October 4, 2007
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A Day Off?
It is a homeschooling Thursday, so what am I doing typing a Xanga entry? I have two ailing children and a VHS tape with eight episodes of Magic School Bus. It’s a version of school, right? The frictionless baseball game episode is on right now. We’ll get around to doing math and things later today, but for now, the diseased and in pain (and Gockle, who is neither) get a fun dose of science. And I get a fun dose of Xanga!
The furniture arrived yesterday. It looks much nicer than I thought it would, which is alway a good thing. It smells like new fabric, though, strongly. We had one couch, a rocking chair, and a desk in the room and replaced it with a couch, coffee table, and two rocker/recliners. Strangely enough, the room feels less full with all the new furniture than it did with the other! Feel free to come by for a visit to see it. Make A Movie Afternoon is October 13th from 1:00 to 8:00, so that would be an ideal time to come and see it.
TGD and I watched Tristan and Isolde Tuesday night. I really liked it and went searching for the “original” to read. Why is it that Tristan’s name rarely changes but Isolde is spelled a dozen different ways? I was able to find a romance novel (complete with shirtless guy on the cover), a series of three books (probably magical/fantasy), and a reprint of a 13th century document requested from Penn State’s library (which I hope has the translation from the old English. I can handle Canterbury Tales, but CT was written in the 14th century). Which to begin first?
What movie has sent you scurrying for follow up reading?
Comments (25)
What is Make a Movie Afternoon? Sounds like fun!
I’ve wondered re that movie…we’ll have to check it out. Of late, we’ve been experiencing the reverse….books sending us to find movies. The last was Dorian Gray.
Yes, the Richmonds know all about it. They posted re. it on their website…I had even wondered if SR would come to the funeral, but she did not. I haven’t seen her in years….
Hey, one really does learn from The Magic School Bus. And from Bill Nye the Science Guy. And from Wishbone. And even from Zoom. What happened to all those good PBS shows? My sister and I were discussing this. Now adays all one has for kids shows is a choice between Sponge Bob or the latest Japanese anime cartoon, and you don’t learn from any of those. My sister replied to that with “Of course you do! You learn that weird is cool.” Not to deny the possibility that weirdness really is cool, but I miss the shows I watched when I was little. Alas!
Most recently? Probably North & South, by Elizabeth Gaskell. Which reminds me, the book is on hold for me at B & N! I should probably get around to picking it up one of these days.
Oh yes, and I found a copy of Tristan and Iseult by Joseph Bedier at a used bookstore. Unfortunately it has been sitting on my shelf for months with only the first couple chapters read. See, this is why I need Wishbone.
The Lord of the Rings and Ben-Hur were both movies that inspired me to go read the books. And in both cases I enjoyed the books very much. I wonder if I would have enjoyed the movies so much if I’d read the books first?
I have greatly appreciate of that show Magic School Bus.. I love that little Izzy Iguana. I just wish that they had shown that when I was young child.. At least better late than never..
I have seen that movie which I thought it was romantic but I felt it was bit slow in my opinion..
I sure would have love to stop by visit if you wouldn’t live so far away.. lol
La Morte d’Arthur was wrtten in the 15th century, so no translation is needed beyond amended spelling. It has a huge middle section on Tristan (Tristram), which may be of some interest. Good luck trying to find the “original”, though. There were already various versions of the Arthurian stories by the 8th century, and things got even more confused during the High Middle Ages and the Romantic movement. Troyes differs from Geoffrey of Monmouth, Geoffrey from Malory, Malory from Tennyson and so on. Whatever the “original” stories were, they were given orally and changed slightly with each telling, so there’s absolutely no way to find them now. Most modern renditions draw from a variety of sources. Isolde, or Iseult or Ysoud or Isolda, or however, has her named spelled so many different ways probably because she had her beginnings as more than one character, just as Morgan and Morgause probably began as the same character and then were seperated at some point.
I thought the movie was interesting as well. You might want to read the Black Rose. I don’t have the author’s name right at hand, but the story takes place in 1273 and it’s incredible.
God bless you.
Cynthia
I suspect that’s the explanation. Hmmm…Jackie Brown?
We’re a bunch of sickies too, hope y’all feel better soon!
