kiwifan
Rohan
Jan 29 2013, 10:33pm
Views: 584
|
In a roundabout way, the 'Hobbit' film is responsible for my widening my horizons : namely, in Brian Sibley's companion book 'TH: AUJ The Official Movie Guide' , in the chapter on Kili, he mentions that Aidan Turner had played Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet, in a BBC series called 'Desperate Romantics' --- which I duly borrowed from the library and watched (in wide-eyed amazement at times because one gets to see quite a lot more of A.T. than I had expected --- not that I minded, really ) --- and that somewhat frivolous romp then caused me to return to the library for Tim Barringer's non-fiction book 'The Pre-Raphaelites', in the German translation, which I rather enjoyed. I had had a fairly hazy idea of that movement but now was motivated to acquire some proper knowledge, and indeed it is a good read, with plenty of pictures, and definitely a good introduction to the PRB, their ideals and works, and to a lesser degree, their lives. Fairly easy reading, even if you have a sinus headache like I did. The second discovery I joyfully made thanks to the 'Hobbit' film is the fact that by reading up in wikipedia on one of its stars I found that the wonderful Richard Armitage has done audiobooks of three of my beloved Georgette Heyer novels, and our library (where would I be without that admirable institution) has one of them, 'Venetia', which of course, flu or no flu, I had to go and get as soon as I discovered its existence and the fact that it was actually available that very day (one copy only in the entire system, and available at the branch library nearest to me, just when I wanted it --- fate, wasn't it?). So I spent two afternoons, snug in bed with a hot-water bottle at my feet, hot herbal tea and a packet of cough drops, listening to R.A.'s lovely and expressive voice giving life to these familiar characters in flawless, crystal-clear English. An almost sensual delight for my fastidious ears . Certainly, the audiobook is much abridged which is a shame since very many of what I call the little 'Austenish' bits of gentle satire in the description of secondary characters are omitted. However, it's still very enjoyable. And now I'm reading the novel again, for the umpteenth time, to catch the bits that were left out in the audiobook. And I also submitted a so-called 'Leserwunsch' which means 'reader's wish' (literally) and is a polite request to the library to purchase something one wants, in this case the other two Heyer novel audiobooks recorded by Richard Armitage ('The Convenient Marriage' and 'Sylvester'). I hope the librarian will decide in favour of doing so ... And of course there are two more Heyer novels recorded as audiobooks in the same series, 'Cotillion' and 'The Grand Sophy', read by Clare Wille, whoever she is, but I didn't dare overwhelm the librarian! I also want to compare the English originals of the two 'Hobbit AUJ' companion books (which I own), Brian Sibley's aforementioned Official Movie Guide, and Jude Fisher's Visual Companion, to their German translations which I got (guess where) temporarily. About those two works in general I just want to say briefly: the Visual Companion contains almost the same photographs as Official Movie Guide so one doesn't really need both of them. So all of this is in some way due to TH AUJ!
|