Month: December 2013

Hello new readers…

/ Over Hills and Far Away / Leave a comment

Hello to any of you who are visiting and reading for the first time, lovely of you to stop by, and welcome back those that have been here before. 

 

Have a look through the old posts if you like, please feel free to share the link, comment, give me ideas of where I should go to for my trip, particularly in the US, SE Asia, New Zealand or Fiji. Let me know if you would like me to pop by on the trip.  I caan make you a good meal if you can give me a sofa or spare bed to sleep on! I’m very open to people’s ideas and suggestions and I’ll be updating here as things develop.

 

Ellie

 

http://www.twitter.com/serenceinwyn

Recommended Reads: The Old Kingdom Trilogy

/ Over Hills and Far Away / Leave a comment

Recommended Reads: Young Adult Fiction

The Old Kingdom Trilogy by Garth Nix

‘Sabriel’ is set in two realms Ancelstierre, an alternate reality early 20th century England, and the Old Kingdom.  The Old Kingdom is a land of magic and danger, where spirits from the dead and Free Magic roam the land.  Ancelstierre is run by politicians who deny the existence of magic north of Wall, the border between the two lands.

The book is named after it’s heroine, Sabriel, a girl from the Old Kingdom who has been raised in a boarding school south of the Wall. Sabriel’s father is a Necromancer, binding the walking dead and putting them to a final rest, preventing them from performing evil deeds at the hands of an unknown villain.

When Sabriel is sent the necromancy tools (a set of 9 bells which are used to bind spirits into death) by her father, she realises something is desperately wrong,  “he himself was unable to return to the realm of the living… And that meant he was either dead, or trapped by something that should have passed beyond the final gate”.   She must travel to the Old Kingdom to rescue her father and prevent the great evil’s return.

  Continue reading →

Recommended Authors: Neil Gaiman

/ Over Hills and Far Away / Leave a comment

Whilst working at the library, part of my job is to help write content for the library blog.  I’ve not yet managed that, but now that I’m on borrowed time there (see this post) I feel like I need to make up for lost time, and in doing so have decided to start a new section of this blog.  And I’ll tidy it up and send it to whoever it is on the council to put on the library site.

It seems fitting that I’m getting around to writing this as The Ocean at the End of the Lane has just been awarded the Book of the Year by the National Book Awards’ public vote.

Neil Gaiman is an author I originally happened upon by chance, through TV and film.   About 9 years ago a friend gave me a chunky video box containing two tapes.  It was a BBC TV production of Neverwhere.  I’d never heard of it but it had an interesting premise when reading the blurb and a fair few recognisable actors in it. My friend said I could look after it permanently as he’d managed to find a DVD copy at great expense from America.  But if I was ever thinking of getting rid of it, I was to hand it back to him.  I’ve still got it somewhere.

Continue reading →

There must be more than this provincial life…

/ Over Hills and Far Away / 2 Comments

“Little town, it’s a quiet village.

Ev’ry day like the one before…”

Well not exactly the same everyday, but it seems to feel that way a the moment.  I feel like I’m in limbo still, living in the village I was born in, working in the town I grew up in.  I’m doing extra hours as someone left and they’re yet to replace him, so that’s good because otherwise I would probably be spending my days off sitting in bed in my pajamas watching ER or Grey’s Anatomy and eating chocolate.  And frankly that’s not going to do anyone any good now is it?  Nope, better that I go to work, read books (in my lunch break), put stuff away, find books for people, chat too people and help children make things.  And it is a lovely job.  I like libraries, I like talking to people and helping out with things, but there’s only so much time you can spend living with your brother and his girlfriend before you feel like you are very much imposing.

‘Look there she goes that girl is strange, no question

Dazed and distracted, can’t you tell?

Never part of any crowd ’cause her head’s up on some cloud

No denying she’s a funny girl that El (sic)

Look there she goes that girl is so peculiar

I wonder if she’s feeling well

With a dreamy far off look, and her nose stuck in a book

What a puzzle to the rest of us is El (sic)

…

Continue reading →

The Top 75 ‘Pictures of the Day’ for 2013

/ Over Hills and Far Away / Leave a comment

I love photographs, I have loved pouring over pictures of my childhood, trying to remember when they were taken and what the world felt like then, looking at pictures of long dead relatives to see if I could spot any resemblance, looking through a book that Dad bought which has photos of the Paris Exhibition and of Egypt at the turn of the 20th century. I began to love photographs even more when I watched the Steven Poliakoff film ‘Shooting the Past’ in 1999. Shooting the Past delves into a world quite separate from modern life, and demonstrates that the preservation of the past, in order to tell the extraordinary stories of the lives of ordinary people, can be astonishingly powerful and revealing. Each time I re-watch it I see something else.

Perhaps that’s why I take so many photos wherever I go. I want to use them to tell stories one day and I want my relatives to be able to look through them and wonder about where they came from.

Today I was looking through this post from Twisted Sifter and some of the pictures nearly made me cry. They are amazing and I wish I had the skill or opportunity to take them.

Maybe I’ll have an opportunity to add to them one day.

TwistedSifter

 

*UPDATE 12/17/2013* THE TOP 100 ‘PICTURES OF THE DAY’ FOR 2013 HAVE JUST BEEN PUBLISHED! CHECK IT OUT!

 

At the end of every quarter the Sifter highlights the top 25 ‘Pictures of the Day‘, culminating in an epic Top 100 at the end of the year (check out the ‘Top 100 POTDs for 2012‘).

It’s hard to believe we’re already in the last quarter of 2013. Below you will find the third installment of this quarterly compilation. All credit goes to the individual photographers and their inspiring visions of our beautiful planet.

For more information on any individual photograph, click the title or image to be taken to the original post.

*Please note the photographs themselves were not necessarily taken in 2013, they just happened to be featured as a POTD on TwistedSifter. The pictures are also listed in reverse chronological order. There…

View original post 1,237 more words