• About
  • Projects
  • Articles
  • Contact

julielivingstone

~ It isn't always about getting what you want. Sometimes it's about wanting what you've got.

julielivingstone

Tag Archives: reading

The Invisible Man

14 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by julielivingstone in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

book, HG Wells, reading, The Invisible Man

I’ve just finished listening to the invisible man by H.G. Wells, read by James Adams
I’ve enjoyed some of Wells’ other novels, and was interested in this one. apart from the obvious aspect of his explanation of how the invisible man became invisible, other things I found interesting were:
The implications of being invisible which I had not previously thought of, and which it seems the invisible man had not thought of before either. For example, dirt collecting on his skin is visible, so when his feet get dirty they can be seen. Likewise snow, and rain. When he eats, his food is not invisible until it is digested – ‘assimilated’ in the book, is this trying to sound more scientific, or a nod to Victorian squeamishness about bodily functions? There is also no mention of what happens when he goes to the toilet, presumably urine and faeces would become visible on leaving his body, but this would probably be too much for Victorian sensibilities.
These things are all problems which he has to figure out ways to overcome, and the only way he can be completely invisible is to be naked, which is not necessarily comfortable. He gets cold, and at one point in the book Kemp, who is trying to catch him, hopes for a cold and wet night, since if the invisible man (Griffin) is forced to seek shelter he will be easier to catch. He also can’t eat whilst anybody is watching, since his food would be visible. Even smoking a cigar reveals him, since the smoke swirls around his throat and lungs and can be seen. This would be a cool trick now for the anti-smoking ads on TV, in fact I think I’ve seen something like it. Smoking a cigar in those days was, of course, not the health hazard it is now, or at least was not known to be.
The other thing I found a little difficult to come to terms with was the attitude of the invisible man towards the end of the book, and his reign of terror. Was he a character who would have turned violent anyway, and the stress and despair caused by invisibility just accelerated that change? Or was the change caused entirely by the circumstances he found himself in? This was not really explored in the book I don’t think, and up until that point I was quite disposed to like him. Maybe I missed early pointers towards his character. I might go back and listen to it again and see if I can pick up a bit more.

Advertisement

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Quilt completed

02 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by julielivingstone in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

books, butterflies, nature, quilting, reading, recycled, spider

I finished the quilt I have been making for my Dad, which was supposed to be for his 85th birthday at the beginning of December, but didn’t get done in time. I went to see them on the day after Boxing Day, and gave it to him then instead. Of course he was kind enough to be very pleased with it, but I have to admit I was quite pleased with it myself.

I bought the fabrics for the quilt top online, by searching for ‘quilt fabric’ and ‘bugs’, since I wanted nature inspired designs. I ended up buying from two different places, www.eQuilter.com and www.bugfabric.com. The only thing I did wrong was to not pay enough attention to the scale of the design on the fabric. Most sites do tell you how many inches across the motif is, or something similar, and I didn’t look at that and got a couple of patterns which were really a bit too big. Still, in the end they all worked in together. I also have this strong feeling that one shouldn’t be too precious about putting together fabrics for a quilt, after all it is a craft which began as a way of using up scraps left over, and recycling old clothes and linen. The idea of going out to buy completely new fabric, cut it into small pieces and then sew them all back together again is not quite in the true spirit of the thing to my mind.

Anyway, here is the finished article

Dad's quilt

Dad's quilt

It should actually be hanging short side at the top, portrait format rather than landscape. But since I left taking photos of it until the last minute I didn’t have any other easy way of hanging it except on the clothes line. The big butterflies are hand appliqued, the rest is machine pieced and quilted.

A closer look

closer lookI was particularly pleased with the spider web fabric, since when my kids were little one of their favourite books for Grandad to read to them was a book about a spider, called Wolfie, by Janet Chenery and Mark Simont. I found a pdf version here just now, and had a little moment of nostalgia.

