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Mar. 27th, 2011 03:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tvordljWent to a Corrie ping today and won an apron in the raffle. It's got a big Hilda Ogden face on it! It's a vinyl coating so i won't get so dirty! I can be quite messy in the kitchen!
40 sleeps until touch down! Just waiting on confirmation of the rental car. I booked an automatic so i could help with some of the driving but they haven't confirmed availability yet. Hopefully that will come tomorrow as the first business day after i'd booked it. G. says he doesnt' mind driving and indeed, likes to drive but i thought i would do some and i wouldn't be brave enough to master the manual shift and drive on the opposite side of the road to what i'm used to. I can drive a shift but i haven't in over 25 years.
2011 tea tasting
Jumpy Monkey was today's try out. it's roasted maté which is apparently a South American rainforest type product and it also has some roasted coffee beans added though it doesn't taste coffee-like. It's also got almond, white chocolate, cloves, other bark and roots! Sounds dreadful doesn't it? It's not though it's not wow either.
2011 Books
22. Midwife of Venice - Roberta Rich
This is a book with two concurrent storylines, related in that they happen to a husband and wife. The wife is Hannah who lives in the Jewish Ghetto in Venice in the late 16th century. She is a midwife. Jewish midwives are forbidden to deliver Christian babies but she is persuaded by a rich Compte to help his wife, already ill, who is struggling to deliver a baby. He's more concerned that the child might be a son, his heir. Because Hannah's husband, Isaac, has been kidnapped and is held for ransom, she agrees, though the Rabbi forbids it. She manages to save both mother and child and uses a device of her own making, birthing spoons, which, because they are not a natural way of helping to deliver babies, could have her condemned for witchcraft. Of course, they go missing and return to haunt her.
Isaac, meanwhile, is sold as a slave on Malta until such time as his ransom is paid. A nun tries to convert him to Christianity and he manages to survive by writing letters for various people in the city and giving the man who owns him the major portion of the fees he gets. The owner also wants him to help woo a beautiful woman with love letters but it's never going to happen. She's got too much sense to fall for a lout like the man that owns Isaac. Isaac has been told he would be set free if he could succeed but since he can't, he must escape.
The story of Hannah is much more interesting than the story of Isaac and I'd have been more interested to hear more of that then of his adventures but the book is well written and well researched. I found that because the book was split into two streams of narratives, there wasn't as much detail in either one as i would have liked and there was not a lot of sense of how much time had passed in the storyline, almost a year where I was under the impression it was a few months. I don't think the two storylines were happening in the same timeline though it felt like it while reading it.
23. The Crimson Petal and the White - Michel Faber
I read this some years back but wanted to reread it because there's a British series being made of it. It's about a Victorian prostitute, Sugar and her relationship with a businessman, William Rackham. She is not really all that attractive and has exema all over her body, with dry flaking skin everywhere but she is apparently very good at what she does and William, at first a layabout gentleman, is enthralled. He installs her as his mistress and becomes more involved in the family business of soaps, a rival to the giant Pears' soaps. He is married to Agnes who is a bit off her rocker and has a young daughter, Sophie. He has a pious brother who lusts after a woman who is a do-gooder, trying to reform prostitutes and bring God into their lives. That sub plot really had nothing to do with the main plot and the characters barely interacted. It seemed like it wasn't all that necessary to have them and their story in there for the very, very little it contributed to Sugar's story.
The narrative is a bit different. It isn't first person but not quite third person much of the time. It's ... second person, i suppose, as if someone was sitting with you and walking you through the story and telling you what was happening. And it isn't consistent through the book, it comes and goes. It's a bit odd at times. I also found the author did ramble on a bit much for my taste at times and you get a lot of unneccessary detail that's a bit mind numbing at times and had me skipping over bits.
It's a long book, well researched into the Victorian London and you can really feel the squalor of the streets in the poor areas and the crowds, the feel of the whole atmosphere everywhere. All the characters are well put together as we bring Sugar from a house of ill repute where she'd been forced into prostitution by her mother at a young age, to a hidey-hole to the "big house" where she becomes the governess for William's daughter. She has ambitions but will they come to fruition? the Fall and Rise of Sugar seems to be teetering and uncertain while the Rise and Fall of William seems pretty resolute. The ending just kinds of hangs there, as if there might be a sequel. I read somewhere there might be but if so, it's been a long time coming as the book is about 10 years old.
