Now I've finally read all of Jane Austen's completed novels. I thought Northanger Abbey was delightful. And I just discovered that there's a BBC production. Yay!
did you hear about "Sundays with Jane"? Starting Jan 18, 2008 every Sunday night, every Austen novel will be on Masterpiece theater. 2008 will be a good year!
No, I didn't know about that, but I did notice on amazon.com that those Masterpiece Theater productions are going to be available, presumably after they air. We don't have TV, so I'll have to get them some other way. Funny how I'm never tired of seeing new versions of Jane Austen's novels. It's always fun to see someone else's take.
Actually, Ivy has recorded the new Masterpiece Theater versions and I'll be able to watch them in a few weeks when I go to her house to watch her kids for a week. Yay! I'm excited to see them. Ivy said they've been good.
We took a train from Rome to Ancona, Italy, where we had a one-day stop. Ancona is about ¾ of the way up the east coast, on the Adriatic Sea. The next evening we planned to take an overnight ferry to Split, Croatia, so this seemed like a simple transfer place, but Ancona is a really neat city itself! At night I wandered around and ended up hiking to a functioning lighthouse. The stone sign is at 104 meters above sea level, about 341 feet. Our neighborhood had some nice murals / graffiti: Here is a view out over a pentagonal building formerly used as a quarantine colony, a little island right by the city, open to the public: There are quite a few drinking fountains scattered all over, and all the ones we tried worked! This is the correct way for a city to be. It is very hilly, with stairs and steep roads all over. Many narrow little alleys between buildings, and connecting passages and staircases up and down hills, between houses, churches, and pa...
Malta’s long history is very interesting, including what is widely thought to be the shipwreck by the apostle Paul in AD 60 described in the New Testament Acts of the Apostles chapter 28 , the last chapter in Acts. Later there was a period where the inhabitants were killed and it was mostly unpopulated, then was resettled around AD 1049 by a Muslim community and their slaves, who rebuilt a ruined city and called it Mdina after the Arabian Madīnah / Medina. Eventually Christians reconquered the island, yet the Arabic dialect spoken by the population remained, with new Christian faith. Here is one example, a guest house called Dar is-Sliem, “house of peace” in Maltese, similar to Dar es Salaam in Arabic, the largest city in Tanzania: Nowadays Malta is a strongly Catholic country. This is evident in many ways. Visually it is obvious in the large in the many, many churches on the islands. In the small, see the very common house devotional niċċa (niches) and shrines that are al...
Mira and I made it to Malta! This is where our trip really began, at the airport which has a nice aquarium: Some views around the town of Sliema where we stayed. It has big built-up tourist areas but also plenty of locals and older buildings: The promenade along the beach is great. Along the southeastern tip (see this Google Maps view ) there are swimming pools cut into the stone in the ocean and people swim and practice diving there with constantly renewed water but without being in the open ocean: And there are cats. First, this statue of one looking out over a bay, then some real ones. They’re pretty mellow: I srictly didn’t park my lack of a car here: And while it probably seemed like a good idea to mix “energy” plus “Malta” to make the name of the electric company, “Enemalta” didn’t sound so good when we saw this sign outside public toilets: We will have more to share about this beautiful island!
did you hear about "Sundays with Jane"? Starting Jan 18, 2008 every Sunday night, every Austen novel will be on Masterpiece theater. 2008 will be a good year!
ReplyDeleteNo, I didn't know about that, but I did notice on amazon.com that those Masterpiece Theater productions are going to be available, presumably after they air. We don't have TV, so I'll have to get them some other way. Funny how I'm never tired of seeing new versions of Jane Austen's novels. It's always fun to see someone else's take.
ReplyDeleteif you want you can watch 16 episodes on YouTube, someone uploaded the new version. Persuasion and Northanger Abbey was phenomenal.
ReplyDeleteActually, Ivy has recorded the new Masterpiece Theater versions and I'll be able to watch them in a few weeks when I go to her house to watch her kids for a week. Yay! I'm excited to see them. Ivy said they've been good.
ReplyDelete