toothache and books

[watervole]

THe toothache wends its merry way along.

It wasn't too bad over the weekend - settled down enough for me to go on the ZZ9 slouch to Birmingham (very strange visiting the city at street level - I've been there several times at water level on the canals and it's like visiting a totally different city).

I went to my nephew's 3rd birthday party on the Sunday, felt a little bit queasy, but survived okay and greatly enjoyed playing with the boys and catching up with family.

Monday, Richard had a day off work and I was feeling pretty good and we cleared out a lot of odd jobs between us. However, last night, the toothache started up again and it's still bad (worse) this morning.

I find I can only read books that I've already read when I'm in this condition, it reduces the concentration needed. Hence, I've got through three Pratchetts in rapid succession (NIght Watch is better than I remembered, and I remembered it as good) and a copy of Sharpe's REgiment that I got in Oxfam. I haven't actually read the Sharpe novel before, but I've been watching the TV movies and saw this one recently. I was surprised by how faithful the show was to the book. There were changes, but they were all very minor ones. The two most visible changes were done for obvious reasons. One shifted a dramatic moment (an acceptance of a marriage proposal) to nearer the end to make it more of a closure to the episode, and the other reduced a really large mock battle to a smaller theatrical presentation - for very obvious reasons of budget. Several thousand troops in Hyde Park would have been a bit of a killer.

I would guess that the novels with the most battles are hardest to do on screen - I watched one last night where they were assaulting Toulouse and I have to say that the city appeared to be reduced to one very short section of wall.

Comments

[sharikkamur.livejournal.com]

The Sharpe series isn't entirely faithful to the books. Sharpe's Gold in particular comes to mind. I find both interpretations enjoyable all the same.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Sharpes Gold was the weakest of the T shows, so I am hopeful that the book is better. I was told that they had to invent some new bits as there were more battle scenes than they could handle within budget, so they had to concentrate on the non-combat bits and expand them.

[dougs.livejournal.com]

I omitted to ask anyone to write up the slouch for the magazine. Would you be able to put together four or five hundred words and email it to editor at zz9.org?

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Normally, yes. Today, in pain and feeling nauseaous, no. I can barely put together a coherent sentence in LJ (and I am editing typos as I go).

Today is the kind of day where I ask friends with free time to give me a phone call and distract me.