Le Morte d’Arthur is also what I was going to suggest, but arohk beat me to it. The Squires Tales (a series with several volumes) by Gerald Morris are wonderful books. The author has “retold” many stories from Le Morte d’Arthur which I have not read although two of my children have.
Oh, I’m intrigued by the idea of a series. Who’s the author?
ChristianFictionQueen, the series is by gerald Morris. They are written for children, but they’re good enough that adults enjoy them. One book I didn’t like as well as the others because it seemed that the main form of humor was the characters insulting others.
I had to read Tristan and Isolde for High school English. (I think it was for our advanced placement course. also I thought it was spelled Isolte? in the book) I just remember it being a sort of Romeo/Juilette kind of story.
I guess the most recent movie that influenced me to read the book was the Chronicles of Narnia. I never read the series when I was younger.
RYC: We live in Upstate NY – our leaves have been changing for a couple of weeks and this weekend will probably be the “peak” color.
I hope ya’ll feel better!
I LOVE the magic school bus!!!!!!
Not just lovED, but still LOVE.
The only thing I know about Tristan and Isolde is the gorgeously lush orchestral piece named for them composed by Richard Wagner– it is one of my favorites which most people would question since it is very somber and heavy music– but very romantic. I assume the music is as well?
Oh, and when I saw the trailer I thought the movie looked like an ahistorical mess trying with much futility to recreate Dark Age Britain and to populate it with men who have hairless torsos–once considered undesirable–and sword fighting sequences that would have been outrageous with Celtic weapons. And James Franco.
I trust it wasn’t as bad as all that?
This summer I saw Bridge to Terabithia and immediately put the book on my ‘To Read’ list (which is way too long already). I’m finally getting around to reading (er, listening to the audiobooks) Harry Potter after seeing the first five movies.
Movies that sent me to the book. Albeit, I haven’t actually read the book that movie was based off of, so I guess it doesn’t count?
I ahven’t even seen the movie yet, but Sean Penn wrote and produced a movie based on the book ‘Into the Wild’ and I’ve been waiting to see the movie before I read the book. http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount_vantage/intothewild/
So how bad do you figure this staurdays game is going to look? lol I haven’t decided which team is worse yet.
Technically speaking, Arthur doesn’t have a connection to Tristan anyway, so the movie was making no mistake there. That is, originally the two legends were separate. (Merlin was a historical figure who had also had nothing to do with Arthur originally, interestingly enough.) The historical Arthur, whoever he was, was probably not a king and really had no connection to most of the other Welsh legends that he is now most strongly associated with until the troubadours of the Middle Ages got a hold of him. It’s really a pretty complicated matter (no pun intended).
That tactic you describe was not standard as far as I know, but there’s no particular reason that someone might not have thought of it. Medieval and Dark Age warriors were much more inventive than they’re generally given credit for being.
Babe. I had no idea it was a book! When I heard I had to find out how much they had changed it for the movie and read it for myself and find out what else the author wrote.
RYC- Thank you for your prayers! MAinly that I will manage my time well with out freaking out as I tend to do when rushing and that I will know when enough is enough.
And yes we do live in a very diverse area. We have a very large Jewish community. Probably one of the biggest around. We also have a really big Muslim community and a pretty large amount of Buddists and Hindu’s. On any given day, at any given place you see men with side curls and hats walking around and Buddist monk looking people picnicing on the grass and many, many women with their heads covered and a lot of Indian women in the beautiful fabrics and jewlery of their culture. It is really great. There is no tension (that I know of) because there are so many of everyone and we really all have the same goals, especailly the moms. It is not at all unusual to have Muslim women with covered heads dropping their kids off at Jewish temples for homeschool classes that have at least half the population conservative Christians.
Jo Pa would be sorely disapointed in you! lol The Iowa Hawkeyes will be there this weekend [laying to see which team ends up with the worst Big 10 conference record so far this season. It’s okay though, I don’t expect everyone to follow college sports, I probably wouldn’t follow as closely if I didn’t live here in Iowa City.
I hope everyone is well recovered for a great weekend!
I had used the laundry basket to carry out the dirty laundry. Once it was clean I put it on the couch or chair to fold, because ot totally creeps me out to put the clean clothes back in the basket that carried the dirty ones out.