THE SONGS OF SPRING

THOUGH it was chilly, I left the window open while I cleaned tonight -- spring is in the air! 

I love summer, but there is nothing like the smell of spring in March. Spring is coming, she may be already here! "The songs of spring," my beloved John Keats called it <3

Being a nocturnal person, I do most of my work during the night. So far tonight I have done: house-cleaning, clothes folding, my teaching notes. And I still got: teaching notes (to finish), dish-washing, laundry.

Yet spring is in the air, and nothing can beat this. In the winter, I am in hybernation; now I have started to wake up. 

Enjoy the springtime -- it only comes once a year!

THOUGHTS ON DICKENS

I ALWAYS love to read the scene which introduces Mrs Rouncewell, in Bleak House by Charles Dickens! Mrs Rouncewell is housekeeper to the manor house of Lord and Lady Deadlock; she started working there as soon as her husband died years ago.

I am not sure why I love the scene so much. Maybe it is because it is so full of Victorian notions and ideas (and I am a Victorianist by training). Maybe it is because Mrs Rouncewell is so essentially reassuring and good. Most importantly, I love Dickens's assertion that Lord Deadlock respected his employee housekeeper so much that, if he ever found himself in a compromising situation, he would ask for Mrs Rouncewell to be brought to him and she would make things right again, and restore Lord Deadlock's dignity.

Many "good" characters in novels are not very well designed; eventually, we tend to lose interest in them, or simply dislike them outright. I think some goody characters in Oliver Twist are like that, also I can add Pauline in Charlotte Bronte's Villette (I hate her personally: if she is good, please give me BAD), Agnes in Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte (ditto), Fanny in Mansfield Park -- it's a long list!

Mrs Rouncewell is not like this. Dickens took care to make her essentially honest and good, but also believable and close to reality.

Reading the scene I mentioned in Bleak House always makes me feel content and at ease. It's part of the magic of books, the magic of words and, also, the magic of Charles Dickens!

Have a beautiful start to the week :-)

THE LIPSTICK PAPERS WEEKEND REVIEW

HELLO and welcome to The Lipstick Papers Weekend Review! Tonight we have The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying, by Marie Kondo!

Marie Kondo is a Japanese professional cleaner and housekeeping expert. She runs a successful business in Tokyo, helping her clients de-clutter, tidy and transform their homes, and she has written a book about her knowledge and attitude.

Being obsessed with cleaning and tidying myself, of course I had to have the book. I am a manic house-keeper, though I must admit that sometimes things can get out of control. These days, for instance, I am so busy with my teaching, that clutter has started to form inside cupboards and on shelves. However, I don't despair. Cleanliness and neatness are all-important, but they are usually the least of a life's problems. Come summer, I will begin to de-clutter step by step.

I found The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying to be well-written, interesting and practical. It has good and insightful advice on de-cluttering and achieving order all through the house. 

I would certainly recommend The Life-Changing Magic... to anyone who feels they are in need of some useful advice, suggestions and ideas on how to manage storage space and minimize clutter!

However, one fault is the advice on books. According to Kondo, we should keep as few books as possible in our home. You can understand that this idea does not sit too well with me! My home is full of books. I am not exaggerating. I mean FULL. I can't imagine life without books; I need to have and see them around me everywhere (except the bathroom and bedroom).

So I think that you will find some ideas in Kondo's book to be extreme or not very useful for you. Other than this, The Life-Changing Magic... is a good addition to a housekeeping books collection.

Have a good Sunday night, always with beauty and a book! 

THE LIPSTICK BELT

HERE I am with my amazing lipstick belt! With lipstick, you just can't go wrong. It is a thing of joy without exception. A beauty aid, a mood-lifter, a great accessory, a skyscraper shape (see the Lipstick building in NYC) and a title for your favorite blog! ;-)

THE ART OF READING

READING makes such beautiful art!

Reading is, in many ways, an art, but I think, like all intriguing art, it has no rules! We can read pretty much what we like. What's in my reading list these days? Charles Dickens's Bleak House (re-reading for 3rd time); Fifty Shades Darker (re-reading for 100th time); and several non-fiction books.

Have a lovely start to the week! xxx

THE LIPSTICK PAPERS WEEKEND REVIEW

HELLO and welcome to The Lipstick Papers Weekend Review! Tonight we got Fresh Lipstick by Linda M. Scott!

This is a book which falls into the area of women's and gender studies, and is an excellent choice for International Women's Day! (But for my ideas on the day see below).

Fresh Lipstick was one of my basic theoretic texts during PhD study, because it deals with the relationship between women, feminism and beauty. Linda M. Scott belongs to the area of feminism (Third Wave/ Lipstick Feminism) which approves of beauty, beauty practices and beauty products.

Like myself, Scott is pro-beauty, and argues that to divorce women from beauty is a form of what she calls "cultural cruelty". Beauty is important in the lives of women.

Scott makes a good case for her ideas, explaining that feminism has always been interested in beauty, and that women are not simple consumers of beauty products; they are active agents in the beauty and fashion businesses, as employees, managers and business owners.

The book contains massive research on women entrepreneurs of the beauty industry in the US, women like as Elizabeth Arden, Estee Lauder and Helena Rubinstein.

The one problem in the book is the sometimes hostile attitude towards more traditional feminism, and also what I think is a complete misunderstanding of Naomi Wolf's ideas in The Beauty Myth. Wolf created history when she wrote The Beauty Myth, and she by no means regards beauty as oppression.

