I am nuts about Dickens. Especially David Copperfield.
I purchased and downloaded the audio book, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
- all 34 and a half hours of it. It is read by Martin Jarvis, who I
have to say is the master of narration. There is none better - no, not
one.
It took me nearly 2 months to listen to it all. And I was sorry when it
ended. Audio books are perfect for me, because I barely get time for
leisurely reading these days, but I have heaps of time while I'm ironing
or cleaning or prepping for dinner, and it makes me feel productive to
be doing two things at the same time - plus it makes the chores so much
more nicer!
I'm the type of person that when I read a good book that I love, I can
believe that those people are real, and that those events really
happened. I think it means that somewhere in my childhood I didn't make
the transition between imaginary and reality. It's why I can't watch
really violent movies - or really intensely sad movies - because they
will haunt me.
But David Copperfield is a delight to the senses. It is almost rivaling my love of Jane Eyre. I don't know which I enjoy better.
One thing I love about Dickens' writing is that he rounds things off
very nicely at the end. You're never left hanging, trying to guess the
fate of the characters, or thinking about what is going to happen next.
It's very, very satisfying.
If you have seen the movie, David Copperfield, with Maggie Smith playing
a wonderful Betsy Trotwood, then you should read the book too, because
the movie left out some wonderful characters such as Tommy Traddles and
Dr. Strong and Annie, and while I love the movie, the book is better.
I have an audio book to download before we go on holiday tomorrow, and I
am torn over what to get. More Dickens (Great Expectations or Bleak
House) or a Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility)
or an Agatha Christie. Such a big decision.
Saturday, September 15, 2012
The City of Ember
The kids and I are fighting.
Over a book.
I told them I better read it first, just to make sure that it's ok for little kids.
"We've seen the movie, Mum. It's ok. And I'm not little."
Now I'm having to hide it.
What is this book?
It is The City of Ember written by Jeanne DuPrau.
I am not one for Science Fiction. At all. I hate it. Usually. But they say that there is always an exception to the rule. This is it.
The City of Ember has gripped us. We saw it on dvd at the weekend - just a random movie that I grabbed off the children's shelf at the library last week when I was in a hurry. Quickly scanned the blurb on the back. Sounded ok - rated PG. Give it a go.
Did I already say we love it?
The City of Ember is actually a city. A post-apocalyptic city, buried miles under the surface of the earth. It was built to save the human race from destruction. It was built to last 200 years. Now, that time is up.
Everything is running out. The food, the clothes, the lights, the generator. The city is beginning to crumble and corruption is rife. It is up to teenagers, Lina and Doon, to find the way out and to piece together the clues left by the creators of the city in a small forgotten steel box - before darkness encloses them all forever. The citizens of Ember know nothing outside their little electric-run city, lighted by hundreds of lamps. They don't know about Earth. They don't know about the sea and the sky and the wind and rain and the moon.
And they don't know about the Sun.
All they know is Ember. And outside Ember is darkness.
The secrets of the Earth were enclosed in the little box and sealed for 200 years.
The movie was very well done - exciting. I would not recommend it for any children under the age of 8 years. Even then my 8 year old wanted to fastforward the scary bits - which were a man being taken to jail and a mutated mole with an octopus-like head who is very hungry (that was the only bit in the movie that I thought was dumb), and Lina and Doon being chased by the 'policemen' of a corrupt mayor.
But my 10 year old liked those parts.
The book itself is very good and grips you from the first page. It's also the first in a series of 4. Without giving too much away the rest of the series follows the fortunes of Lina and Doon and some of the other people from Ember.
It's also on audio book .
Over a book.
I told them I better read it first, just to make sure that it's ok for little kids.
"We've seen the movie, Mum. It's ok. And I'm not little."
Now I'm having to hide it.
What is this book?
It is The City of Ember written by Jeanne DuPrau.
I am not one for Science Fiction. At all. I hate it. Usually. But they say that there is always an exception to the rule. This is it.
The City of Ember has gripped us. We saw it on dvd at the weekend - just a random movie that I grabbed off the children's shelf at the library last week when I was in a hurry. Quickly scanned the blurb on the back. Sounded ok - rated PG. Give it a go.
Did I already say we love it?
The City of Ember is actually a city. A post-apocalyptic city, buried miles under the surface of the earth. It was built to save the human race from destruction. It was built to last 200 years. Now, that time is up.
