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Bits and Bobs... and Jamie too
Nov. 18th, 2007 07:28 pmSo, this was going to start out by saying I'd had an unusually successful weekend (for my values of 'success'), as I'd 1) found a pair of comfortable shoes I could stand to wear while simultaneously breaking in my new corrective insoles 2) finished knitting a hat 3) done a good wodge on a scarf for Younger Daughter 4) finished another (unmatched) fingerless glove with colourwork - oh bother - I know there was more to it than that....
Anyway, I walked down to the shops this evening, in the gloom, chill and rain (and also in new shoes and hat), to get food for dinner, got home and wondered a bit how the back of my ankle had managed to collect rain-water, only to discover that it was blood rather than water. And there's a nice bit of light-coloured unpolished leather at the heel there to ensure the blood can never be cleaned off too. The hat, however, is a delight, of the sort which can only be appreciated by those who are surrounded by hoardes of daughters who look wonderful in hats, while themselves looking like someone auditioning for the part of the Hag blown in on the Storm. This one I like. On me, even! And it's warm and soft and doesn't make me itch, which is even more joy.
Jamie is the hero whose name I can never remember, of Justin Richard's Time Runners books. I recently finished the second, Rewind Assassin, which had different strengths and weaknesses from the first, for my taste, but still didn't end up being a big winner. On the plus side, there was less need to deal with Jamie's perfectly understandable angst at the discovery that he's 'lost' - permanently erased from time, although we had one scene in which he was infected with Anna's 'sad smile'. On the negative side, the treatment of time travel which was really interesting in the first book just got too clever by half for my taste. Perhaps it's my lack of Dr. Who fanishness which leaves me deficient in appreciation, but Jamie's and Anna's ability to keep going back to the time before whatever they just discovered has happened, so they can prevent it, eventually got quite irritating. And I wanted there to be *something* of the Elizabethan setting really used to give us a bit of historical story, but there was little beyond 'It smells. No really - it stinks here. Did you get that it smells? And everyone's dirty!' Which isn't necessarily a problem with the book, but meant it wasn't the book I'd have enjoyed. Besides, the inaccuracies annoyed me and the obligatory Kit Marlow in-joke, which would hardly be gettable by the majority of the intended-age readers again seemed smug-clever.
The best laugh I got from the book came from a line delivered by Queen Elizabeth when the Spanish Armada is brought to attack London, despite the sailors being mostly dead. Anna and Jamie are there, trying to protect the Queen, as are Burbage, Shakespeare and some of the other actors who've just been performing A Midsummer Night's Dream for her. Here it is: 'Behind us, I could hear the Queen shouting, "Defend the children. I am but a frail old woman, whereas they are our future."' No wonder her subjects loved her...
Very far behind in recent reads write-ups, but some good ones should be up soon!
Anyway, I walked down to the shops this evening, in the gloom, chill and rain (and also in new shoes and hat), to get food for dinner, got home and wondered a bit how the back of my ankle had managed to collect rain-water, only to discover that it was blood rather than water. And there's a nice bit of light-coloured unpolished leather at the heel there to ensure the blood can never be cleaned off too. The hat, however, is a delight, of the sort which can only be appreciated by those who are surrounded by hoardes of daughters who look wonderful in hats, while themselves looking like someone auditioning for the part of the Hag blown in on the Storm. This one I like. On me, even! And it's warm and soft and doesn't make me itch, which is even more joy.
Jamie is the hero whose name I can never remember, of Justin Richard's Time Runners books. I recently finished the second, Rewind Assassin, which had different strengths and weaknesses from the first, for my taste, but still didn't end up being a big winner. On the plus side, there was less need to deal with Jamie's perfectly understandable angst at the discovery that he's 'lost' - permanently erased from time, although we had one scene in which he was infected with Anna's 'sad smile'. On the negative side, the treatment of time travel which was really interesting in the first book just got too clever by half for my taste. Perhaps it's my lack of Dr. Who fanishness which leaves me deficient in appreciation, but Jamie's and Anna's ability to keep going back to the time before whatever they just discovered has happened, so they can prevent it, eventually got quite irritating. And I wanted there to be *something* of the Elizabethan setting really used to give us a bit of historical story, but there was little beyond 'It smells. No really - it stinks here. Did you get that it smells? And everyone's dirty!' Which isn't necessarily a problem with the book, but meant it wasn't the book I'd have enjoyed. Besides, the inaccuracies annoyed me and the obligatory Kit Marlow in-joke, which would hardly be gettable by the majority of the intended-age readers again seemed smug-clever.
The best laugh I got from the book came from a line delivered by Queen Elizabeth when the Spanish Armada is brought to attack London, despite the sailors being mostly dead. Anna and Jamie are there, trying to protect the Queen, as are Burbage, Shakespeare and some of the other actors who've just been performing A Midsummer Night's Dream for her. Here it is: 'Behind us, I could hear the Queen shouting, "Defend the children. I am but a frail old woman, whereas they are our future."' No wonder her subjects loved her...
Very far behind in recent reads write-ups, but some good ones should be up soon!
