MTV awards show?) There were plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, especially the movie parody clip things. They're normally funny. Much to our delight, the studio boss Les Grossman from Tropic Thunder made several appearances. Including dancing with J-Lo. I didn't know Tom Cruise could move! His lady wife in the audience seemed to enjoy him more dressed up as Les gettin' jiggy wif it rather than when he was presenting an award with Cameron Diaz. Well, "Les is more" as a newspaper h...

Watching bits of the BAFTAs on TV. There was Richard Armitage having a right laugh at something Graham Norton (the presenter) was saying - didn't hear which, as it was just as I switched over to BBC1. At ca 20:40, the man himself was introduced to present the award for Supporting Actress. Just me, or did he seem a little bit nervous? Anyway, here are the winners, which I got off the BAFTA website . Fellowship: Melvyn Bragg Special Award: Simon Cowell Leading Actor: Kenneth Branagh - Wallander (BBC One) - Nice one! It's odd to see a bunch of British actors filming a Swedish book in Sweden... in English. They couldn't get the pronounciations right, to start with, but it was still a good watch. Plus, I can't really say no to the effort they made. Leading Actress: Julie Walters - Mo (Channel 4) Supporting Actor: Matthew MacFadyen - Criminal Justice (BBC One) - Aww, he's even starting to look grown up! Just give it a few more years and then we'll...