i'm not sure how i got through this much of my adult life without reading any muriel spark: the prime of miss jean brodie was the most wonderful book i've read in a long time, (possibly because i was imagining evans reading it out loud most of the way through). bits to quote: too many, but here's just one of them, for my own pleasure:

This was the first winter of the two years that this class spent with Miss Brodie. It had turned nineteen-thirty-one. Miss Brodie had already selected her favorites, or rather those whom she could trust; or rather those whose parents she could trust not to lodge complaints about the more advanced and seditious aspects of her educational policy, these parents being either too enlightened to complain, or too unenlightened, or too awed by their good fortune in getting their girls' education at endowed rates, or too trusting to question the value of what their daughters were learning at this school of sound reputation. Miss Brodie's special girls were taken home to tea and bidden not to tell the others, they were taken into her confidence, they understood her private life and her feud with the headmistress and the allies of the headmistress. They learned what troubles in her career Miss Brodie encountered on their behalf, "It is for the sake of you girls - my influence, now, in the years of my prime.'

has anyone seen maggie smith in the 1969 version? i'm a little scared to netflix it in case i get taken in the rapture 5 minutes in.



in other news: mauled by both the saturday and sunday crossword this week. don't know why i've never before seen the word GEST (def: a deed or exploit). zao ju, anyone?