V. busy right now preparing for upcoming travel, but I did not post last week and probably will be too busy the next two weeks also, so I should catch up on books.

Bartholomew Fair, Ben Jonson. I read this in college, and all I can remember of the experience of reading it is that I was on the bus home from Thanksgiving. As with all public domain plays, I was reading this with half an eye as to whether it would make a good readaloud, and I think the answer is probably not; I suspect it actually works best on stage with actors who can get the characters across.

A Tale of Time City, Diana Wynne Jones. Hugo Award winning (!) podcast Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones released its episode on this book over the weekend. At some point I should actually try listening to the podcast, but I'm a text/instant gratification person, so I started reading, and midway through when they moved from the part of the book that is mostly setting to the part that is plot, decided I should reread the book before continuing, and fortunately realized that I had a copy in a box of books I hadn't unpacked. Things that struck me this read around: it is so very much a Diana Wynne Jones book, both in writing style and in themes. Vivian gets to be physically aggressive with the butter-pies, and I feel uncomfortable reading that. This is the sort of time travel book that doesn't fuss much about language barriers (as lannamichaels would say, everyone has the metaphorical fish in their ear); we know that Time City has developed its own writing system, which mainly exists for the purpose of the one hilarious translation scene, but everyone in Time City and the various bits of history we see is talking recognizable English.

A Nursery in the Nineties, Eleanor Farjeon. I know Farjeon as the author of Morning is Broken, and of Cats Sleep Everywhere, and for her novel The Glass Slipper that I read when I was about 8 or 9. Recently I was listening to a classical album with a track by her brother Harry Farjeon, and that caused me to look the entire family up on wikipedia, and they are incredibly fascinating. This is Eleanor's book about her family history and childhood.

The story so far: Benjamin Farjeon, Eleanor's father, ran off from his Orthodox Jewish family to make a fortune in Australia and New Zealand. After having set himself up there as a successful newspaper man, he receives a kind rejection letter from Charles Dickens and takes this as a signal that he should move back to England and start a literary career, which is remarkably successful (despite Dickens dying too early to be of any help). Meanwhile, Margaret Jefferson, Eleanor's mother, descended from a long line of popular actors, grows up in the US around the time of the Civil War. As a young woman she reads one of Benjamin's books and decides it is the best book ever -- now she is about to go to England where they will presumably meet and fall in love!