An Awesome Austen Event!

Are you an Austen fan? 

Are you THE Austen fan?

Would you like to meet and mingle with other like minded souls?

Then the Bristol Women's Literature Festival is about to make your day...

We’re looking for a young person aged 16-25 who has a passion for Jane Austen to take part in our next event. 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice remains one of the UK’s best-loved novels 200 years after its publication. And to celebrate the fact, the Bristol Women’s Literature Festival want to invite young people aged 16-25 who love Jane Austen to take part in our film and panel event later on in the year.

We’ll be bringing together novelists, critics and lovers of Austen to explore the importance of her work and to understand why this wonderful novel and the five fabulous Bennett sisters still maintain a hold on our imaginations.

But most excitingly of all, we want you to be on our panel. 

We’re looking for the biggest Austen fan aged 16-25 to join our panel and celebrate Pride and Prejudice with us. All you need to do is tell us why you love Austen, and why you deserve a place in the panel, in 50 words.

If you can prove you’re Austen’s biggest fan, then there’ll be a seat at our table with your name on it.

Simply email sianandcrookedrib[at]gmail[dot]com to tell us in 50 words why you want to be part of the panel before 30 October 2013.

You need to be aged 16-25 to take part and to be free on Tuesday 26th November 2013. Travel and accommodation is not included in the prize.

Remember, follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me I own, and I laugh at them when I can. So make your entries as imaginative, creative and Austen-worthy as possible!

Enid Blyton Challenge Book 07 - The Adventures of the Wishing Chair

One of our Superstar Guest Stars has agreed to a new challenge based on our chats relating to #LBCPuffins.

Can't wait to read each review as they come! Huge thanks - as always - to Helen...though now I think on it...missing out on all these wonderful stories... Clearly we need each other!

Helen's Enid Blyton Challenge

About the Author

The Adventures of
the Wishing Chair

I’ve fallen behind on my challenge. A lot behind. I started to struggle with a couple of Enid’s books and decided to get back into it. This was June’s choice and I have fallen in love with this. I had to remember this is a book for children and to not be as critical over as I was with the enchanted wood which felt a bit strange. I’m convinced I read this as a child but I can’t remember. The illustrations look so familiar and the chair growing wings brought something back. I’ll get on to that a bit more in a moment but here’s part of a review I found which summed it up completely.

The Story: (Goodreads)
Once Mollie and Peter have discovered the Wishing-Chair, their lives are full of adventure. It takes them to all sorts of magical places, from the giant's castle where they rescue Chinky the Pixie, to the amazing party at Magician Greatheart's castle.

What others thought:
 ‘People seem to think that using simple English is talking down to children or having a rather simplistic story line is somehow patronizing to kids. Which seems to be the more common complaints against Miss Blyton.

I strongly disagree with this reasoning. Sometimes kids need a simple story so they can grasp it easily and get straight to the fantasy. Sometimes they just need a book that doesn't seek to teachthem a bunch of words. Using simple English doesn't necessarily mean patronizing, it's often far easier for the child to be immersed in the story. Immersed being the key word there.

Enid Blyton has this knack for knowing a child's wildest fantasies and tapping into their desires. Her simple but direct manner of writing is easy for a young child to get into and there's a sort of whimsy and wonder found in her words.

Her worlds offer a place of escape for the child and the simple manner it is delivered makes it easy for the child to immerse themselves into whatever faraway world is on offer.

I think that's why she's so endearing even to modern audiences. Her books offer all the places of magic and wonder we were already wishing to travel to in our youth.’

“We have been given two ears and only one mouth, so you should talk only as half as much as you hear - Mollie

This is so far one of my favourites besides the brownie book. I loved it. From the moment Mollie and Peter go in search for something for their Mother’s birthday and wonder off into a shop to find it run by a wizard, almost made me wonder if J.K. Rowling had read Enid Blyton’s work as a child.

The children get scared by the little man in the shop and end up sitting on a chair and are very frightened when suddenly Peter says ‘Oh, I do wish we were back home’  only for the chair to sproutwings and fly out the window. They land safely back home and decide to leave the chair hidden in the playroom. After that day they wait for it to grow wings and fly off for an adventure where they rescue Chinky - the elf/pixie - which then leads to lots of magical adventures. They gain a new friend; learn to be careful what they wish for.  Because sometimes they landed in some rotten places. They discover the rewards from helping each other out, even complete strangers. That how we treat each other is important and we shouldn’t be horrid to each other because we’re not happy or don’t get what we want.

This is a fantastic adventure - at some points it was too fast for me but if I was reading this as a child I wouldn’t want to stop nor get whoever reading it to me to stop. So please pick it up and read it and meet the wonderful characters as I don’t want to give too much away.

Oh and one last thought, I like the idea of fairies being at the bottom of the garden. One day I might find them.

Check out The Enid Blyton Society page for more history on the book

Next book: The Boy Next Door

The Book List

Dec - The Twins at St Clare's
Nov - The Mystery of the Pantomime Cat
Oct - The Naughtiest School Girl
Sep - Mr Galliano’s Circus
Aug - The Boy Next Door
Jul - Adventures of the wishing Chair
Jun - The Magic Faraway Tree
May - The Enchanted Wood
Apr - The Adventures of Scamp
Mar - Secret Seven
Feb - Five on a treasure Island
Jan - The Book of Brownies

Helen tweets from @isfromupnorth and has her own blog Hello from me to you. It's worth bookmarking because Helen knows EVERYONE and is involved in all sorts of lovely events!

The Hobbit (book) review

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Guest - Table of Contents

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Full Table of Contents

Enid Blyton Challenge Book 05 - The Enchanted Wood

One of our Superstar Guest Stars has agreed to a new challenge based on our chats relating to #LBCPuffins.

