lady_schrapnell | Easy to be worth more than a thousand of mine.

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Easy to be worth more than a thousand of mine.

Such a great cover - it tickles me every time I look at it. The manly, manly jaw and sharp pointy object so undercut by the stance and wrist limpness... (But is the pose This dagger will be used to pick my nose if necessary - it's my compensation or the more obvious Mention my flaming campness and I'll give you a free lobotomy?

Very interesting read, too - I was babbling to

steepholm last night about a few of its oddities, including the fact that Regina, who has 'never had a mother or father' but was owned by a nasty old woman who sent her out begging in the streets of Vinconium, speaks with the perfect, rather formal language Rosemary Sutcliff uses for People from the Past.

This is the more obvious type of happiness - my second completed (all except getting Younger Daughter to choose buttons and then sewing them on) Mrs Darcy cardigan. I'm thrilled to have it off the needles, sewn up and blocked, in large part because I kept making idiotic mistakes which made me sure I need a keeper. There were attempts to get pictures of her wearing it, but she claimed they were all horrible and they were on her camera so I couldn't just ignore her.

Silly, horribly immature pleasure provided by a thread on Ravlery about a new yarn (wrote 'yearn' first time!) called Fannie's Fingering. It *is* a US company, rather than a British or Australian one, and fingering *is* a weight of yarn, but still... Yes - this remains book-related - Fanny Burney - Fanny Price - Fanny Hi... never mind.

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Oh, how I devoured those Sutcliffs at age ten through twelve, though the relationships puzzled me exceedingly.

Dawn Wind is probably my favourite Sutcliff. Knight's Fee is a close second. I agree with you about the cover, though :)

Funny - those were the two I just got from the (tiny, dreary local) library recently. I thought I'd read Knight's Fee before, but won't know until I start it. Eagle of the Ninth is probably my all-time favourite, though I have a real fondness for the two Tudor ones (The Armourer's House and The Queen Elizabeth Story) - despite knowing both are perilously close to twee at times. And Simon I felt was good but rather dull, until I reread it after reading the *censors self* I, Coriander and realised how much had stuck with me about how a clash of ideologies could be presented in children's historicals. (From probably one full read about three decades earlier? Impressive.) I liked the very understated romance, and probably read those couple of scenes more times!

Have you read Mark of the Horse Lord? That one always impressed me with its fairly unflinching representation of the society. Also, Warrior Scarlet, which was my mother's favourite. I remember the romance in Dawn Wind, but it always seemed pretty understated - for me, it was the dog.

She does male friendship so well - I'd be interested to know more about her. I remember my mum reading, I think, her autobiography, or something about her childhood, and I believe she was housebound and "physically challenged" as they say today.

I've read - uh - *some* of Mark of the Horse Lord - like the beginning and end and then ran away screaming. Major, serious wimp here. But - take a look at this (http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Horse-Lord-Rosemary-Sutcliff/dp/1932425624) for a cover!

I agree about Warrior Scarlet - not my favourite but I appreciate the unflinchingness and lack of soppiness in depicting the society. (Just mentioned The Shield Ring in reply to sartorias - another that does the unflinching well.)

Also just mentioned the male friendship thing to sartorias - I never felt excluded from it as a child though, which is possibly a bit surprising - just liked it. And of course she (and Connie Willis!) does dogs fantastically! Think Cub in Eagle of the Ninth is another reason for my love of it.

You have just aided research enormously, as I was going to go looking for a long online article I read about Sutcliff to show you, which talked about her being forced to stay home in bed and read all day as a child, but while I was looking idly at other covers, I saw her autobiography (Blue Remembered Hills) on Amazon. Don't know how I'd managed to forget there was such a thing, and I shall now have to get it immediately! So thanks twice over - for chat about a favourite author and the discovery. :) (Love the userpic too.)

I do urge you to get Blue Remembered Hills - I picked it up in the university library in Ayr, thinking it was Dennis Potter's play, which I fancied rereading since I'd acted in it (I was Donald because of a man-shortage) - and had to be hauled away. It's most odd, though.
I do know what you mean about People-from-the-Past-speak, though I think historical novel dialogue presents almost insurmountable challenges. I flinch from ay-me-zounds-I-pray-thee-not-Lucrezia but also from anachronism - the unconsidered "lovelys" and "sures" that pepper a lot of historical fiction (in my early schooldays "OK" was still considered a vile Americanism tolerated in the playground but quite unsuited to classroom use -- and this was an ordinary village school) make me rage and grind my teeth. The middle ground does seem to be something like what Sutcliff comes up with, but the disadvantage of it is that it's just a signal that we are now in the Past (the cinematic equivalent is that clasp-forearm-hearty-laugh thing that, if Hollywood is to be believed, was the preferred greeting of adult males between the epochs of Homer and Henry Fielding - what happened to "Good morning", I wonder?) and it can't really accommodate class difference without becoming hopelessly messy.

Where do you get these great userpics? That's wonderful.