Everything is running out. The food, the clothes, the lights, the generator. The city is beginning to crumble and corruption is rife. It is up to teenagers, Lina and Doon, to find the way out and to piece together the clues left by the creators of the city in a small forgotten steel box - before darkness encloses them all forever. The citizens of Ember know nothing outside their little electric-run city, lighted by hundreds of lamps. They don't know about Earth. They don't know about the sea and the sky and the wind and rain and the moon.
And they don't know about the Sun.
All they know is Ember. And outside Ember is darkness.
The secrets of the Earth were enclosed in the little box and sealed for 200 years.
The movie was very well done - exciting. I would not recommend it for any children under the age of 8 years. Even then my 8 year old wanted to fastforward the scary bits - which were a man being taken to jail and a mutated mole with an octopus-like head who is very hungry (that was the only bit in the movie that I thought was dumb), and Lina and Doon being chased by the 'policemen' of a corrupt mayor.
But my 10 year old liked those parts.
The book itself is very good and grips you from the first page. It's also the first in a series of 4. Without giving too much away the rest of the series follows the fortunes of Lina and Doon and some of the other people from Ember.
It's also on audio book .
New Zealand Women Are....
. . . Amazing! That's what I think after reading this book while on holiday this week.
I wandered into the resort's tiny little library. Actually, just a small bookshelf, in the hopes of finding an Agatha Christie or some similar thriller, and finding nothing but Barbra Cartland-type novels I was about to flounce out of there in disappointment when I saw, tucked in amongst all the pathetic romance novels this little gem. I opened it and was hooked from the first page.
Maybe it's because of my own interest in sailing - and yes, I have to admit I did enjoy all the technical descriptions of halyards and main sails and gybing, and the little plan of the inside of the ship. But mostly I was thrilled with her story - amazed too at the courage of Naomi James - the first woman in the world to sail single-handedly around the world via Cape Horn in 1978. She made a world record. 272 days alone at sea. Imagine that! And she is a kiwi - born and raised on a farm in the Hawkes Bay.
What was inconceivable to my timid nature was her decision to do this when she was only a fairly novice sailor! She didn't even learn to swim until she was in her twenties - which in itself is unusual for a New Zealander. She has even said that she learned to sail on her trip around the world! Her diaries and accounts of her solo voyage is fascinating and gripping. I loved all the little details of what she had to eat - what she craved. How she could speak by radio to people in England and New Zealand when she was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Of the people she met in South Africa - of the elderly Dutchman who bought her oranges and a survival kit on the eve of her departure.
I loved every chapter of this book. Unfortunately it is no longer available to buy new, so as I have my copy on a long-term loan from the resort (we are regulars there, so they let me borrow it), I am having to keep my eye out for my own copy online.
She is now a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, having earned that after her success, and lives in Ireland (I believe), and from what I can find out has not sailed again since her husband was drowned after falling overboard on a race some 5 years after her voyage.
If you can find a copy of this book in the library, I heartily recomend it as a good and exciting read - she is a forgotten heroine, but her amazing courage and fortitude has inspired me this week. I've added her to my list of inspirational people I'd like to meet. But she hasn't inspired me so far that I'd want to do the same thing as her in sailing around the world solo. It was the heavy weather account in the Southern Seas that put me off. I also had to laugh at her description of New Zealand being a 'shipping hazard' as she passed below us in the middle of the night!
No, I think I'll just stick to the Hauraki Gulf for my sailing thrills.
I wandered into the resort's tiny little library. Actually, just a small bookshelf, in the hopes of finding an Agatha Christie or some similar thriller, and finding nothing but Barbra Cartland-type novels I was about to flounce out of there in disappointment when I saw, tucked in amongst all the pathetic romance novels this little gem. I opened it and was hooked from the first page.
Maybe it's because of my own interest in sailing - and yes, I have to admit I did enjoy all the technical descriptions of halyards and main sails and gybing, and the little plan of the inside of the ship. But mostly I was thrilled with her story - amazed too at the courage of Naomi James - the first woman in the world to sail single-handedly around the world via Cape Horn in 1978. She made a world record. 272 days alone at sea. Imagine that! And she is a kiwi - born and raised on a farm in the Hawkes Bay.
What was inconceivable to my timid nature was her decision to do this when she was only a fairly novice sailor! She didn't even learn to swim until she was in her twenties - which in itself is unusual for a New Zealander. She has even said that she learned to sail on her trip around the world! Her diaries and accounts of her solo voyage is fascinating and gripping. I loved all the little details of what she had to eat - what she craved. How she could speak by radio to people in England and New Zealand when she was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Of the people she met in South Africa - of the elderly Dutchman who bought her oranges and a survival kit on the eve of her departure.