As a feminist, I have ambivalent feelings towards women's day. Every day is a good day, if we are to fight for gender equality and respect for basic human rights. If Woman's Day is used as a platform, then this is fine with me. However, a single day dedicated to women's issues does not solve problems or change attitudes.

Have a good night and be well, always with beauty and a book! xxx

IMPRESSIONIST RENDITION
Here's my impressionist rendition of the Estee Lauder Time Zone Night cream! I love to draw beauty products, and beauty products inspire me endlessly! As for Estee Lauder, I love it so much, that I did not even dare to throw away all those lovely gold-lidded pots. Happily, my local Beauty Line has a recycle bin -- now how cool is that???? The pretty cream and make-up pots and containers are used again and made anew. Have a beautiful Friday night xxx

GLAMOROUS BAD BOYS

A CONCERNED father once wrote to express his anxiety that his daughter was given to study Byron at University; the letter is in the University Archives! Lord Byron was considered far less than exemplary: "mad, bad and dangerous to know", as a former mistress (Lady Melbourne, I think) once called him!

Still, the father's letter dates early 20th century, if I remember correctly, while the Bronte sisters read Byron without censorship from their father decades earlier.

Lord Byron was a true celebrity, probably one of the first celebrities in the modern sense of the world: good-looking, famous, a bad boy living the glamorous life. People loved to learn about his adventures.

Byron's exploits, and his own dark heroes, became so ingrained in popular culture, that they gave their name to a type of a literary character, the Byronic hero. This is a man who has many qualities and is attractive, but seems to be haunted by a dark past, or a dark secret. The Victorians loved to create Byronic heroes of their own, and Victorian Byronic heroes are memorable -- Mr Rochester from Jane Eyre, Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, Sydney Carton from A Tale of Two Cities, and so on and so forth.

Darkness was so fashionable, that young men in the 19th century thought it cool to hint about dark secrets and a dark past. This was party conversation Victorian style for you!

Glamorous bad boys and Byronic heroes are still in our hearts and minds today; think Edward Cullen and Christian Grey <3

No Byronic type for girls; I am afraid that we only got the femme fatale ourselves! Maybe it's time to change this! ;-)

THE LIPSTICK PAPERS WEEKEND REVIEW

HELLO and welcome to The Lipstick Papers Weekend Review! Tonight we have La Petite Fadette by Georges Sand, and here I am at my favorite cafe, where I certainly do a lot of my reading!

La Petite Fadette is a 1849 French novel, and probably one of the first novels I have ever read (the first was Good Wives). I read Fadette in a good Greek translation, and absolutely loved it!!!!!!

Fadette has been translated into English as Fanchon, the Cricket; I don't know how well-known it is in the English-speaking world though. In Greece and Cyprus it is virtually unknown, I think.

The plot goes something like this. Fadette is an orphan girl raised by her grandmother in the woods. She has a handicapped brother. Their grandmother is not very nice, and Fadette and her brother, poor and disadvantaged, are hated in the village. Everybody thinks that Fadette is a witch, and that her late mother was a witch also. As luck would have it, Fadette gets to meet Landry, son of a respectable farmer family. She saves him one evening (where he gets lost in the woods while looking for his twin brother Sylvinet). Landry is the best-looking boy in the area, and a huge success with the girls. At first, he thinks that Fadette is ugly and plain, but he is soon crazy about her. In the end, and after a number of difficulties, they marry and live happily ever after.

La Petite Fadette is an unsettling novel. It is all about young romance and the power of love, of course, but it is also about the dark side of everyday life, and the great evil people can do with their common sense and common wisdom. Often these are just another name for prejudice and spite, the novel seems to say.

The protagonist Fadette is, in my view, a real witch. Landry becomes certain she is a witch the night she saves him in the dark woods. There is something highly disturbing in the scene where she comes near the young man carrying her lantern. We know she is safety, but, somehow, she is also not quite safe.

As a young child, I learnt a lot from La Petite Fadette. I learnt that people and common wisdom are not always right, and that there can be men and women out there who may not be exactly like us, but they are kind and good; I think the novel taught me about difference and about tolerance. As I grew older, I realised that, for many, I am different and unusual as well. There is no same to compare yourself to.

I don't know if you can get hold of an English copy of the novel! The Greek edition I have is old and threadbare, and definitely out of print (the cover is still pretty, though). The novel is highly popular in France (and was made into a TV movie in 2004), so all Francophones and French-speakers may be at advantage here!

Have a good night and be well! xxx

TO BE HONEST

OH NO! Waterstones has published their list of "best books" for the last 20 years, and I agree with none!!!!!!!!!

Waterstones are my favorite bookstore chain. Inasmuch as I love Foyles, nothing can beat Waterstones for me. The Costa Cafe in the Waterstones outside the University of London is my favorite spot on Earth.

Still, their list is, for me, an utter disappointment. White Teeth? Captain Corelli's Mandolin? No thanks.

I think that, as far as so-called literary fiction is concerned, I prefer fiction from the 19th century backwards. The only 20th century literary fiction I liked was Virginia Woolf and Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, though not for bed-time reading; just "serious" reading. On the other hand, I don't mind reading Dickens, Jane Austen and the Brontes for fun.

Recently, I have stopped reading fiction altogether. I read mostly non-fiction now. I write my own fiction (romances) and this is enough for me. The only fiction I read are any classics (from the 19th century backwards) I haven't read yet, and   the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy on repeat. I haven't found anything so exciting since Fifty Shades, to be honest.

I guess "best books" lists are entirely subjective. A formula for book success, or to make us all agree on what is good, is yet to be found. Meanwhile, I'll stick to my preference for the Victorians and for Fifty Shades! :-)