Image borrowed from the author's website

I only found out about this last night on Twitter, when this wonderful writer received birthday congratulations under her pen name of Lian Hearn. See, she doesn't even appear on the Famous Birthdays web site, where there are a whole lot of celebrities, even among the authors, of most of whom I've never heard. I'd heard of Nancy Holder, but not read any of her work.

Silent movie version. Public Domain.

I stumbled across the trailer when I was reading a newspaper article on-line - about Donald Trump, of all things! It was the advertising added to the video footage about Trump.

I never thought it could be done, considering how expensive the first one was, but ... I guess that in this day and age, you can do an awful lot with CGI, making it less expensive.

The movie hasn't had much of a rating in IMDB, but how can I let it go, when it comes out?

I've seen the original, made in 1907, one day in the city. It was Easter and they showed the 1907 version, the 1925 version and the chariot race from the Charlton Heston version.

The original movie was only ten minutes long. I vaguely recall, it had a cast of dozens and ended with the (two-chariot) chariot race. It's actually played a part in history by having gotten its makers into trouble for copyright breach,  so they created a law to make sure it didn't happen again.

And it was hilarious, by our standards. I don't know if it's on YouTube, but worth looking.

The 1925 version, with Ramon Navarro, was actually not bad. I think it went for about two hours, quite impressive for that day and age.

Francis X Bushman played Messala. I read somewhere that he went for advice to Will S Hart, who'd played the role in the Broadway play(and who later became a well-known cowboy star in silent movies). Hart advised him to take the role, saying something along the lines of, "It's the best part in the play! They made me play Ben-Hur once and it made me sick - I couldn't wait to get back to playing Messala again!"

Carmel Myers, who played the vamp, Iras the Egyptian(left out of the later movie) was a rabbi's daughter. Iras is the daughter of Balthasar, one of the Three Wise Men. He has come back looking for the child he once gave presents in that stable, and brought his daughter with him. She falls in love with Messala, abandons her Dad and later regrets her choice.

I remember that from the book, which I read as a child, because it had all that spectacle in it and lots of horses and I was, after all, a little girl longing for a pony... In the novel, as I recall, Ben-Hur's chariot team were bays, not white. But white does look more spectacular in a film - wonder what they'll do in this version? From the looks of the trailer they may be white again, or maybe dapple-grey?

The 1950s version was amazingly beautiful to watch, and that chariot race was breathtaking. It's also the version where, so we heard in The Celluloid Closet, Stephen Boyd, the Irish actor playing Messala, asked how he should handle the scene where he and Ben-Hur first meet again after all those years and was told, "Play it like he's your lover - but don't tell Chuck!"

Is it apocryphal? I don't know, but it makes a good story, and it was told in the film by one of the script-writers. And every time I've watched that scene again, I can't help noticing it - Stephen Boyd really does look as if he's gazing at his lover!

The thing is, I had been enjoying it for the spectacle and for the distinguished cast members such as Jack Hawkins and Frank Thring. Sorry, I know he got an Oscar for the lead role, but Charlton Heston, in my opinion, was very pretty, but not the best actor in the world. His Moses was just as awful. Just my personal opinion, so please, any Heston fans out there, don't kill me! But oh, he was pretty! In all fairness, the lines he got were not that good; he actually did well in Planet Of The Apes, where he had a decent script. And yes, he did make quite a good Michelangelo in The Agony And The Ecstasy, although I'm remembering it from a long time ago.

I went to see the movie one day at the wonderful Astor Cinema, which has the biggest screen in Victoria, and took along my friend Bart, a Catholic, who had never seen it before. Afterwards, discussing it with him, I realised that in his eyes, it was just a Sunday school lesson, not one of the great epics of cinema history.

It hasn't had quite the same feel for me ever since.

