Not had much time to read at the moment, so haven't got many books to post about except these two. Am currently reading 'The Message' which is going to take AGES to read. It may be a while before my next book post!
18. Noel Streatfield. Party shoes
I am a big fan of Noel Stratefield's books. I have read lots of them, and reviewed of mentioned them on this blog. She writes about children who love performing and I think I identified with them as a child and understand the world she is writing about to a certain extent. Party shoes is my latest find. Now, immediately, my first thought on seeing this boo was I WANT THAT DRESS!!!!!! It's such a beautiful white organdie dress with a pale blue sash! Vintage perfection! I was in a musical called 'Meet me in St Louis' (Judy Garland made a film of it) as a child and at the end, we went to the Lousiana Purchase exposition and we had to wear dresses reminiscent of this- the Judie Garland ones are wonderful examples. It also reminds me of Truly Scrumptious in Chitty chitty bang bang, who had the best dresses (and hair) ever!!! Do such dresses still exist?
Anyway, once I tore my eyes away from the exquisite cover details, I found the book to be an interesting read, telling the tale of a family of children at the end of WW2 who put on a pageant, months of organising, all so that Serena can wear the beautiful dress sent from America. It seems highly unbelievable at times that such a massive pageant would be put on with hundreds of people taking part, but was still enjoyable To be honest, it lacked the journey, struggles and character development that I usually like in her books, there wasn't enough of a journey for the main characters, it's probably the weakest of her books I've read, but still worth a read if only for imagining the dress and the wardrobe full of motheaten vintage gowns belonging to Mrs Day of the manor house!
19. Tony Wilmott Birdoswald Roman Fort (English Heritage Guidebooks)
Around 12 years ago or so, I completed an A level history project equivalent in length to a doctorate or more (if I remember rightly, my word count was something like 34,0000 words! I only discovered later that most projects were around 4000 words) It was about searching for the real Camelot and the real King Arthur. A lot of my study looked at reviewing potential sites for where Camelot was and weighing up the likelyhood of its being there. I eventually concluded that Camelot could have been at a place called Birdoswald on Hadrian's wall. I always wanted to visit there. So it was lovely when I was in Northumberland to visit there with CBC as it is around 7miles or so away from where we were staying! When I was there, I bought this copy of a guidebook to find out about it again (I regret that I gave my only printed copy of my project to my friend Owen who never returned it!!
The computer copy is on Floppy disc. Not sure how to access it!)
The gude was an interesting look at the site and what is available but curiously didn't seem to mention ANYTHING to do with Camelot!
Thanks to Amazon for the images.
