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There's been more listening than reading happening for me lately. Music, for starters - a terrific Bach concert, and another of unthemed scraps from all over, which began with Octet for Eight Strings (Prelude and Scherzo) by Shostakovich which was new to me, and brilliant.
But I've been listening to literature, too, courtesy of Librivox - to Arthur Conan Doyle's The White Company , with Sir Nigel Loring, the most chivalrous of all literary knights - at first I wondered if he was a model for Reepicheep. ( Cut because it rambles, rather. )
I've started reading The Edge of the World, by Michael Pye, about the influence of the North Sea traders in European history, but haven't got far yet, just to Frisians in the Dark Ages. More in a later post. (Has anyone else read it? Or know the period? - roughly 700-1350, I think.)
I've dipped into Maria Edgeworth, thanks to a post by blueinkedpalm on LJ, and found her much more fun than I'd expected - previously I'd only read Castle Rackrent, and hadn't much enjoyed it - they were such very unappealing characters, and I couldn't see or couldn't enjoy the social comedy. But blueinkedpalm gave a link to some easy-going didactic stories, intended as hints for parents on how to raise children - it included the Good Governess who took her charges to the Rational Toyshop (not nearly as horrible as it sounds). There was bucketloads of Lessons to be drawn throughout, but also wry and amusing social observation. Here's a basically decent young man, but vastly full of himself, mansplaining to a polite young woman:
Pow! Take that, all bumptious young men who have ever tediously and instructively wasted Maria Edgeworth's time when she could have been having fun at a party!
(What great days we're living in! Where so much is freely available on the internet.)
And then there was Shakespeare. I'd been playing with the idea of entering the StageofFools fic exchange - but when I came to consider which plays I knew anything like well enough to offer to write from... oh, then I had to scurry to the invaluable internet and find the plays and read them all again. Not them all, no, but to skim from one to another, (reading one for the first time; it was better than I'd thought - good work, Shakespeare! Keep it up.) until I thought I'd read enough to be able to get to the stage of offering some, and prompting some, and hoping for the best - which I now have, recklessly.
So that's the thinking about writing part - just thinking idly at this stage, because the prompts have yet to descend.
(Consumption of pulses, in honour of the Year, continues. Recently: falafel with hummous, and at another meal tofu with peanut sauce - quadruple score!)
But I've been listening to literature, too, courtesy of Librivox - to Arthur Conan Doyle's The White Company , with Sir Nigel Loring, the most chivalrous of all literary knights - at first I wondered if he was a model for Reepicheep. ( Cut because it rambles, rather. )
I've started reading The Edge of the World, by Michael Pye, about the influence of the North Sea traders in European history, but haven't got far yet, just to Frisians in the Dark Ages. More in a later post. (Has anyone else read it? Or know the period? - roughly 700-1350, I think.)
I've dipped into Maria Edgeworth, thanks to a post by blueinkedpalm on LJ, and found her much more fun than I'd expected - previously I'd only read Castle Rackrent, and hadn't much enjoyed it - they were such very unappealing characters, and I couldn't see or couldn't enjoy the social comedy. But blueinkedpalm gave a link to some easy-going didactic stories, intended as hints for parents on how to raise children - it included the Good Governess who took her charges to the Rational Toyshop (not nearly as horrible as it sounds). There was bucketloads of Lessons to be drawn throughout, but also wry and amusing social observation. Here's a basically decent young man, but vastly full of himself, mansplaining to a polite young woman:
"After he had told her all that he knew concerning the fossils, as they were produced from the cabinet — and he was far from ignorant — he at length perceived that she knew full as much of natural history as he did, and he was surprised that a young lady should know so much, and should not be conceited."
Pow! Take that, all bumptious young men who have ever tediously and instructively wasted Maria Edgeworth's time when she could have been having fun at a party!
(What great days we're living in! Where so much is freely available on the internet.)
And then there was Shakespeare. I'd been playing with the idea of entering the StageofFools fic exchange - but when I came to consider which plays I knew anything like well enough to offer to write from... oh, then I had to scurry to the invaluable internet and find the plays and read them all again. Not them all, no, but to skim from one to another, (reading one for the first time; it was better than I'd thought - good work, Shakespeare! Keep it up.) until I thought I'd read enough to be able to get to the stage of offering some, and prompting some, and hoping for the best - which I now have, recklessly.
So that's the thinking about writing part - just thinking idly at this stage, because the prompts have yet to descend.
(Consumption of pulses, in honour of the Year, continues. Recently: falafel with hummous, and at another meal tofu with peanut sauce - quadruple score!)