The novel was indeed a Sunday school story.  I think it could probably do with some pruning, beginning with the opening scene, where the shepherds see a great light, etc. and the Wise Men come along looking for that stable. It began with a long description of the territory where the shepherds were watching their flocks by night, then the shepherds themselves, then the Wise Men's camels...

It was also interesting in that it's the first time I read the word "voluptuous" applied to a young man, Ben-Hur as a teenager (oh, yes, in the novel he and Messala were teenagers in the early chapters). I asked my English teacher the meaning of the word and she described it as being big, perhaps a little bit too big, ie overweight. So I tend to snicker when slush stories I read describe a character as being "slim but voluptuous."

Nevertheless, it does have a lot of dramatic set pieces. There's the fight at sea. The chariot race. The drama of the Crucifixion. Even reading it, I could almost hear the music, see the crowds...

Hey, I was a child who loved ancient history - anything to read a historical novel!

Just saying, by the way, there weren't any galley slaves in ancient Rome - as I discovered in my reading. The rowers were free sailors, though one of the lower ranks in the Roman navy.

So much for one of the most famous scenes in Ben-Hur!

Ah, well, I guess I'll go see the new one anyway. Morgan Freeman plays Sheik Ilderim and I gather he gets to do a lot more than Hugh Griffith did in the Heston version, though guess what? He got Best Supporting Actor in the Oscars that year and he was delightful in the role. But if Morgan Freeman is playing it, it's going to be dignified, as the trailer seems to suggest. Anything with Morgan Freeman!

I'll see if I can get someone other than Bart to come along, unless, as usual, he's read some interesting things about it. I couldn't put him through another Sunday school story.

Anyone else thinking of going?

I'm lying in bed posting to the world on my little iPad. And it's early on the morning of August 13 and it's also Nation Left-hander Day, so I win on both counts. Go southpaws!

Famous lefthanders? Off the top of my head, Leonardo Da Vinci, though he may have been ambidextrous.  Also, looking it up, I see so many others that I need to choose just a few. President Barack Obama. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Albert Einstein. Bill Gates. Charlie Chaplin. Michelangelo. Marilyn Monroe. Angelina Jolie. Two of the Apollo 11 astronauts - Armstrong and Aldrin. Joan of Arc. Benjamin Franklin... I can't find any writers so far, let me know if you know of one. You notice how many creative people are on that list? I think it's to do with the right-hand side of the brain, the creative side, which is linked with left-handedness.

I first read this some years ago, when it first came out. It's fifteen books into the series of twenty, so near the end. The last book, Brother Cadfael's Penance, felt like a last book, although it didn't have to be, only the author died not long after. Brother Cadfael had disobeyed his Abbot to go to the rescue of his son and was riding home, expecting trouble but thinking it worthwhile. That, I remember.

But this one, I read again yesterday at my mother's home, where I spend Friday nights, and remembered nothing.

I really wasn't in the mood for Vikki Wakefield's latest at the time - I prefer to read something familiar and comforting at bed time and curled up in bed on a weekend, when I don't have to get up at 6.00 am. And whatever I may have to say of Inbetween Days when I've finished, it's neither familiar(first time) nor comforting. And not meant to be comforting!

But I really didn't remember anything, it has been such a long time since I first read it. It did have some of the usual elements - Brother Cadfael accompanies someone on a journey, there's a sweet young couple who aren't allowed to marry for one reason or another(at least, not till the end of the book) and although there's a murder, the killer doesn't actually get executed.

And, as usual, Ellis Peters doesn't cheat her readers with last-minute information they couldn't possibly have known - more than can be said for Agatha Christie, who usually has Poirot announcing in his gather-all-the suspects meeting that he has received a telegram in answer to an inquiry he sent and his suspicions were confirmed! If you read any Brother Cadfael mystery carefully enough, you can usually work out whodunnit. You do need to read carefully and not take any character for granted as a minor character. At least you know it won't be any of the regulars(again - unlike Agatha Christie, who doesn't give you that comfort). That helps.