I loved every chapter of this book. Unfortunately it is no longer available to buy new, so as I have my copy on a long-term loan from the resort (we are regulars there, so they let me borrow it), I am having to keep my eye out for my own copy online.
She is now a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, having earned that after her success, and lives in Ireland (I believe), and from what I can find out has not sailed again since her husband was drowned after falling overboard on a race some 5 years after her voyage.
If you can find a copy of this book in the library, I heartily recomend it as a good and exciting read - she is a forgotten heroine, but her amazing courage and fortitude has inspired me this week. I've added her to my list of inspirational people I'd like to meet. But she hasn't inspired me so far that I'd want to do the same thing as her in sailing around the world solo. It was the heavy weather account in the Southern Seas that put me off. I also had to laugh at her description of New Zealand being a 'shipping hazard' as she passed below us in the middle of the night!
No, I think I'll just stick to the Hauraki Gulf for my sailing thrills.
This Liking For Winter
"There's something special about the log fire.
I like the smell of it.
I like its companionable ways, how it flares and flickers like a conversation, animating the room."
Katherine Swift in The Morville Hours: The Story of A Garden.
I have found a book that my heart loves. I wasn't going to write about it, because it's in my sidebar, but I am so enjoying it that I just have to. It was a slow start - I nearly gave up. She starts the book with alot of Anglo-Saxon history and Roman catholic rites and rituals that are woven through English history. They are interesting in their own way, but a little dry at the beginning, but I do love the way that the author goes right back to the beginning of England and traces the history of her county, village, house and garden. I am two hours into it (as I don't get time for curling up by the fire with a good book these days I mostly use audible), and I'm hooked. I have a funny feeling that this is going to get added to my list of favourite books.
There's a delicious slowness about this book - about the story of her garden, her house, her life and the lives of the villagers and the people she knows and the people who have lived in her house. This is no romantic thriller, or on-the-edge of your seat book, but a beautiful, slow, romantic dance through an English garden. It's a celebration of the seasons, of nature, of history, of human creativity. A musing on the great privilege of drawing breath, living, seeking, meeting, creating. It's a book about beauty. And that's what I like about it - in a world where there is chaos, evil, indifference and harsh assaults on our very senses, this book reminds you of the good, the romantic, the lovely, of things worthwhile.
I've been reading today in the Morville Hours about the delights of winter. I am a winter lover too.
I love the way winter draws you in to the small cosy world of your four walls - it makes you feel safe and wrapped up in warmth while the winds and rain and snow batters at your door and lashes against the windows.
Part of the joy of winter for me is having a real log fire. The flickering of the orange flames, the dying embers, the crackling of the wood and the unrivaled warmth and embrace that comes with a real, proper fire.
Remembering when I was small and getting dressed by the large open fireplace after a bath. I can still smell that woody, winter aroma as the sparks flew and the wood crackled. I'm glad that my children will have that memory too and the memory of sitting by the fire having stories read to them before bedtime.
I like the smell of it.
I like its companionable ways, how it flares and flickers like a conversation, animating the room."
Katherine Swift in The Morville Hours: The Story of A Garden.
I have found a book that my heart loves. I wasn't going to write about it, because it's in my sidebar, but I am so enjoying it that I just have to. It was a slow start - I nearly gave up. She starts the book with alot of Anglo-Saxon history and Roman catholic rites and rituals that are woven through English history. They are interesting in their own way, but a little dry at the beginning, but I do love the way that the author goes right back to the beginning of England and traces the history of her county, village, house and garden. I am two hours into it (as I don't get time for curling up by the fire with a good book these days I mostly use audible), and I'm hooked. I have a funny feeling that this is going to get added to my list of favourite books.
There's a delicious slowness about this book - about the story of her garden, her house, her life and the lives of the villagers and the people she knows and the people who have lived in her house. This is no romantic thriller, or on-the-edge of your seat book, but a beautiful, slow, romantic dance through an English garden. It's a celebration of the seasons, of nature, of history, of human creativity. A musing on the great privilege of drawing breath, living, seeking, meeting, creating. It's a book about beauty. And that's what I like about it - in a world where there is chaos, evil, indifference and harsh assaults on our very senses, this book reminds you of the good, the romantic, the lovely, of things worthwhile.
I've been reading today in the Morville Hours about the delights of winter. I am a winter lover too.
I love the way winter draws you in to the small cosy world of your four walls - it makes you feel safe and wrapped up in warmth while the winds and rain and snow batters at your door and lashes against the windows.