Can't wait to read each review as they come! Huge thanks - as always - to Helen...though now I think on it...missing out on all these wonderful stories... Clearly we need each other!

Helen's Enid Blyton Challenge

About the Author
About the Author
Born in 1897 in South London, Enid Mary Blyton was the eldest of three children and showed an early interest in music and reading. She was educated at St. Christopher's School, Beckenham, and - having decided not to pursue her music - at Ipswich High School, where she trained as a kindergarten teacher. She taught for five years before her 1924 marriage to editor Hugh Pollock, with whom she had two daughters. This marriage ended in divorce and Blyton remarried in 1943, to surgeon Kenneth Fraser Darrell Waters. She died in 1968, one year after her second husband.

Enid Blyton was a prolific author of children's books, who penned an estimated 800 books over about 40 years. Her stories were often either children's adventure and mystery stories, or fantasies involving magic. Notable series include: The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, The Five Find-Outers, Noddy, The Wishing Chair, Mallory Towers, and St. Clare's.

The EnchantedWood

The Book

Jo (Joe), Bessie (Beth) and Fanny (Franny) move to the country and find an Enchanted Wood right on their doorstep. In the magic Faraway Tree live the magical characters that soon become their new friends – Moon-Face, Silky the fairy, and Saucepan Man. Together they visit the strange lands (the Roundabout Land, the Land of Ice and Snow, Toyland and the Land of Take What You Want) atop the tree and have the most exciting adventures – and narrow escapes.

 My Review

The copy I have been reading was loaned to me along with t he wishing chair books by the lovely Kirsty aka @Kayelle5 on Twitter.

We open the story where we meet three children on the day their family are moving from the town to the country. From the edition I’m reading I did actually think this was about three girls, their names being Jo, Bessie and Fanny you know Jo being as in Joanne but apparently it was short for Joseph. In later editions it has been changed to Joe, Beth and Franny.

‘‘wisha-wisha-wisha-wisha!’ 

said the trees in the woods’

First written in 1939 it is classed as a piece of fantasy writing and you can see why. Not one chapter allows you to stop and think for a second, it’s crazy! It is a wonderful book for kids, the thought that you climb up a ladder from a tree and at the top will be a different ‘land’each time you go. Not always nice, pleasant ones but ones that will always give you an adventure. The children get to learn of other lands and their inhabitants and their different characters like Moon Face and the strange Mr Saucepan Man and the not so nice Mrs Snap or again in later editions Mrs Slap.  Who had a school for naughty pixies, fairies and brownies with horrid punishments.

“up the lane and down the lane and around the lane.”

It is the classic story of children being warned not to do something and they do it. 

The tree they find is apparently the oldest and most magic tree in the world and it turns out to be the faraway tree which once you reach the top can fill you with all sorts of surprises. 

And of course the three children have nothing better to do but explore and are determined to find out whats at the top and find all sorts of characters and objects and another world.

‘But everybody cheered up a little at the thought of tea’

Reading this as an adult I did find it quite difficult with the constant changing of lands and characters and perhaps as I’m getting old the pace of the book was just to fast for me. All the silly names as well threw me but if I were to read this as a child or to children it would have them absorbed I am sure of it as it’s such a lovely little book. And as  with all Enid Blyton’s stories there are lessons to be learnt is that life is full of  scary adventures and most of all you should be thankful for what you have and be careful what you wish for!

Next book: The Magic Faraway Tree

The Book List

Dec - The Twins at St Clare's
Nov - The Mystery of the Pantomime Cat
Oct - The Naughtiest School Girl
Sep - Mr Galliano’s Circus
Aug - The Boy Next Door
Jul - Adventures of the wishing Chair
Jun - The Magic Faraway Tree
May - The Enchanted Wood
Apr - The Adventures of Scamp
Mar - Secret Seven
Feb - Five on a treasure Island
Jan - The Book of Brownies

Helen tweets from @isfromupnorth and has her own blog Hello from me to you. It's worth bookmarking because Helen knows EVERYONE and is involved in all sorts of lovely events!

The Hobbit (book) review

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Guest - Table of Contents

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Full Table of Contents

Podcast - Interview with Ross Young

LeedsBookClub is delighted to welcome Ross Young to the LBC Podcast. 

Ross is an English author based in Egypt, currently spending most of his time in the fictional afterlife world of Gloomwood. 

We discuss Dead Heads, Ross writing techniques and the slippery slidey world of self publication. 



LANGUAGE - well...I'm hosting so usual warnings apply!

SPOILERS - mostly just hints to entice you to read Dead Heads!

 

If you'd prefer to listen on your mobile device, click HERE! The second in the Gloomwood series – Get Ted Dead – will be out soon...

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Check out our review of Dead Heads HERE Visit the Gloomwood website HERE Stalk...Chat with Ross on twitter HERE. He's very friendly. 

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Table of Contents - Podcasts!
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Our Podcast Page 

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Full Table of Contents

September 2013 - W.B. Yeats

September 1913 

W.B. Yates

What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For men were born to pray and save;
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman's rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You'd cry `Some woman's yellow hair
Has maddened every mother's son':
They weighed so lightly what they gave.
But let them be, they're dead and gone,
They're with O'Leary in the grave.

In one of his most celebrated works, Yeats laments the death of Ireland's nobility and honour; seemingly replaced by a less tangible and decidedly less moral materialism. 

This poem was written to mark the occasion of the Dublin Lockout (details of the centenary in the Independent HERE) and to protest the Dublin Corporation's refusal to house a collection of art belonging to Sir Hugh Lane (for more details see this excellent article on the Irish Times site HERE). 

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Table of Contents - A Poetry Moment

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Table of Contents - Full

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