Book Review- The Ruby in The Smoke

"On a cold, fretful afternoon in early October, 1872, a hansom cab drew up outside the offices of Lockhart and Selby, Shipping Agents in the financial heart of London, and a young girl got out and paid the driver.

She was a person of sixteen or so -alone, and uncommonly pretty. She was slender and pale, and dressed in mourning, with a black bonnet under which she tucked back a straying twist of blonde hair that the wind had teased loose. She had unusually dark brown eyes for one so fair. Her name was Sally Lockhart; and within fifteen minutes, she was going to kill a man."

That opening to Philip Pullman's first Sally Lockhart adventure, The Ruby in the Smoke packed a narrative punch. As soon as I read it, questions flooded my brain. I had been scared to read this as I enjoyed the Northern Lights trilogy so much that anything without Lyra and Will in seemed pointless. I didn't see the BBC adaptation of the novel, so I went in blind, my favourite way to read a book. The story is set in Victorian London and follows the adventures of the recently orphaned Sally Lockhart, 16 and a more unconventional Victorian heroine you could not imagine. Sally is clever, good with a gun, can speak Hindustani and balance an account book as well as an accountant. Her adventure starts when she receives a mysterious message from a friend of her recently drowned father who was involved in the world of shipping. The words "the Seven Blessings" lead to a world of secrets, Chinese gangsters, opium, riddles, extreme danger and of course, the mysterious ruby in the title. Along the way Sally is befriended by a photographer and his equally unconventional sister who try to help her make sense of the mysterious dangers that surround her.
This book gripped me from the start, and I was soon thrust into Sally's world. There is a real sense of danger and menace, this is not a Victorian world of lace curtains and tea shops; villainy lurks on every corner. I can't wait to read the remaining books in the series!

Hobbit book fetches high price

A first edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit sold for £6,000 at an auction in Norfolk. The book was first published in September 1937, and only 1,500 were ever printed. They sold out by December and so are very, very rare. ABEBooks sold a first edition in the original dust jacket for $65,000. If you look here, you can see how expensive these editions are. This article will fill you in on all the various editions. If you are interested in seeing various different covers, then this website has many different examples of cover art.

Beowulf

Beowulf is one of the oldest poems in the English language. Written sometime between 800 and 1100 AD, it tells the story of Beowulf, a brave warrior who fought many monsters. The British Library holds the only remaining copy of the poem, pictured on the left. This was nearly destroyed in a fire in the 1700s, so it's a good job the library has digitised it!

Beowulf is written in Old English which looks very different to the Modern English which we use today.
If you listen carefully, you can hear some similarities with the English we speak 1,000 years later. The British library has a link to a reading of a passage from Beowulf in the original Old English here. In this passage, reproduced here from the website,

The Danish king speaks to Beowulf, telling him of the terrible place where Grendel's mother lived. He describes the desolate landscape: the wolf-haunted slopes, perilous paths through the marshes, a mountain stream that plunges into the earth, and a lake overhung with trees bound in eternal frost, whose waters burn at night with a dreadful fire. A stag chased by hounds allows itself to be torn apart rather than plunge into those waters. It is a dark, misty and fearful place. Hrothgar offers rich rewards of twisted gold if Beowulf can find and kill the monster and escape with his life.

Can you find any similarities with Modern English?

If you want to read a translation into Modern English, you can find several online. This one is known as the Gummere translation and was done in 1910. It is very poetic and uses a lot of alliteration, just like the oiginal.
Below is a selection from the text, describing Grendel's attack on Beowulf's men

He spied in hall the hero-band,
kin and clansmen clustered asleep,
hardy liegemen. Then laughed his heart;
for the monster was minded, ere morn should dawn,
savage, to sever the soul of each,
life from body, since lusty banquet
waited his will! But Wyrd forbade him
to seize any more of men on earth
after that evening. Eagerly watched
Hygelac's kinsman his cursed foe,
how he would fare in fell attack.
Not that the monster was minded to pause!
Straightway he seized a sleeping warrior
for the first, and tore him fiercely asunder,
the bone-frame bit, drank blood in streams,
swallowed him piecemeal: swiftly thus
the lifeless corse was clear devoured,
e'en feet and hands.

A very addictive game

Multipopword is just like Blogger, except you are playig online against others. You have to drag your mouse over adjoining letters to create words, building up your score. You cannot stop at just one game...

Much Ado About Nothing

SATS are fast approaching, and one of the biggest concerns for pupils is the Shakespeare Paper. Y8s and Y9s are studying Much Ado About Nothing this year, so I thought I would collate a few sites that might be worth a look.
Firstly, the 2 key scenes- the first one is from Act 4 Scene 1 and covers lines 196-325.
You can find it here, at the BBC bitesize website.
The second key comes at the very end of the play, Act 5 Scene 4 (the whole scene). You can find it here, on the previous site.

The Bitesize site also contains an excellent summary of the play.

If you find it helpful to listen to information when you revise, you may like these podcasts. They contain actors from the Globe Theatre's production of Much Ado discussing how the character feel and act in the key scenes. You can download them as MP3 files or listen to them on the site.

The SparkNotes sites has some good summaries and discussions of key themes and ideas in the play.

Finally, set your video/sky+/other gizmo to record the revision programme on Much Ado on the 13 March, 4am-6am on BBC2.