well, that was 2005, was it?

the Johnny Depp calendar has gone up in the kitchen, and the Discworld calendar has gone up in the study, so it must be a new year, presumably.

2005 was, for us, mostly good, although I don't forget that for many friends of ours, it was anything but :(

( but this is about me, and so ... )

all in all - not a bad year. We'd like a decent holiday in 2006; we're expecting to go to the East Coast of the USA to see friends towards the end of the year, and hopefully we can take a little time to do some travelling round New England again - loved it when we went in spring 1999.

other than that, more of the same, I guess. Which ain't so bad, really.

have a good year, all.

The Narnia Chronicles

I've bought two boxed sets of C S Lewis' Narnia Chronicles in my life and (I think) had one bought for me... I certainly had all the books when I was a child, but I have no idea what happened to them. And, indeed, they may not have been in a box. But I digress ... The first set I bought was for my daughter kalunina when she was small, and the second a few years ago, from Amazon, for myself.

that last set sat on the bookshelves, unopened, until we catalogued all the books last year, when I did at least rip the cellophane off them. I hadn't read them myself for over about 35 years, probably, and I decided to do so over the recent late December holiday period.

I'm sure I bought them from Amazon UK, and was somewhat irritated to find that it is a US printing - odd typefaces, spelling USAnianised in places, and very badly proofread / typeset, with paragraphs repeating themselves in places.

I had remembered the the stories with much fondness - religious allegory and all - after all, I'm a convent girl, and I can brush religious allegory aside when need be. I was really looking forward to them, but oh *dear*. The Xian stuff reads to me now as though it's been shovelled on with a JCB, and the whole middle class mores jarred horribly. And the stories themselves are really quite light in most respects. I was actually pleased to finish the last one this morning - I was determined to get through them, but it was tough work.

I doubt I'll read them again, and I'll wait for LWW on DVD, I think.

next up: Alan Bennett's Untold Stories - looking forward to that.

(no subject)

as seen and mentioned by thunderbox in Another Place, I give you www.cleanflicks.com.

they specialise in editing out the "profanity, nudity, graphic violence and sexual content" from Hollywood movies, then renting them out.

words fail me.