Part of the joy of winter for me is having a real log fire. The flickering of the orange flames, the dying embers, the crackling of the wood and the unrivaled warmth and embrace that comes with a real, proper fire.
Remembering when I was small and getting dressed by the large open fireplace after a bath. I can still smell that woody, winter aroma as the sparks flew and the wood crackled. I'm glad that my children will have that memory too and the memory of sitting by the fire having stories read to them before bedtime.
One
thing I have loved about living in the South Island are the extremes in
the seasons. I love a snowy, rainy, icy cold winter just as much as I
love the fresh, warm, fragrant summers. If I ever move far enough north
where the seasons are not so defined, I know I will miss that.
The Best Book This Year
The Best Book This Year
What is the book? The one everyone is talking about.
The Help written by Kathryn Stockett
I am not going to write a summary of the book, as there are plenty of them out there in the internet world written far better than I ever could. Just know that it is one of the few books on my list that have the honour of being impossible to put down, and one you won't want to end.
Once you start reading, you won't be able to stop. These women become your friends.
My favourite characters are Miss Celia and her husband Johnny, and Aibilene and Minnie. Looking through the trailers on youtube for the movie I think the casting director has pretty much hit the characters spot on - Miss Celia is exactly as I pictured her in the book, as is Minnie, Skeeter and Aibilene. The only one I think they didn't get right was Skeeter's mother, but that is my own opinion.
This story will make you laugh and will make you cry. At times you'll be worried about what's coming next. This is not a time in history that America should be proud of, but it is a time in history that saw great changes, good changes.
I remember the first time when I was a child that I heard about slavery in America. I was at school and we were learning about it. I must have been about 9 or 10 years old at the time, I think. All I can remember is being horrified at the cruelty and the injustice, and just a little bit not willing to believe that such things could happen - feeling like a 3 year old and wanting to clap my hands over my ears. Living in a country where inter-racial marriages have been common right from the get-go (I am not a purebred English girl myself), it is like hearing about the Nazi holocaust for the first time - horrific, shameful.
My grandmother encouraged me to read Uncle Tom's Cabin after that. She gave me her own beautiful copy given to her by her mother and father in 1927. I remember being glued to that book too, and crying buckets of tears over it.
So it is fascinating to go back in time through this book, The Help, and get an insight into the daily dramas and the daily struggles of women who lived through this, and to see the little changes in society that were happening slowly during this time of liberation.
I hope that you will give the book a chance - it is a wonderful book, brilliantly written. Can you believe that the author was turned down by 60 publishers before it was accepted! Now that must surely be encouragement for any budding novelist. It does make me wonder about those 60 publishers though and what they were thinking when they rejected it. Madness!
Friday, September 14, 2012
Farewell to the East End
Do you remember the first book you read that made you cry?
I do. It was Charlotte's Web by EB White and I think I must have been about 9 years old. I remember lying in my bed on a Saturday morning (probably), and tears rolling down my face when Charlotte died. I also remember thinking at the time that it was rather extraordinary to be crying over a book.
But I have cried over many books since then, and not the least of which is the book I have just finished. Yesterday I was driving into town, listening to the reading of this book on audio. I was at the part of the book which tells the story of a family of 7 children who all died, one by one, of tuberculosis, leaving only the youngest and least-favoured daughter surviving to live with her publican-father. Jennifer Worth wove the story with such skill and told the tale of the father and daughter's tragic lives with such poignancy that I found tears filling my eyes rapidly, just as I came up to a traffic light in the busy midday rush. I had to force myself to push the stop button on the audio, just so I could drive safely - not much good trying to drive a car, and crying my eyes out at the same time. How would I explain that to a policeman!
Farewell to the East End by Jennifer Worth.
Some of you may have watched the BBC production of Call the Midwife that recently played on television here in New Zealand.
Call the Midwife is the first book in a trilogy of books written by Jennifer Worth on her experiences working as a young midwife in the East End of London in the 1950's.
I have been enthralled by her writing. She grips the reader from the very first page and I have been devouring anything I can get my hands on that she has written, and this book did not disappoint.
However, I must warn you - it is not a pretty book. It is real life, with real life issues, and the brutality, sadness, tragedy and total desperation of the poor. But also the stocism, fortitude, love and loyalty of human nature.
