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Internet highlights – w/c 22nd December 2024

28 12 2024

https://twitter.com/PMartinsSmith/status/1871991005857403172

https://twitter.com/Rothmus/status/1872086791769280526

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Categories : The Best of the Internet

William Shakespeare: The Complete Plays in One Sitting – by Joelle Herr

28 12 2024

Having just read the Dickens one of these, I thought as I looked for something to take me up to Christmas that I may as well read this next to finish off the little group of this series I’d bought years ago.

Again it worked well, gave the opening line, the major characters, and a high level plot for each play, and an “iconic line” from some of them.

Only a few things let it down: a few typos in the last third or so of the book, Boleyn being spelt incorrectly each time it was printed, and while at the beginning the character descriptions were helpful, telling you how they related to the plot and each other, the more the book went on, the more it just sort of gave you their vibe, without explaining anything useful.

But it’s a good little reference group to get the basic premise of each play!

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Tags: book review, book reviews, joelle herr, shakespeare, william shakespeare
Categories : Books I've Read

Internet highlights – w/c 15th December 2024

21 12 2024

Tweets don’t seem to embed properly in wordpress anymore, so until they get that fixed, I’ll shove the links for those that won’t embed down the bottom….

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Categories : The Best of the Internet

Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels in One Sitting – by Joelle Herr

21 12 2024

Many years ago I read the War and Peace book from this series, little books that fit in your hand, and just give you a high level overview – perfect for things I know I’ll never read properly!

Most books start with a quote, list the main characters with a sentence about them, and then a summary of the plot, very easy to work through!

There were a few stories I’d seen on film/TV, and they were easier to fly through, but it also got me interested to watch a few more that I’ve not seen before. A lot of them were much darker than I expected!

There are a whole load of these available, I have the Shakespeare one on my shelf, which is the one I actually bought first, but have been a bit more daunted by, so I guess that’s one to try in 2025!

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Tags: book review, book reviews, charles dickens, classics, fiction
Categories : Books I've Read

Father Christmas and Me – by Matt Haig

19 12 2024

The final book in the trilogy, picking up from where we left off at the end of book two, when Amelia ended up coming to live with Father Christmas. She’s now attending school with the elf children, and struggling to get to grips with their subjects (elf maths is VERY different, eg: 2+2=snow, or a feather duvet), and she just doesn’t feel like she fits in.

There follows an accident with a sleigh, an elf that hates humans and spreads fake news about them in a very Trumpian fashion (this book was published in 2017, and you can tell!), and a warren full of rabbits, led by the Easter bunny – standard kids Christmas stuff, right?!

One problem that made me chuckle is that money in Elfhelm is chocolate coins, and when Father Christmas goes to withdraw money to cover the damages from the sleigh accident, it turns out that he has very few savings left as he ate it all… oops! And there is a point where our heroes are at great risk of being drowned in chocolate, what a pickle!

I’ll leave you with a line I thought was just beautiful:
“Books and trees are the same thing. My aunt used to tell me that books are just trees that are having a dream.”

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Tags: book reviews, children's fiction, christmas, fiction, matt haig
Categories : Books I've Read

Internet highlights – w/c 8th December 2024

14 12 2024

https://twitter.com/scottygb/status/1868026975635525918

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Categories : The Best of the Internet

The Human Body in Minutes – by Tom Jackson

9 12 2024

A marked improvement on the world history version, this was more science-y which is my cup of tea, and less assumed knowledge which is where the other one fell down for me. It still had a few typos, which makes sense given it’s the same series of books, but a different author at least improved the other issues.

It’s a page per thing, and covers all sorts of levels too, so right down to individual types of cell, up to whole systems across the body, and at the end, cloning, and death – so most things you’ll want to know about will be in here, it’s all just brief, which is what I wanted. Most double page spreads are a page with a couple of paragraphs on the left, and a diagram on the right. Good for an overview.