Anyway, it was a pleasure to re-enter the world of twelfth century England with our favourite herbalist monk!

Probably a bit early to be commenting, but this isn't really a review. I'm up to page 130. It's the last book of the Older Readers section for me - I've read the rest. I don't think it's exactly contemporary fiction, as nobody in the novel so much as mentions the Internet and the heroine, Jack, doesn't have a phone, apart from the one in the home she shares with her sister Trudy, and that one is disconnected for non-payment of the bill, so she has to go to the phone booth to try calling her boyfriend Luke(well, I say boyfriend, but they're not actually dating - all they do is meet weekly to have sex; she says she loves him, he doesn't return her feelings). Having a mobile would allow her to make contact without having to go through his family. In one scene the phone rings out - no message bank. In another, she mentions her video recorder. So, is it set in the 1980s? The 1990s? Certainly not in the here and now.

Jack seems to have a bit of obsessive compulsive disorder, taking the form of  counting the diamond-patterned tiles in the shop where she works.  She also keeps moving her bed around in her room, for no special reason, and setting up a display of toilet rolls at work, angrily shifting them back when they have been moved by the other shop worker. Definitely some OCD there!

The small town where she lives is dying, getting smaller and smaller, and has the appropriate name of  Mobius - you know, like the strip that has only one side. It also has a forest where people go to commit suicide. Very odd place!

I expect I'll finish it on time for Book Week, though, to be honest, I don't know what the students will think of it. It's a strange book...

I finished this yesterday and bought a copy for the library.

Oh, my, this is a deadly serious book, not the slightly humorous, or at least whimsical one I had expected from the blurb. It is about depression. The hero, Declan O'Malley, throws himself under a train in a fit of depression after his girlfriend is sent to live with her aunt in Hong Kong by her abusive mother and doesn't send a text to confirm she has arrived okay. It turns out that her mother had confiscated her phone before she left.

But Declan's depression isn't just about that, it's about something truly horrible that happened when he was six. This is hinted at several times in the course of the book, before you finally learn just what it was his great-aunt Mary did to him when he was a child.

After a gruesome and detailed description of his being dismantled by the train, he speaks to the reader from "non-space", where he gets to see what would have happened if he had hesitated before jumping. It isn't all positive but it's a lot better than being killed and thinking of what it has done to his family, his girl and even the train driver. This takes up most of the novel - and, interestingly, goes over nine years; the Declan of the later part of the novel is well into his twenties.

I found it very readable and you might have noticed I finished it quickly. It might work for some of our students who feel like reading a deadly serious book, but today I only had three Year 7 girls, a Year 9 and a Year 10 with me at book club. And there were only two borrowings from the shortlisted books - The Flywheel and Soon.

I've started reading Inbetween Days by Vikki Wakefield and when that's done I will have read all the Older Readers books. I think, of those I've read so far, I'd give the award to Cloudwish.

And speaking of books that turn out to be deadly serious, I've just begun reading Lili Wilkinson's newest novel, The Boundless Sublime, and I don't think this is going to be the usual romantic comedy which my students enjoy so much. It starts with a thoroughly depressed mother and daughter sitting in the living room watching TV and doing very little else after a family tragedy. Oh, dear. I'm sure it will be a great book, but, I must admit, I like those romantic comedies as much as the kids do, and this is beginning to remind me of the time Paul Jennings, so beloved by so many children for his hilarious stories, decided to write a serious YA novel. It was good, don't get me wrong - in fact, very good! It just didn't feel like Paul Jennings. If it's still in print I'll be very surprised. 

It may be that the author  needed to get this book out of her system. 

Or it may be that funny books just don't win the Children's Book Council Awards. Some of them make  it to the shortlist, but I can't recall one ever winning. Paul Jennings and Andy Griffiths are hugely popular with their readers, but not with awards judges. They just aren't literary enough. Ah, well. 

Anyone else out there reading the list? What do you think?