She interweaves her often sad stories with humour and character so full of life and personality that they almost jump out of the pages. But she is graphic, in a pragmatic way, of the social issues surrounding the East End of that day and in English history. Back-street abortions, prostitution, suicide, infanticide, tuberculosis, even the selling of children into brothels in Europe in the early 20th century- it can hardly be born to listen to these atrocities, but I made myself hear it, beccause I wanted to learn about it. It made me think of people like Amy Carmichael who gave her life to save the lives of innocent children, and General Booth of the Salvation Army. I believe Worth even mentions the Salvation Army in her books as the tireless saviours of many lives so desperate in their poverty. Where would the world be without these God-fearing people who were heroic and dauntless and unjudgemental in dealing with these issues.
Jennifer Worth touches on the devastation that rampant prostitution had on the East End community, destroying families and increasing the rise of venereal disease. It makes me think that the lawmakers of our day need to read these stories as a sharp lesson in how history can, and will repeat itself.
Blind, blind mankind.
I have always been drawn to stories of midwives and their experiences. I think, perhaps, because some members of my family have said that I would have made a good midwife. But I think not. I don't know that I could handle the tragic side of birth. Instead, I love to read about it and especially the way Jennifer Worth (who passed away in 2011) weaves the stories of such interesting people and the history of their lives. I found myself growing fond of the midwives, and the Nuns that they lived with, and I love how in the last chapter of this book she tells of how their lives developed, what they ended up doing or how they died.
So, I recommend this book as an entertaining, educational work of literature, that will make you cry, but will also make you laugh. But it is not for the faint-hearted, nor for the prudish.
In reading it, you will run the gamut of human emotion. But it is worth it, for all that.
I do. It was Charlotte's Web by EB White and I think I must have been about 9 years old. I remember lying in my bed on a Saturday morning (probably), and tears rolling down my face when Charlotte died. I also remember thinking at the time that it was rather extraordinary to be crying over a book.
But I have cried over many books since then, and not the least of which is the book I have just finished. Yesterday I was driving into town, listening to the reading of this book on audio. I was at the part of the book which tells the story of a family of 7 children who all died, one by one, of tuberculosis, leaving only the youngest and least-favoured daughter surviving to live with her publican-father. Jennifer Worth wove the story with such skill and told the tale of the father and daughter's tragic lives with such poignancy that I found tears filling my eyes rapidly, just as I came up to a traffic light in the busy midday rush. I had to force myself to push the stop button on the audio, just so I could drive safely - not much good trying to drive a car, and crying my eyes out at the same time. How would I explain that to a policeman!
Farewell to the East End by Jennifer Worth.
Some of you may have watched the BBC production of Call the Midwife that recently played on television here in New Zealand.
Call the Midwife is the first book in a trilogy of books written by Jennifer Worth on her experiences working as a young midwife in the East End of London in the 1950's.
I have been enthralled by her writing. She grips the reader from the very first page and I have been devouring anything I can get my hands on that she has written, and this book did not disappoint.
However, I must warn you - it is not a pretty book. It is real life, with real life issues, and the brutality, sadness, tragedy and total desperation of the poor. But also the stocism, fortitude, love and loyalty of human nature.
She interweaves her often sad stories with humour and character so full of life and personality that they almost jump out of the pages. But she is graphic, in a pragmatic way, of the social issues surrounding the East End of that day and in English history. Back-street abortions, prostitution, suicide, infanticide, tuberculosis, even the selling of children into brothels in Europe in the early 20th century- it can hardly be born to listen to these atrocities, but I made myself hear it, beccause I wanted to learn about it. It made me think of people like Amy Carmichael who gave her life to save the lives of innocent children, and General Booth of the Salvation Army. I believe Worth even mentions the Salvation Army in her books as the tireless saviours of many lives so desperate in their poverty. Where would the world be without these God-fearing people who were heroic and dauntless and unjudgemental in dealing with these issues.
Jennifer Worth touches on the devastation that rampant prostitution had on the East End community, destroying families and increasing the rise of venereal disease. It makes me think that the lawmakers of our day need to read these stories as a sharp lesson in how history can, and will repeat itself.
Blind, blind mankind.
I have always been drawn to stories of midwives and their experiences. I think, perhaps, because some members of my family have said that I would have made a good midwife. But I think not. I don't know that I could handle the tragic side of birth. Instead, I love to read about it and especially the way Jennifer Worth (who passed away in 2011) weaves the stories of such interesting people and the history of their lives. I found myself growing fond of the midwives, and the Nuns that they lived with, and I love how in the last chapter of this book she tells of how their lives developed, what they ended up doing or how they died.
So, I recommend this book as an entertaining, educational work of literature, that will make you cry, but will also make you laugh. But it is not for the faint-hearted, nor for the prudish.
In reading it, you will run the gamut of human emotion. But it is worth it, for all that.
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