Two E. Nesbit books

[heliopausa]

I've been work-travelling!  which involved another hotel, another swimming pool, and the chance to swim at six in the morning, as well as in the afternoon, and then again between the last session and catching the bus back home.  Bliss!  Because summer's ebbing, but hasn't gone yet

Comments

[steepholm]

I love watching her work out what she can do with time travel in those books (and The Amulet before them, which of course makes an appearance in the earlier).

[heliopausa]

So it does! I'd forgotten, but now I remember - the presents at the beginning from Aunt Edith. (I think.) This wasn't a reread, I was going on childhood memories, and so may be out on the finer points. (Part of the reason I admire the "Much stupider" line is that it struck me so strongly as a child.)
The "time is only a mode of thought" was around in the Amulet books, too - I'm not sure who else was doing what with time travel at the time. No-one I can think of in children's books, anyway.
instantly editing to say - Puck of Pooks Hill! :D etc.

[steepholm]

Yes, Kipling and Nesbit are generally reckoned to have set the ball rolling.

There was a very interesting comment thread on this question on my LJ a couple of years ago.

[heliopausa]

Thank you! I've dipped into it, and will go back - it does indeed look like a treasure trove of time-travel, and of thinking about the definition of the genre as well.

[wellinghall]

I have read House of Arden, I think, but not since I was a child; but I haven't read the other one (yet).

And hurray for late summer swims!

[heliopausa]

The House of Arden was the only Nesbit book which was on the bookshelves in my childhood home, as opposed to being borrowed from a library, so of course I read it many times. :) Harding's Luck, not so often, but the Nurse's incantation has stayed with me.

Are you getting to swim on your seaside holiday? Swimming in the sea beats a pool by miles! :)

[wellinghall]

We have swum in an outdoor pool which contained seawater. We haven't quite braved the open sea.

[heliopausa]

Oh, saltwater pools by the sea are great! I think, from what I read, that the English ocean(s) can be a lot trickier than the ones I know - that your tides turn with a sudden rush. It makes sense, I guess with so many other coastlines and islands all about, complicating the waterflow amazingly.

[asakiyume]

Enjoyed this so, so much--thank you. This is one of the ways I get to experience and enjoy books: by people really talking about them in depth, thoughtfully. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it! I don't know if I'll get a chance to read these--I feel like I'd like at least to read the first and maybe both, but time and obligations being what they are, who knows?--but now I feel as if I've had an experience of them, and it's thanks to you

[heliopausa]

Oh, asakiyume - I don't think I did House of Arden justice. :( It does end, like Harding's Luck, in very messy unconvincing complications, but it's great on the way to that point - fun, fast-moving, wry humour, a believable past and convincing, down-to-earth magic.

Yes, absolutely, about being blind to our own prejudices, and doing harm where we want to do good - and of course we're as likely as the past to get it wrong! (I am often highly indignant by how condescending people are about people in the past, assuming they were all naive and unenlightened.)
Yes, to try for humility, and while trying not to be held back from doing for fear of doing it wrong, to be open to seeing how to do "it" (whatever "it" is) better. (Oh, my. A long slog.)

[asakiyume]

I can't say about justice, having not read it, but it certainly came across as fun-seeming and engaging!

Whatever "it" is--haha, yes, exactly.

[sovay]

She clearly had the second book in mind when she wrote the first - but does it work?

My inelegant response to finally getting around to reading Harding's Luck (without first reading The House of Arden) is, "What a weird-ass book!" I like the travels of Dickie and Beale, especially in the stage when Dickie in the past is still missing Beale and wanting to find a trade for him so that in the present they neither have to beg for a living nor depend on Dickie's woodcarving skills, i.e., reasons of practicality and affection rather than taking Beale on as a project; I like Dickie's gravely novelistic relationship with the pawnbroker so long as Nesbit doesn't trip over her own anxious anti-anti-Semitism, because the pawnbroker takes him seriously, does him a good turn, takes a little advantage of him, never learns how the story comes out: he's on the outside of the mystery and that's all right. Not everything needs to be part of the pattern. I like the magic while it's all allusion, unexplained, chiming with itself like a dream or a spell

[heliopausa]

I don't know what's happening with LJ - I wrote a reply to this just now, and it won't post. And I'm time-pressed and can't write it all again. Bother!
But "trips over [herself]" - yes. Not just the anti-Semitism, either - the Burglar (I'd not made that connection) and Elfrida being braver, and so Edred having to do something even better, because it would cost him more.
(If I can get the other reply out of its strange frozen state, I'll post it.)
The Grand Mouldiwarp Court is just a mess.

[sovay]

I don't know what's happening with LJ - I wrote a reply to this just now, and it won't post. And I'm time-pressed and can't write it all again. Bother!

I'm so sorry! I'd love to see your other reply if you can recover it. I'm not having any trouble posting comments, but my journal right now looks weird, so I'm waiting to see if it's me or LJ. (Either way, since I get the apologetic error page every time I try to look at my style code, I can't fix it.)

the Burglar (I'd not made that connection)It hit me when I was showering, which is where most of my intellectual esprit d'escalier hangs out. Beale is more genuinely shady than the Burglar, who has a day job and is just trying his hand at housebreaking when the children catch him ("I was a-selling oranges off of my barrow-for I ain't a burglar by trade, though you 'ave used the name so free"), and he is also closer to being a person rather than a social type, having a family and a genuinely complicated relationship with Dickie for a Dickensian couple of chapters, but their similar