That applies to three things I’ve watched lately.

(Four, if one includes the film adaptation of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader -- I had successfully managed to avoid seeing what Hollywood did to this childhood favourite until recently, when I spent an hour in the same room as some children who were watching it. My chief impressions were that the ( Read more... )

I’ve realised something that should perhaps have been obvious to me earlier: my readiness to rewatch a film (or TV series) depends a lot on how aesthetically pleasing I find it ( Read more... )

All term I have been wearing my watch on one wrist and my Fitbit on the other. Technically the latter renders the former unnecessary, but my watch is like a piece of jewellery that also serves a practical function -- I like still having access an analogue clock, even if I don’t often check it ( Read more... )

I didn’t read absolutely all of Leah Schnelbach’s article Moral Kombat: How Narnia and Harry Potter Wrestle with Death and Rewrite Christianity
because part of it discusses Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (a story I’m not interested in reading or even reading about), but I found the rest of it thoughtful and thought-provoking: Harry Potter and ( Read more... )

I was considering what these book all have in common with each other, aside from my having read them in the last few weeks. They are all fantasy, in their various ways. They don't all have maps or dragons or even orphans, but all of them do involve the loss of a close family member. Again, in their various ways. However, that didn't make a catchy ( Read more... )

It was a sort of ferocious, quiet beauty, the sort that wouldn't let you admire it. The sort of beauty that just always hurt.
-- from The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater

I don't read a lot of biographies. It isn't a deliberate choice - I'm just too busy reading fiction. I forget non-fiction as something which interest me exists unless I ( Read more... )

Jane: I'll go seek adventure elsewhere...
Rochester: Tomb robbing?
Jane: Among other things.
-- from The Autobiography of Jane Eyre, episode 30 "Wages"

They're making an adaptation of The Silver Chair. ( I don't know to be ecstatic or terrified. )

'Oh for the people who speak one's own language.'
-- C.S. Lewis in a letter, 4 November 1925, quoted in The Inklings by Humphrey Carpenter

I read The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and their friends a couple of months ago and recently remembered that I still hadn't finished writing my review of it. That feels somewhat ( Read more... )

LandOfTheLoops: Is Darcy a dalek? is that why we never see him?
TheGadgetPanda: Yeah, he'd never be able to make it up the stairs to Lizzie's bedroom.
CoconutterlyCrumble: I will be forever thinking of Darcy as "Soufflé Boy", now.
-- from Youtube comments for episode 47 "It's All About Communicating" of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries
I talk about some ( Read more... )

Most people who have written about questions of gender bias in language have belonged to one camp or the other. Either they want to change everything, or they don't see what all the fuss is about. Am I the only one who feels torn? [...] My reactionary self, however, prevails when I hear someone attempt to purge bias from "to each his own" by ( Read more... )