Typepad featured blog

Petrona is the Typepad featured blog for today, 2 March 2007.  As Jenny strangely said when her father asked her what she thought of the new iron I bought the other day: "cool".

It does feel strange to have one’s blog reviewed through someone else’s eyes, that someone being (I presume) a Californian web technowiz, who has never met me and probably doesn’t have that many overlapping interests with a rapidly ageing English person.  Here’s an extract:

Petrona

Maxine Clarke is a mega-blogger. She authors seven blogs, mostly about her love of books, publishing, and the writing world. Petrona is her personal blog, which shares the life and thoughts of a mother of two living in the South of England. Maxine has been a science journal editor for most of her working life, but in reading Petrona it can seem like she was reborn once she became a blogger. It started as an experiment, but then became substantially meaningful to her, if not her favorite personal pursuit.

Thank you, Typepad. I feel very grateful and honoured to have been selected, especially as I did not nominate myself (as I see is encouraged,  from the Everything Typepad page).

Dylan Hears a Who!

Link: Dylan Hears a Who!.

Dave Lull has sent me a truly wondrous link (above): Dylan’s tribute to Dr Seuss. Listen to seven tracks, including the incomparable Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, and one new to me but curiously inappropriate: Too Many Daves.

Thanks, Dave — I loved it. As you know I usually have the volume turned off, but Jenny has been using my computer to play Sims so had left it on. I got quite a start when I clicked on the link to have the immortal tones of Mr R. Z. blasting out at me — lucky, though, as it turned out, otherwise I would not have realised it was something to which one could listen (being a bit non-intuitive on the audio front).

BBC classics on special offer

The BBC is offering DVDs of its classic drama productions "from £7.99". The BBC shop’s website is featuring the "old" Pride and Prejudice (Andrew Davies/Colin Firth version) for £11.99 — it is twice as long or more than the current (Deborah Moggach/Keira Knightley) version, and although it contains a few Andrew Davies-isms deviating from the book, it is a wonderful production.

Persuasion is £9.99,  Wuthering Heights £7.99, North and South £9.99 and many others are listed. I can recommend the North and South (starring, as Cathy tells me, "Guy of Gisborne"), but have not seen this version of WH. I have seen a good ITV production which covers the whole story and not just the first half, but I trust the BBC to do the same and not go the Hollywood route of missing out all of part 2. The ITV version, incidentally, features the current Mr Darcy, Matthew MacFaddyn, in an earlyish role as Hareton Earnshaw.

It is probably worth doing a price comparison on Amazon, but the BBC’s listing is a quick way to see what classics are currently available, which Amazon does not do so well. (Amazon’s definition of "classic" being unintentionally amusing, when you see some of the titles interspersed with those that would be more generally considered to be qualifiers.)