I'm Blathering Now...

It had to be didn't it? Well how can you do a Classic reading challenge and not have any Dickens on the list? There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor Christmas, a time to bring in the holly and ivy, put decorations on a tree, fill up on turkey and mince pies, and watch terrible TV whilst ripping garish coloured paper off numerous presents! Surely there's more to Christmas than that! In today's overly commercial society, it does us good to curl up with a copy of A Christmas Carol, and journey with the lead character, Ebenezer Scrooge as he is visited nightly by ghosts and shown his Christmases past, present and future. Dickens' novel contains a plethora of characters who exhibit many different qualities, some good, and some bad. The book is essentially Scrooges journey from being a self-centred miser to his awakening, where he becomes a warm-hearted, caring human being who thinks of those less fortunate than himself. It

When I visited Bath earlier in the year, I came across a book by Christopher Frayling - "Inside The Bloody Chamber on Angela Carter, the Gothic, and other weird tales." The book is a memoir about the literary friendship Frayling had with the late author Angela Carter. It focuses on the conversations and ideas the two of them would throw about until the early hours of the morning, the research he carried out about The Vampyre in literature, and some of his articles and essays on the various aspects of the "Gothic." Whilst reading his book, I realised that I had not read or watched many of the books and films Frayling mentioned and I thought that I needed to rectify that. Carter sounded like an inspirational and interesting woman, and at some point I need to read her work, but as I went through the book, the chapter entitled Nothing But a Hound Dog made me think about November's book challenge...here was a classic novel I hadn't read, but one that I really s

Dear Blog, I've been very remiss and ignored you for a couple of months. It doesn't seem that long, but I've checked, and I haven't posted anything since October! It seems I've been too busy doing and not enough writing about it. Oh well!!! A New Year is a good time to reflect, so let's see what's been going on in the last couple of months that I've been too busy to tell you about, before we start getting busy with 2017. November I've been very busy at work. I agreed to make a birthday dress for my friend (I have four weeks to get it done) and I want to create a Tom Burke Calendar. I need 12 drawings, I have previously drawn 6 pictures that I like (I'm very critical of a lot of my earlier work) and so I need to create 6 more drawings that I'm happy with. Why am I doing this to myself? (Especially when I know I have very little spare time!!) So despite becoming sleep deprived, I start sketching ideas in my head for a dress to discuss