40 sleeps until touch down! Just waiting on confirmation of the rental car. I booked an automatic so i could help with some of the driving but they haven't confirmed availability yet. Hopefully that will come tomorrow as the first business day after i'd booked it. G. says he doesnt' mind driving and indeed, likes to drive but i thought i would do some and i wouldn't be brave enough to master the manual shift and drive on the opposite side of the road to what i'm used to. I can drive a shift but i haven't in over 25 years.
2011 tea tasting
Jumpy Monkey was today's try out. it's roasted maté which is apparently a South American rainforest type product and it also has some roasted coffee beans added though it doesn't taste coffee-like. It's also got almond, white chocolate, cloves, other bark and roots! Sounds dreadful doesn't it? It's not though it's not wow either.
2011 Books
22. Midwife of Venice - Roberta Rich
This is a book with two concurrent storylines, related in that they happen to a husband and wife. The wife is Hannah who lives in the Jewish Ghetto in Venice in the late 16th century. She is a midwife. Jewish midwives are forbidden to deliver Christian babies but she is persuaded by a rich Compte to help his wife, already ill, who is struggling to deliver a baby. He's more concerned that the child might be a son, his heir. Because Hannah's husband, Isaac, has been kidnapped and is held for ransom, she agrees, though the Rabbi forbids it. She manages to save both mother and child and uses a device of her own making, birthing spoons, which, because they are not a natural way of helping to deliver babies, could have her condemned for witchcraft. Of course, they go missing and return to haunt her.
Isaac, meanwhile, is sold as a slave on Malta until such time as his ransom is paid. A nun tries to convert him to Christianity and he manages to survive by writing letters for various people in the city and giving the man who owns him the major portion of the fees he gets. The owner also wants him to help woo a beautiful woman with love letters but it's never going to happen. She's got too much sense to fall for a lout like the man that owns Isaac. Isaac has been told he would be set free if he could succeed but since he can't, he must escape.
The story of Hannah is much more interesting than the story of Isaac and I'd have been more interested to hear more of that then of his adventures but the book is well written and well researched. I found that because the book was split into two streams of narratives, there wasn't as much detail in either one as i would have liked and there was not a lot of sense of how much time had passed in the storyline, almost a year where I was under the impression it was a few months. I don't think the two storylines were happening in the same timeline though it felt like it while reading it.
23. The Crimson Petal and the White - Michel Faber
I read this some years back but wanted to reread it because there's a British series being made of it. It's about a Victorian prostitute, Sugar and her relationship with a businessman, William Rackham. She is not really all that attractive and has exema all over her body, with dry flaking skin everywhere but she is apparently very good at what she does and William, at first a layabout gentleman, is enthralled. He installs her as his mistress and becomes more involved in the family business of soaps, a rival to the giant Pears' soaps. He is married to Agnes who is a bit off her rocker and has a young daughter, Sophie. He has a pious brother who lusts after a woman who is a do-gooder, trying to reform prostitutes and bring God into their lives. That sub plot really had nothing to do with the main plot and the characters barely interacted. It seemed like it wasn't all that necessary to have them and their story in there for the very, very little it contributed to Sugar's story.
The narrative is a bit different. It isn't first person but not quite third person much of the time. It's ... second person, i suppose, as if someone was sitting with you and walking you through the story and telling you what was happening. And it isn't consistent through the book, it comes and goes. It's a bit odd at times. I also found the author did ramble on a bit much for my taste at times and you get a lot of unneccessary detail that's a bit mind numbing at times and had me skipping over bits.
It's a long book, well researched into the Victorian London and you can really feel the squalor of the streets in the poor areas and the crowds, the feel of the whole atmosphere everywhere. All the characters are well put together as we bring Sugar from a house of ill repute where she'd been forced into prostitution by her mother at a young age, to a hidey-hole to the "big house" where she becomes the governess for William's daughter. She has ambitions but will they come to fruition? the Fall and Rise of Sugar seems to be teetering and uncertain while the Rise and Fall of William seems pretty resolute. The ending just kinds of hangs there, as if there might be a sequel. I read somewhere there might be but if so, it's been a long time coming as the book is about 10 years old.
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Date: 2011-03-27 09:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 10:05 pm (UTC)