I had a pleasant dream last night. It was half mixed up with the book or the film of itself, but I always like when even fictional people turn out to be more interesting than their first appearances, so I enjoyed hearing a stiff shy teacherly type enthuse about ballooning with an animation he had not formerly been able to carry into his classes. Everything got vaguely action-packed after that. The previous dream I had which was not a nightmare dated from the night before the beginning of the move; it was the direct consequence of watching a movie which I would still like to write about and featured Peter Ustinov.
There must still be a global shortage of vanilla, because when I unpacked the bottles of vanilla extract I had carefully saved from the wreck of our pantry, my mother looked at me as though I had produced oranges in wartime. On the other hand, she has reserves of marzipan.
On second or third read, I still find Wildfire at Midnight (1956) the most frustrating of Mary Stewart's novels of romantic suspense. It was her second novel; it looks now like the outlier in her catalogue with its police inspector and country house cast of suspects for whom the heroine out of her element is more the reader's lens on the action than its catalyst; its plot is essentially folk horror, which feels intriguing and unusual for the time, but its romance suffers more from its era than any other novel of Stewart's I can bring to mind and so does its psychology. It does contain one of my favorites of her supporting characters, right up there with the incomparable Tony Gamble. I just really wish the central couple would stay divorced.
As 1776 season is upon us, please enjoy this rendition of "He Plays the Violin."
There must still be a global shortage of vanilla, because when I unpacked the bottles of vanilla extract I had carefully saved from the wreck of our pantry, my mother looked at me as though I had produced oranges in wartime. On the other hand, she has reserves of marzipan.
On second or third read, I still find Wildfire at Midnight (1956) the most frustrating of Mary Stewart's novels of romantic suspense. It was her second novel; it looks now like the outlier in her catalogue with its police inspector and country house cast of suspects for whom the heroine out of her element is more the reader's lens on the action than its catalyst; its plot is essentially folk horror, which feels intriguing and unusual for the time, but its romance suffers more from its era than any other novel of Stewart's I can bring to mind and so does its psychology. It does contain one of my favorites of her supporting characters, right up there with the incomparable Tony Gamble. I just really wish the central couple would stay divorced.
As 1776 season is upon us, please enjoy this rendition of "He Plays the Violin."
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