Tuesday is history day around our house, and Faith and I were reading about the first European colonies in the Americas. I read to her, "Spain was building an empire in the New World," and paused to ask her if she knew what an empire was.
"Oh, yes," she replied excitedly. "It's a bad person with pointy teeth!" At which point, my face must have given something away, because she added, "...isn't it?"
But just think if Spain had been building a vampire in the New World. There's a historical-conspiracy action movie in there somewhere.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
What I'm reading now
...and have actually been working on for quite a while. It's The Arcadian Friends by Tim Richardson, a book not presently in print in the US. (I ordered it from an eBay seller in the UK.) It's a long book and on a subject -- the evolution of the English landscape garden -- that made Tommy ask me why, exactly, I was reading it, but well-written and not at all dry, as evidenced by this passage which opens Chapter 11:
Binfield, in Berkshire, is a village which still feels hemmed in by trees. The lanes are canopied with boughs, and ploughed fields picked over by crows are suddenly interrupted by thickset parcels of woodland. In hedgerows of hawthorn stand dark and ancient oaks that improbably sprout fresh green leaves each spring, and I well remember thirty years ago the felled carcasses of once-grand elms blighted by disease strewn across the fields, thousands of woodlice seething beneath their tawny skins, orange fungus erupting wildly from crumbling joints.
As to Tommy's question why I am reading it, the book connects the landscape garden of the early 18th century to the political outlooks of the landowner, and while the focus of the book antedates Jane Austen's novels, I was very much intrigued at the prospect of comparing, say, Pemberley and Sotherton to the gardens and concomitant ideas discussed by Richardson, for what they might say about Darcy and Rushworth.
What I'm reading now to Faith at bedtime is Peter Pan. She is a big fan of the movie (not the Disney version, but this live-action one) and lives in constant hope that Peter will fly in her window and take her off to Neverland. We have been through The Wizard of Oz, The Land of Oz, Winnie-the-Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, Alice in Wonderland, and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. I've learned that Alice has far too many jokes incomprehensible to modern American children to make it a successful bedtime read for under-7s, and House at Pooh Corner is far more child-oriented than the original Winnie for similar reasons.
My mom suggested Charlotte's Web to Faith, which has put it in our future-reading stack, but I'm dreading it, as I can never make it through without crying. (I couldn't even make it through an abridged version of The Velveteen Rabbit several months ago.) Spoilers be danged, I've already warned Faith that the spider dies at the end. We had better both be steeled for that circumstance.
Binfield, in Berkshire, is a village which still feels hemmed in by trees. The lanes are canopied with boughs, and ploughed fields picked over by crows are suddenly interrupted by thickset parcels of woodland. In hedgerows of hawthorn stand dark and ancient oaks that improbably sprout fresh green leaves each spring, and I well remember thirty years ago the felled carcasses of once-grand elms blighted by disease strewn across the fields, thousands of woodlice seething beneath their tawny skins, orange fungus erupting wildly from crumbling joints.
As to Tommy's question why I am reading it, the book connects the landscape garden of the early 18th century to the political outlooks of the landowner, and while the focus of the book antedates Jane Austen's novels, I was very much intrigued at the prospect of comparing, say, Pemberley and Sotherton to the gardens and concomitant ideas discussed by Richardson, for what they might say about Darcy and Rushworth.
What I'm reading now to Faith at bedtime is Peter Pan. She is a big fan of the movie (not the Disney version, but this live-action one) and lives in constant hope that Peter will fly in her window and take her off to Neverland. We have been through The Wizard of Oz, The Land of Oz, Winnie-the-Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, Alice in Wonderland, and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. I've learned that Alice has far too many jokes incomprehensible to modern American children to make it a successful bedtime read for under-7s, and House at Pooh Corner is far more child-oriented than the original Winnie for similar reasons.
My mom suggested Charlotte's Web to Faith, which has put it in our future-reading stack, but I'm dreading it, as I can never make it through without crying. (I couldn't even make it through an abridged version of The Velveteen Rabbit several months ago.) Spoilers be danged, I've already warned Faith that the spider dies at the end. We had better both be steeled for that circumstance.
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