Yes, yes, and yes again - I certainly wasn't criticizing Sutcliff's usual dialogue - as you say, whatever you do with dialogue is going to have problems. Oh, but since you opened yourself up for it, and might possibly have escaped my ranting about this before, I'm going to share with you the line from I, Coriander (1660s, supposedly) that caused steepholm and me incredulity, rage and hilarity, in about equal measure: the evil stepmother says 'She be faking it'.

Anyway, it was just this case, with this poor character who'd hardly be able to speak, in all likelihood, let alone speak perfectly. But in general, it is a double problem in the Really, Really Past. This came up in another form with the audiobook version of Kevin Crossley-Holland's Gatty's Tale, which is set in about 1200 - the narrator did the accents for the Welsh, Italians, French and all, and it did cause us a bit of -- discussion. (The 'accents' weren't the author's doing, though he does distinguish for class, which is interesting again!)

bogbean made it. I'm sure she wouldn't mind you using it.

That's lovely, like the mad old crone in Blackadder:
BA: Is this the house of the wise woman?
MOC: Arrr...that it be...
BA: "Yes it is", not "that it be"...I'm not a tourist, you know.

I have always wanted to make a film of Margery Kempe. In Middle English. There are (sort of) precedents -- I'm thinking of Jarman's Sebastiane rather than The Passion of the Christ. I think distant distant past is easier, in some ways, though, esp. largely pre-literate past: you can come up with your own idiom (my preference here would be for a neutralish modern-sounding one in which "She's faking it" would be fine, as long as the mores were otherwise right) because there has to be suspension of disbelief anyway, unless you fancy writing in Visigothic or Sanskrit. When you get into periods for which there are texts available for comparison purposes the possibility for disaster increases exponentially. My personal black beastie is pastiche Austen, which is just not as damn easy as you think it is, people.

My personal black beastie is pastiche Austen,
which is just not as damn easy as you think it is, people.

WORD.

There are dogs in Knight's Fee, too. Yes - Blue Remembered Hills was the book my mum read and enjoyed. (I do miss the wonderful book talks I used to have with my mum...). I shall have to look for it again (it's even possible I have a copy rattling about the place somewhere). I don't really associate Connie Willis with dogs?? (oh, duh, except for To Say Nothing, of course, and, oh, The Last of the Winnebagos, - sob - so, yes, I suppose)

And, oh my - homoeroticism much??? (the cover, the cover!)

And, oh my - homoeroticism much??? (the cover, the cover!) :) Quite!

I suppose I was being a bit careless with Connie Willis and dogs, as I kind of include the other dog-like animals in the category with the dogs... By 'dog-like', I probably mean only not-cats, as good spec-fic cats are hardly worthy of mention. The fire monkeys in Promised Land are very lovable and the horse in Lincoln's Dreams... I was reading that when my mother's last dog was put down -- well, you can imagine.

I didn't stop devouring at 12, though I didn't find probably half of them! Kept rereading them until it was time to read them to the girls... that was fun.

Do you mean the ones with romances puzzled you or all the relationships?

I have a vague recollection that our library got rid of them. The copies we had were very old, quite worn. I can remember those books, at first thinking that they dated back to medieval times. (Hey, at ten or so, I had no clue about history.) At any rate, when I tried to find them years later, they were costing a fortune to find used, so I haven't reread any for ages.

I was puzzled by the (austere, as I believe) love relationships. I finally did get exasperated because the women never seemed to do much of anything. Even Wendy went to Never Land, though she was a prissy drip. So I read them for that adventure itch, but preferred the Enid Blytons overall. Shows what great taste I had!

:) Yeah - I was just thinking now (when replying to

intertext) how I have a most split reaction to Sutcliff's willingness to keep the girls in historically-appropriate positions, unlike modern historicals. There's one - don't know if you read it - The Shield Ring and the girl/woman character is anything but a passive sit-at-home, but it still refers back to the beginning, where the hero as a little boy grabs her skirt and says 'Come you' and - you know - that's the way it is. No need for him to ask her to come with him again! And that kind of horrifies me and I kind of admire it deeply. But even though the male friendships are usually by far the most important, I like the little flashes of humour in the romances sometimes. And some of them just rock.

Gah to your library getting rid of them! But next time I see any of hers for sale (they were 5 books for one Euro at our library!) I'll grab them for you and keep them until someone's going in this direction or that across the pond and can bring them over. I love your thinking they were medieval!

Oh, if they really are that cheap, that would be awesome. Because they sure aren't here.

Definitely! Though I can't promise you covers this fabulous.

I never notice covers. my nose is inside!

"There's a piece of grit in my eye. And this fucking sword is heavier than it looks, by the way - if we don't stop this stupid pose soon I'm going to drop it. Probably on your feet."

*sporfle* You're right of course - it's Photo-op. Bush in flak jacket, perhaps minus the spin docs to advise?

the cardigan looks beautiful.

Thanks! The sleeves don't really flare out at the ends when on - that's an odd look - but it suits her well. Now just to get her to decide about buttons!

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Easy to be worth more than a thousand of mine.

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