On the subject of quilting being a make-do-and-mend type of activity, I have decided to start another quilt using the English patchwork technique. My mother did one many years ago, and I’m going to do likewise. The idea is to use up all the little bits I have left over from years of other projects, at least all the cotton bits. Other quilts, the girls’ clothes, my clothes, clothes made for other people, you get the idea. I’ve started making hexagons and am putting them all in a box to sew together when I start to have enough. Another thing that this technique uses up is junk mail, and advertising material, since a lot of it is printed on slightly heavier than normal paper. It is really satisfying to cut up the little booklet of ‘changed terms and conditions’ which comes with the bank statement, or the flier in the mail from our local politician. Finally a use for all that stuff!

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

The rythym of words

23 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by julielivingstone in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

language, quilting, reading, words, writing

Listening to the televison last night, not watching as I was in the next room. The sound was turned low so I couldn’t hear what was being said, but found myself listening to the rythym of speech. The show was a comedy, American I think, with audience, canned, laughter. I found that I could almost anticipate when the pause for laughter would come. There were two male characters, and although I could not hear the words and did not know which lines were going to be funny, there was a rhythm to it. If conversation is like a game of tennis, where the speech gets hit back and forth between two people, then this was like a game of tennis where every few strokes the ball goes into the audience. By laughing, the studio audience showed that they had understood, and were supportive. They tossed the ball back to the players so that they could continue.
I have also been reading recently The Little Red Book of Writing, by Mark Tredinnick, and he speaks about the rhythm of writing. Read your work out loud, he says, so that you can tell if it flows, or is stilted and unnatural. The best writing is like speech, only you have practiced it and polished it until it has rhythm. I think this is something I have generally done anyway, but it makes sense, and I shall certainly make a point of doing it in future.
I finished Dad’s quilt this morning, the last step being to stitch on a label. I included his name, where he lives, the occasion the quilt was made for (being careful to say given for, not on, since I have missed his birthday by almost a month). I bought a laundry marker to write the label with, a Pilot one here, which is supposed to have a point made especially for writing on fabric, and it is certainly much better for the purpose than a normal permanent marker, which is what I have used in the past. The only remaining thing is to take photos, which I will do tomorrow, and then give it to him. I’ll post photos here too.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Trollope and Wodehouse, compare and contrast

19 Wednesday Oct 2011

Posted by julielivingstone in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Anthony Trollope, books, Jeeves, novels, PG Wodehouse, reading, Wooster

Recently I’ve been reading, or more accurately listening on CD, to both Anthony Trollope and P.G. Wodehouse, two of my favourite authors. Until now I’d always thought of their works as belonging to totally different genres, but it dawned on me that there are pronounced similarities.

The particular Trollope novel I was listening to was one of his last, The Way We Live Now (BBC Audiobooks 2009, read by Timothy West).  It’s set in the mid 1870s. I followed this with Wodehouse’s Uncle Fred in the Springtime (BBC Audiobooks 2009, read by Jonathan Cecil), first published in 1939.

I’ve always envisaged the world of Wodehouse, Jeeves, Wooster et al, as being set in the 1920s rather than later, perhaps because the author stubbornly ignores any mention of the events in Europe during the 1930s, which led to the outbreak of war.

Wodehouse commented in an interview (reported here)  that he tried not to date his novels, as he was ‘bad at remembering things’.

If we allow Uncle Fred and his adventures to have taken place in the 1920s that gives only 50 years between the two works. They are remarkably similar, particularly considering that in the intervening time the world had been changed by the First World War.

Both deal with similar subjects, there is much talk of young men and their gambling debts, characters not being able to marry those they love because of financial and social considerations, elderly or powerful relatives who must be appeased. A young man, once he has agreed to become engaged to a girl, is a cad and a bounder if he breaks it off, and there is much plotting and scheming all round.

