Booking Through Thursday: When despair comes...

[fajrdrako]

From Booking Through Thursday:

Okay . . . picture this (really) worst-case scenario: It’s cold and raining, your boyfriend/girlfriend has just dumped you, you’ve just been fired, the pile of unpaid bills is sky-high, your beloved pet has recently died, and you think you’re coming down with a cold. All you want to do (other than hiding under the covers) is to curl up with a good book, something warm and comforting that will make you feel better.

What do you read?

I read The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett.

Easy answer. Best comfort read in the universe.

Comments

[basingstoke.livejournal.com]

heh.

I don't read a book. I watch Oz, because it could be so much worse.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Whatever works!

If I watched something it would be... It would be... Hmm.

Maybe "The Lion in Winter". Maybe "The Sound of Music". One of those things I already know by heart and can just relax into.

Maybe even Torchwood episodes....

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

I'd go to bed. Because, clearly, tomorrow has to be better.

Though, either "The Princess Bride" or some version of Jeeves & Wooster would not be amiss. Or the musical version of "The Producers." But mostly sleep.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Good choice! Including sleep. Any possible dreams would have to be better. Besides, one could face all or any of those troubles better if well rested.

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

Cold Comfort Farm.

Or children's classics - any Anne of Green Gables book, Heidi, A Secret Garden, A Little Princess, that kind of thing.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Good choices, all of them!

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Cold Comfort Farm: yayyyyy!

I love the 1968 BBC TV version of it, too (better than the 1995 remake: it includes more of the narration).

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I've only ever seen one version - probably that of 1995? - mostly what I remember is that it had Rufus Sewell in it.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I think I sent you the 1968 version – Maybe you just haven't got around to it yet. Alasdair Sim as Amos, Rosalie Crutchley as Judith, Sarah Badel as Flora, Brian Blessed as Reuben, and a very young (it was his first leading role) Peter Egan as Seth, wearing a good deal less than Rufus did in the same role…
Enjoy the view.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I looked at it just to see it was there but haven't had a chance to watch it through. (Nice pile o' stuff waiting for me beside my television!) Lovely pictures!

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Let's just say that that shirt stays completely unfastened throughout the entire series, except when he's in an evening suit.
;-D
(Amusingly, 15 years later Peter played the rather more sophisticated, if strange 700-year-old who is the hero of my current fic (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3678507/1/Survivors)…)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Very cool! He looks good.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I just wish they had given us some mediæval flashbacks with Raoul in Dark Side: he'd be very elegant in the habit of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple…

He seems to be a nice man, too. I wrote a fan-letter to him once, and got a note back (which I think got lost in a house-move, alas), because he has done literary readings in aid of one of my favourite charities.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

How wonderful!

I love the way the Templars looked.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Yes. The habit was very graceful: ankle-length black or dark coloured tunic, with a white mantle for knights (black or brown for sergeants or serving brothers) blazoned with the red cross on the left breast, and a little black beret/cap.


Sadly, the nearest we got in Dark Side was the Salles des Croisades-y portrait which Raoul keeps in his office, and claims is an 'ancestor'. Mind, given that the author seems to have had some of the usual odd ideas about the Templars (which I'm dismantling in the fic!), this may be something for which to be thankful…

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Good pictures, anyway.

I think I'll have to search out a good piece of Templar art for my living room.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

The 2 Helen Nicholson books, the New History and the Osprey one, have lots of nice plates that would blow up to A4 or A3 on a good quality copier.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes - good idea!

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

The admission ceremony painting is from the Osprey book. The New History has lots of scrumptious buildings, paintings and sculptures.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

A good place to start.

There's a local artist who does lovely medieval-inspired art - and I've lost her name. Hope to find her again. Probably can't afford her art, but I'd love to look at it.

There's another local artist, Rosemary Spragg, who does lovey medieval plaster reliefs - I have one of the north door, Chartres Cathedral. Love it.

But I've never seen her do Templars. She does have a nice version of St. George.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

The New History has a lovely pic from the Alfonso X MS of a pair of them playing chess in full habit (with the dinky little hats).

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I do love chess pictures. I love pictures of any activity or event (or building or place) that has survived from then till now.

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I didn't know there had been an earlier TV version. I thought Ian McKellen was fantastic as Amos in the 1995 one, but I did miss the narration a bit.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I have the official NTSC videotape set (now deleted), and can DVD 'em if you're interested (as I did for fajrdrako).

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

Hmm, not sure actually. I'm a little put off by the pictures you posted - that's not how I imagine the characters at all, and I'm having difficulty with Brian Blessed as Reuben. I'm always a little wary of adaptations of books I really love - I saw the 1995 version before I read the book, and after I read the book I didn't want to see it again because I preferred reading it.

Thanks for the offer though.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I liked the 1968 version better: I was impressed that it kept the narrator as a voice-over, and even found a way to indicate the asterisked passages!

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

Sorcery and Cecilia by Pat Wrede and Caroline Stevermer, or one of its sequels. Or A College of Magics or A Scholar of Magics by Stevermer.

I would definitely not read a book for the first time when I'm miserable. Did that once after I got laid off -- it ruined the book for me.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes - when things are bad, that when it's time to reread something. And it would be a really bad time to take a chance on something that might have a depressing ending.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I don't read under such circumstances: I write. Either research, or if we're talking major comfort-need, fanfic.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Depending on circumstances, I find it difficult to write if I have something on my mind. It's a matter of apportioning of energy.

Which is too bad, because writing certainly takes my mind off myself, and refocuses my energy.

Not that there's anything wrong with reading under stress. Or re-reading.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

For me, fic is the ultimate comfort-blanket/escape. Reading doesn't give me the same degree of immersion in another world.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

For me, a good book is the best refuge. Good fic can do the same thing, especially if it's something I know is extremely good - this is why I tend to reread things I've already read when I'm down.

[msilverstar]

Jessica Mitford's A Fine Old Conflict is my comfort read. How I wish I'd met her when she was alive, she lived just a few miles from me.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I haven't read it - thanks for the recommendation.

[magika83.livejournal.com]

I haven't read The Game of Kings, so I can't comment on that one (though it sounds interesting!), but I would read Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher. It's really just a book about ordinary people leading ordinary lives, but Pilcher makes ordinary seem nothing less than magical. And it's set (mostly) in Scotland just before Christmas. Add a blanket and a box of chocolate, and I might stop crying.