On The Road With Al and Ivy: A Homeless Literary Chronicle: On The Road With Al and Ivy: A Homeless Literary Chronicle - May 2021: The Original Scroll (like it's later published version) had an episodic approach to story telling, moving from one scene to another as it appeared in Kerouac's head, as opposed to events tied to a linear time frame. He spends time in the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, yet describes very little of what he saw. Days or weeks are often covered with a single sentence, yet many pages are devoted to conversations with a friend or friends, and if he's waiting for money to come via mail (or wages on payday), he'll just skip over to it's arrival and then the narrative becomes full again. Wow! Have the people at Google fixed (at least partially) the "Blog this" feature? Now all they need to do to fix it completely is to bring the old one back, so that if I want to but three quotes into the same blog post I don't create three separate and superfluous blog posts!
King Of Shadows by Susan Cooper
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A surprisingly moving story about an orphan boy actor who is magically transported 400 years back from the 20th century to the original Globe theatre, where he performs in A Midsummer Night's Dream which he had been rehearsing for in his own time) and meets William Shakespeare himself.
This was the third book by Susan Cooper I'd read in the last couple of months, and I liked it a lot better than her The Dark is Rising. It invites comparison with another book I read not so long ago -- Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill -- see my review here.
Both books feature Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and in both books children are plucked out of their own time into the past and discover something of past history. But I think Susan Cooper tells a better story, and tells it better than Kipling. I think Kipling's Kim is far better than his Puck of Pook's Hill, and have read that several times, but Kim is a spy story and a Bildungsroman, not fantasy.
King of Shadows also features bubonic plague, and reminded me of another historical fantasy book that featured that, which seemed appropriate reading for our times of quarantine. For more on that, and other plague-time reading, see Physical distance and social proximity in a time of plague.
As recent posts on this blog show, the "Blog This" tool has been corrupted and produces corrupt blog posts as a result of "improvements" made by the people at Blogger. It was a good tool and worked well for 15 years or more, but as can be seen from recent posts on this blog, it has not been "improved" by the changes, and it is now of very little use.
When will people learn the importance of the principle" if it ain't broke, don't fix it?
I really wish the people at Blogger would bring back the old one, which was useful in many ways, none of which work any more. For example:
They have entirely removed all functionslity from this tool;, making "Blog This" a non-function, a totally functionless function.
Bring back the "Blog this" that was useful and worked.
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I see the good folks at Blogger have broken the "blog this" feature.
Pity.
When will they learn the truth of "If it ain't brioke, don't fix it".
