(no subject)

Adventures, of course, as we shall see, were of daily occurrence; but about this time Peter invented, with Wendy's help, a new game that fascinated him enormously, until he suddenly had no more interest in it, which, as you have been told, was what always happened with his games. It consisted in pretending not to have adventures, in doing the sort of thing John and Michael had been doing all their lives, sitting on stools flinging balls in the air, pushing each other, going out for walks and coming back without having killed so much as a grizzly. To see Peter doing nothing on a stool was a great sight; he could not help looking solemn at such times, to sit still seemed to him such a comic thing to do. He boasted that he had gone walking for the good of his health. For several suns these were the most novel of all adventures to him; and John and Michael had to pretend to be delighted also; otherwise he would have treated them severely.

He often went out alone, and when he came back you were never absolutely certain whether he had had an adventure or not. He might have forgotten it so completely that he said nothing about it; and then when you went out you found the body; and, on the other hand, he might say a great deal about it, and yet you could not find the body.

-Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

Also on the topic, John wusses out when Peter suggests they get their murderin' on.

My increasing terror of Peter Pan aside, I like this book. I wish I was better at concentrating on it or I'd be done by now, but I am enjoying it. A few friends of mine have noted the messed up gender role stuff in it, I've noted the murder, and god knows the Redskins are their own bag of issues.

But, you know, I read Lovecraft which features a black cat with a 'delightful' name* in one of his stories, The Rats In The Walls. Try and beat that, Peter.

Please don't actually try.

There's some stuff that's been catching my eye in delight, like Wendy's pet wolf (SHE HAS A PET WOLF, GUYS) and uh, interesting lines like: "Some unsteady fairies had to climb over [Peter] on their way home from an orgy."**

Loving that Hook's first plan I've seen to kill them is with cake. And the whole 'what adventure should we choose?' section which is way too long to quote in an already long post but let me tell you, they had an amazing amount of adventures I would have loved to have heard. Especially Tink's attempt to fly Wendy to the mainland via street fairies and a giant leaf.

Still torn on what to read next though. Thinking Narnia, might be Jeeves and Wooster, might be Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Might be some fairy tales, as I've discovered that all of Andrew Lang's colour fairy books are available on Gutenberg.***

*Named after Lovecraft's own cat
**I'm thinking the first set of definitions but I was still taken aback.
***If you search 'Lang' and 'Fairy' you get all of them individually, and some versions have illustrations!