Holiday 2011 Gift Ideas

Red-headed? Glasses? Arms full of library books? Yeah, I need this. And would it make a great gift for a bibliofreak in your life?

6 months ago

http://www.etsy.com/listing/59963998/burlap-pillow-cover-the-french-flower?ref=cat2_gallery_19

6 months ago

http://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TO&Product_Code=QC-BLINDED&Category_Code=QC-SHIRTS

6 months ago

Theodora was, if you were like me and really not sure, the wife of Justinian, the Byzantine emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Justinina was commonly known as Justinian the Great, and ruled from 527 to 565. A Roman historian by the name of Procopius wrote The Wars of Justinian, in which her beauty and piety were much praised. Later, he wrote another book about the couple, called Secret History, where he basically the beloved couple to proverbial shreds. Stella Duffy has taken these two Theodora’s and merged them into a stunningly well written and engaging book on the life and adventures of Theodora. And what a lovely conflicted, perfectly flawed, and powerfully strong woman she has drawn from these brief sketches of a woman who lived almost 1500 years ago.

Theodora, of documented fact and of Duffy’s novel, was born into humble beginnings. The Theodora of Duffy’s novel is precocious and shrewd from a very early age. Here I will divert from historical fact and talk only about the novel. By the age of 5, Theodora had lost her father to death and her mother to remarriage and a new family. To give her daughter(s, Theodora was the middle child between Comito and Anastasia) the only help she could, their mother delivered them into the performing life of the stage as dancers, actress, and, eventually, whores. There Theodora thrived from the attention she got from her audience. Okay, mainly the attention of men. Though not attractive, Theodora knew how to work her audience and made them love her. She learned very young the power she had over men and she exploited it to for her own interests.

And exploit them she did.

How? Well now, don’t you think you should read the novel to see how?

Stella Duffy, my dear, where have you been all my life? I felt the same way reading Theodora as I did when I read my first Sarah Waters, my first Emma Donoghue, my first, oh, any book that grabbed me by the hair on my brunette head. I love a good character. I adore a great character. And my friends, I adore Theodora. Duffy has written a fantastic character here, multifaceted, strong, yet not without her flaws and vulnerabilities. Her Theodora recognizes her strengths, her weaknesses, how to get what she needs and what she wants. Which Theodora is true? The sainted Empress Theodora of the Orthodox Church? The power hungry ambitious Theodora of Procopius’s Secret History? Or the combination of the two in Duffy’s Theodora? No one really knows for sure, obviously, but I prefer to think of her as something like Duffy’s Theodora, a character you can’t miss meeting.

http://www.capriciousreader.com/?p=7393

6 months ago