The Butterfly That Stamped, by Rudyard Kipling.
Last night, Sarah and I finished reading the last chapter of The Last Battle. We've been reading the Narnia books for more than a year now, a few chapters a night, a few days a week, with other books interspersed here and there.
This is the first time I've read all the way through the Narnia books for probably 20 years, and they had as much magic this time as the last. Perhaps even more, as I got to share it with Sarah. I think perhaps the end of the Last Battle was a little too high-browed for her. But she's definitely had her appetite whetted for books of this short, and wants to know what other books might fall in this category.
Maybe, just maybe, we can read The Hobbit before too long. :-)
What's life without a few Alarums and Excursions?
(Re-re-re-re-reading Dandelion Wine. There's some delightful word-pictures in there.)
I'm currently writing 4 things. One of them is creative, and the other are works of reference, into which I try to shoehorn just enough of my personality that it is actually me, and not merely the technology, which is speaking.
It seems that each time I try to write something non-technical, I get hung up before I can make it very far. I suppose it could be that I'm just not particularly creative - that has certainly occurred to me. Or it could be that it's OK that my skills lay elsewhere. I have some stories that I want to tell, but when I tell them, they seem stilted and wooden next to the words of Bradbury, Dickens, and Kipling that I've been reading so much of lately. So I end up throwing away a lot of stuff, and never letting anyone see it.
I suppose this is for the best. It's not very good. And mostly it's the process of writing it that I enjoy, and then find myself embarrassed to show anybody the results.
Anyways, I'm writing this, mostly to avoid writing those other things. Deadlines, you know.
The Cat That Walked By Himself, by Rudyard Kipling.
(Approx 10MB, 21 minutes)
