Lord Peter Wimsey

Last semester, I had the beautiful luck of discovering the perfectly delightful Lord Peter Wimsey. Dorothy Sayers' detective novels have been on my to-read list for eons, but somehow I never got around to reading them. Until now.

Since I couldn't find Whose Body?, the first in the series, I got a book of short stories to peruse. Because of all that curricular reading, I wanted something that I could read in short bursts whenever I found a few smidgens of free time, or simply couldn't bear the thought of another reading from Aristotle's Categories (no matter how beautifully logical you are, Aristotle, you can be rather dry and dull from time to time).

And Lord Peter is simply the most wonderful non-existent person I have had the very great pleasure of meeting in a very long time (enough superlatives for you?). He reminds me a little of P. G. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster, but with a rather larger endowment of mental acumen. He even has an amazing butler sidekick who is the very model of discretion and loyalty. (For those of you who have not made the acquaintance of Bertie and his inimitable valet, Jeeves, I can but offer my most sincere sympathy. You have not lived.)

As well as the comic genius of Wooster and Jeeves, Wimsey also brought G. K. Chesterton's crime-solving priest Fr. Brown to mind as well. In The Blue Cross, Fr. Brown's child-like simplicity and world-view cloak an astounding understanding of the way in which the human mind and soul work. As Fr. Brown simply remarks, however, "Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hear men's real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil?"

Wimsey often wears the same kind of abstracted expression on his face that Fr. Brown wears. In The Vindictive Story of the Footsteps That Ran, Wimsey has seen something that has to do with the mystery, but he cannot for the life of him recall what it was. Eventually he puzzles his way through it, an extraordinary mix of abstraction and brilliance.

Lord Peter has often been criticized as being "too perfect". He does have flaws (a fear of responsibility, shell-shock), but they are few, and his list of skills and talents grows as the stories go on. In some ways, Lord Peter does come across as a shallow character, made to meet the requirements of the story at hand without the depth that would be expected of a character in a full-length novel (true, these stories aren't full-length; nevertheless, Lord Peter's character is unusually thin in some stories, even for a genre where character development takes a back seat to plot.) In "The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba" , Lord Peter tackles the requisite secret ring of thieves in the necessary melodramatic fashion. A few of the other stories are equally spectacular, but equally enjoyable as well.

It is only when Lord Peter interacts with the various members of his family (nephew, wife, sons) that he seems more authentic. In most stories, Lord Peter is the detective extraordinaire, aided quite capably by his man, Bunter, but still intangible. With his family, Lord Peter is allowed to show more than his merely professional attitudes and abilities. Indeed, in Talboys, the last of the stories, Sayers paints a delightfully full-bodied picture of Lord Peter with his wife and sons, solving a mystery and fending off an over-zealous would-be child-rearing expert at one and the same time. Talboys sealed my fate as a Wimsey fangirl. While reading it, I caught distinct echoes of the often-chaotic events that accompany a family of any size, including my own. Perhaps because this is the scenario with which I am most familiar, Talboys seemed to me the most real of these tales. However exciting and glamorous Lord Peter's previous life as a detective was, the truest adventures are those which take place in the harum-scarum reality of family life.

Guilty Pleasures...

Let's admit it.

We all have out guilty pleasures.

What is a guilty pleasure? Merriam-Webster defines it
Main Entry: guilty pleasure
Function: noun
Date: 1907
: something pleasurable that induces a usually minor feeling of guilt.

No duh.

So, finding that entry unhelpful, I betook myself to that noble lexicon of modern slang:

Urban Dictionary.
This is how Urban Dictionary defines a "guilty pleasure":
1. Something that you shouldn't like, but like anyway.
2. Something that you love to do, but you just cannot admit that you do it.
Guy 1: "DUDE, you still watch Pokemon?"
Guy 2: "WHAT? NO! Ok, I do, its my guilty pleasure.
4. Keeping a secret collection of ABBA and Carpenters and listening to their albums when no one else is around.


So, yeah, I think we all get the general idea. (Here's when you're thinking-"Renee, get to the point already!!")
So, what's my guilty pleasure?

Avatar.
Avatar-The Last Airbender.

Laugh all you want. I see you all rolling your eyes. I can't help myself-I love my Avatar. I discovered this delightfully delightful television series at the beginning of the summer, when I began working at NU. Our first training sessions were "character research days" where we watched the shows of the Nick characters that the park owns.

Did I ever mention what a physically demanding and taxing job I have? Riiiiiiigggghhht.

One of my fellow trainees was flabbergasted when I mentioned that I'd never heard of Avatar before. Honestly, I've never seen someone so disturbed. So, we watched an episode of Avatar. I was seriously unimpressed. However, I fit the Aang costume, and I'd probably have to cohort Aang, so I figured I should probably be somewhat knowledgeable about the series. Thus, in the spirit of being a good, well-informed employee, I reserved the first few episodes from the library. While I watched them in the comfort of my living room, a quiet, sneaky little thought stirred within my mind- "I'm actually kind of enjoying these," it whispered. I laughed superciliously, and quickly quashed that queer qualm.

And then promptly reserved the rest of Season One.




(Or, rather, I should say "Book One." Avatar seasons are called 'books,' and the episodes are called 'chapters.' Random Avatar fact you probably didn't want to know...but now you do!)

Anyhow, over the summer, I've fallen more and more in love with Avatar. It makes me laugh, it makes me cry (no joke. I don't kid about these things! :)), and it's made me practice my earth-bending moves on my long-suffering and ever-patronizing younger brother.

The series main premise is such: it takes place in a fantasy world, where there are four nations, named after the four different elements: air, earth, water, and fire. Certain people can be trained to 'bend' the elements; bending is a martial art-not magic. Nickelodeon's adamant that it's not magic(I learned this by reading the big blue folder at work that is filled with all sorts of inside information about Nick shows-they call it the "Nick Bible.") Anyhow, the basic plot is that Aang (that strange, hyper, bald kid with the random blue arrow on his forehead) has to master all four elements, defeat the power-crazed fire lord, and save the world.

Oh, yeah.

He's twelve.

No sweat, right?

When I was twelve, all that was expected of me was that I make my bed, do my school, and not pick fights with my younger siblings.

Moral of the story is that Avatar=EPIC. (I know you hate that word, Cordelia, but it's the only one that does it justice! :)) I just finished the the series, and I was on the edge of my seat with excitement at the end. My brother rolled his eyes.

But he was watching intently.

Here's betting that he'll be ordering some Avatar episodes from the library soon.