Obviously there are also differences, Trollope’s novel runs to 26 CDs and around 100 chapters, whereas Wodehouse’s is only 6 CDs. I think most people would consider Trollope’s work as satire, whereas Wodehouse’s is comedy with only the slightest edge to it.

There are similarities in the early lives and backgrounds of the two authors.

Trollope was born in 1815 and died in 1882. He went to Harrow and Winchester, but was unhappy at both. His father was ambitious for him, and had purchased a property in the right neighbourhood so that his son could go to Harrow as a day pupil. Due to his father’s later financial troubles, the whole family moved to Belgium in 1834 and lived off his mother’s earnings writing novels.

Trollope however returned to England after a short time and joined the General Post Office in London. Here he had some trouble with debt collectors, he started out owing his tailor 12 pounds, but the debt got passed to a moneylender and became 200 pounds. This experience is common to a number of characters in his books.

In 1841 Trollope took a post with the Post Office in Ireland, married, and started writing.

Wodehouse was born in 1881 in Guildford, Kent, although his parents at the time were living in Hong Kong where his father was a judge. Named Pelham Grenville, his great-grandfather was the second son of a baronet. The family returned to England when Wodehouse was three years old. He attended various boarding schools whilst his parents spent time abroad, and spent most of his holidays with various aunts. He completed his education at Dulwich College, where he edited the school magazine and took part in school theatricals. After school he went to work for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. He was not much interested in banking, started writing in his spare time, and eventually left to become a journalist. In 1909 he travelled to America, where he married in 1914, and spent much of the remainder of his life overseas, dying in America in 1975.

Both authors were born into middle class families, educated at English public schools, neither particularly happily, went into middle class jobs which they didn’t particularly enjoy, started writing, and went to live overseas at around 30 years of age.

OK, I admit this is a very sketchy outline of the lives of these two men, and I have probably looked for the similarities and ignored the differences. I find it interesting though, and who knows, maybe one day the topic of deeper research. In the meantime I shall enjoy reading both of them, and try to find some of their books I haven’t already read.

 

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Blogroll

  • Learn WordPress.com
  • Live to Write – Write to Live

Back Pages

  • July 2018 (1)
  • November 2017 (1)
  • August 2017 (1)
  • June 2017 (2)
  • March 2017 (1)
  • October 2016 (1)
  • September 2016 (1)
  • August 2016 (2)
  • March 2016 (2)
  • February 2016 (2)
  • January 2016 (3)
  • August 2015 (1)
  • March 2015 (2)
  • February 2015 (1)
  • January 2015 (3)
  • December 2014 (2)
  • November 2014 (4)
  • April 2014 (2)
  • November 2013 (2)
  • October 2013 (1)
  • July 2013 (1)
  • June 2013 (2)
  • March 2013 (1)
  • February 2013 (2)
  • January 2013 (2)
  • December 2012 (3)
  • November 2012 (3)
  • October 2012 (4)
  • September 2012 (4)
  • August 2012 (1)
  • July 2012 (1)
  • May 2012 (1)
  • April 2012 (4)
  • March 2012 (2)
  • February 2012 (3)
  • January 2012 (3)
  • December 2011 (3)
  • November 2011 (5)
  • October 2011 (4)
  • September 2011 (2)

My Tags

Anthony Trollope Art Deco article ASG asymmetrical ATASDA Australian Sewing Guild blog blogging book books challenge Christmas clothes clouds colour commonplace book competition content craft creativity design dogs drawing electric embroidery fabric fashion illustration fence freelance Fremantle garden horses ideas inspiration in every issue Jeeves Koos van den Akker labrador language learning machine embroidery magazine Margaret Preston Mozilla novels op-shop origin of phrases pattern PG Wodehouse photography phrases project property quilting reading reconstructed recycled Roald Dahl sayings ScribeFire seo sewing skirt Threads magazine transfer dyes Tris Hussey TS14Plus upcycled water weather Wooster Wordpress words workshop writing

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • julielivingstone
    • Join 36 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • julielivingstone
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: