Posts by Jolisa
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Hard News: We ... WHAT!?, in reply to David Hood,
"US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered State Department translators to work round-the-clock on deciphering the garbled message."
Yup!
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Two nations divided by a common language...
Key's diction can be muddy and galloped at the best of times, but that bit was crystal clear. WTF. Auto-complete??
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Fascinating work, David. It must have been so fun to track down the locations and connections, even if Alice herself cannot be pinned down in any definitive way. Richard is right, that there's a lot of this sort of thing (and thus this kind of mind) out there, but there's something particularly appealing about this trove - the handwritten letters, the gulf of time and place, the thought of a down-under Alice urgently communicating her own mental wonderland to the chaps manning the telescopes...
There's something at once soothing and frightening about her vision of the world; the way the Martian machines sound like lighthouses through the looking-glass. Makes me think of Percival Lowell and his fantasies about the Martian canals, although his theories were perhaps more grounded in observation... He died believing there might still be people on Mars. (One of these days someone should write properly about the links between his Martian imaginings and his whimsical writing about Japan; romantic aliens were very much his thing).
Also, I can't help wondering whether Alice lived long enough to read Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, published only 17 years after her last letter. What she would have made of them?
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Busytown: “Glory! Glory! There’s the salt!”, in reply to Greg Wood,
<Heads for the loo for a great piratical rumbustification of a howl>
<Bangs on the door> Hurry up!
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Busytown: “Glory! Glory! There’s the salt!”, in reply to Rob Stowell,
“What are you reading?” she’d ask us- and random strangers, anyone reading in public- and then want to talk about it.
The funny thing about that question is that it so often shuts people up. (I usually go completely blank, myself). Except when you're talking about kids' books, I find.
One of their pleasures, which only sounds odd to people who don’t read, is tearing up a bit.
There is something voluptuous about a good cry. The books that made me go "waaah" were the ones I most often re-read, as a child. Not for melancholy, but because - oh, to be able to just feel! And to try to figure out how the trick was accomplished.
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Muse: OPEN HOUSE: Margaret Mahy, The…, in reply to Rob Stowell,
I woke up in her house, in her daughter’s bed, to a clink as she set down cups of tea for us.
That's just brilliant! What an excellent start to an out-law relationship. Arohanui to you and the whole family.
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Busytown: “Glory! Glory! There’s the salt!”, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
The Tricksters is pretty hot -- my top-equal favourite with The Catalogue of the Universe. And - it's okay not to be blown away by them all equally. The recipe and the ingredients, while similar, differ from book to book, and you'll find some that please you more than others. Some are more uncanny, some more realist, some quite whimsical, others very dark. Have a play!
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Busytown: “Glory! Glory! There’s the salt!”, in reply to JLM,
You're right - thanks for spotting that!! Too many tabs open on my browser. I'll see if I can get the webmaster to fix the earlier link.
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Busytown: “Glory! Glory! There’s the salt!”, in reply to Kate Hannah,
I am fairly sure the page that floors you in After the War is the one that floors me also
I once showed the book to a friend, and then glanced over to see her bawling. Oh, man. What I love about that book is the huge background arc of history, and the relentless pace of those overlapping single life-spans. Superb.
And I love The Catalogue of the Universe story – what a wonderful foundational myth for your family …
Thank you. I'm not sure I'm fully Angela (too nerdy and book-learny myself, plus could never pull off the tiny-shorts-transparent-blouse look; more of a Tricksters Harry), but it's always a joy to imagine that I could be.
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Busytown: “Glory! Glory! There’s the salt!”, in reply to Jackie Clark,
I've missed them too. No shortage of things to say; I've just been waiting for my voice to return. Sometimes it takes a gentle whack on the head with a book, y'know?