So Many Books... - August 9th, 2009

03:55 pm - Gone, but not Forgetting

After a week in Dublin with steepholm, during which the house did its best to drag every bit of useful waking braincell into the Pit of No Return, precluding my reading most of my flist posts, we came to Bristol together, to a splendidly smooth-running house, in which I've managed to read no LJ whatsoever. However, there has been:

1. A Royal Procession

Everyone knows that steepholm haz Aslan, right? Well, Aslan was brought the length and breadth of the country - or at least from the box in which he traveled to Bristol out and over to Romsey in Hampshire (steepholm's childhood home), and back, via various interesting bits of Dorset, including the New Forest and Lyme Regis. I have photographed the Procession devotedly, and will put photos up as soon as I'm back at my computer. (Had the brilliant idea, managed to remember to bring my camera this trip, but forgot to pack the cable. Sigh.)

2. Reading

Unfortunately, much of it has been reading our own writing, as we're trying to get the Roman Britain chapter of the History Book done and dusted before the end of summer, so nothing like as many books to babble about as usual. Still, read Dust of 100 Dogs (did not like, and shared that on a pagely basis with steepholm as usual) and just finished Lisa Mantchev's Eyes Like Stars, which I loved, and will probably say more about at some point. Also bits and pieces of books set in Roman Britain (rereads and new to me both) and sections of Persuasion aloud, as we drove back from Lyme Regis to Bristol. Partly it was the descriptions of Lyme Regis (watch out for the Cobb in the photos-to-come!), but also it was bits relevant to the characters of Anne and Captain Wentworth, which we'd been discussing. Much fun.

3. Good food, good company, and good (sometimes) crossword puzzling

The good company is not only steepholm, but provided in Dublin by beccadelarosa and Younger Daughter, and in England by steepholm's mother, with whom we had a lovely visit. We got very caught up in sort-of playing a literary game she'd heard about on Radio 4 earlier in the day, which involved remembering the ending line or two of books. Harder than you might think, though between us we came up with close approximations of several of Jane Austen's (mostly from me), Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights (steepholm and his mother, as I've never read it - sshhh!), Great Expectations- ish (I've still to check the existence of the earlier, now not-published version in my Oxford World's Classics ed at home), House at Pooh Corner (steepholm), 1984 (steepholm again) and Peter Pan (can you guess who?). I contributed the end of Joan Aiken's The Teeth of the Gale, though as the other two didn't know it, my success was a bit dulled. It haunted Becca when we read it though, and is memorable!

We do the Telegraph crossword (online, so we don't have to buy the paper, whose political stance is not ours) in the way people take their daily constitutional. Or at least we do when together - not sure what it says of the success of this brain-preserving exercise that we forget when not together! Now, thanks to Becca's discovery, we have Big Dave to help us out if we can't figure out why an answer we got is right. (Okay, okay, or sometimes to help us get it in the first place.) The idea of a daily blog devoted to the explanation of and commentary on the Telegraph's crosswords pleases me enormously.

I will catch up on everyone's posts when I'm back home next week, and the promise of photos to come will have to serve as my apology for seeming to ignore all the interesting things being said in the meantime.