Inbetween Days is by Vikki Wakefield. I've met Vikki. She was part of a group of writers who once visited my school when the State Library couldn't get enough bookings to run one of their Teen Booktalkers sessions and rang me to ask if I wanted to have them come to my school. It seemed a shame to waste the already-organised session. 

She spoke to the kids about her new novel - her first - and showed them some of the art she had done while writing it. It was a very good talk and the kids were borrowing that book for weeks afterwards.

Now she's on her third and I've just started reading it. I haven't read enough yet to know if I'll like it; I never did get past the first couple of chapters of her second novel, maybe I'd better try again. Sometimes - as I said in another post - there are books it takes ages to get into and then suddenly you finish them in an evening. 

I do like the way she has described a hot summer evening in a way that I recognise. And unlike another award-winning author I won't name here, she hasn't resorted to purple prose. 

I decided to try one more time, after having reserved the book at my local library. This time it worked. What do you think, readers? An electronic glitch? Too many people downloading The Cursed Child at once?

Maybe I'm too cynical. Then again, if I was, I wouldn't have tried again.

But I've just finished the first part, up to Intermission. I'd love to see how they got all the effects on stage, but a review in the Age says they did. Will the play ever be performed here? Well, it took The Mousetrap a long, long time to get out of London. I wasn't born when it started. I might have to be taken to the theatre in a wheelchair if this play takes as long!

So for now, the script only.

Back to my read!

Okay, I didn't pre-order. I don't do that. Not for an ebook. Even when I was buying the print books I'd turn up on the day at Dymock's and there would be copies available.

But these days I buy mostly ebooks. You can simply log into your  account and buy. It downloads for you. You have a new book to enjoy! Why would you need to pre-order? It's electronic, right? They don't need to reprint, send them to the warehouses, send them to the shops.

And now, about an hour after this book became available to buy in ebook, I received the message,"This item is no longer availabłe."

Maybe it's my baby boomer ignorance of the technology others my age invented. How on earth can you run out of e-copies?

Or maybe I'm just a cynical person who thinks that this is a marketing thing. Allow so many downloads, then withdraw it. Keep them hungry. Then put it back, perhaps for a higher price. That'll learn 'em for not pre-ordering!

I'd very much like to read this book. I loved all the novels and I've heard good things about the play. I have the highest respect for the author, who deserves her high income.

But at this stage I may just add my name to the reserve queue at the local library and wait for my turn. Even if it takes months. I used to do that for new Terry Pratchett books - borrow, read, then buy in paperback. If it's good enough for Terry Pratchett, it's good enough for Ms Rowling.

Wel, I've completed my read of this particular CBCA shortlist book.

Is it good? Yes. And even if it doesn't win this award, it has already won some others, including one for spec fic. I finished the last chapters quickly, which says something about the readability of the story, and the heroine was good, as was her foster sister and a boy she was friendly with(no romance) but ...

There were some questions left unanswered at the end. I can't go into detail here without spoilers. I described the story outline in my last post on this. It's a dystopia set in a small village where everyone has been trapped for several generations after a rockfall(known as The Rockfall) got them stuck in a valley surrounded by mountains. It has become the ritual to send very slim young girls from seven years upwards to mine mica in the narrow natural passages -men aren't allowed into the mountain or allowed to scoop anything out, because the only survivors of the disaster last time, just after the Rockfall, were women - seven of them, so there is a team of seven girls who are trained to go in and get the mica needed badly for heat and light -only seven at a time, because that's the ritual. And no scooping out anything but what the mountain will allow because that's what caused the Rockfall. I totally understand the point the author is making here.

As I said in my last post, there's no comment on how small the gene pool is in a place where there's only one village - no point in naming it when there aren't any others - although there is a bit on the careful harvests and how happy everyone is when they manage to catch a bird the villagers can share.

But I think the ending let it down. Not so much the discovery of the other people on the other side and that there might be a way to reach them - that's more or less indicated in the scenes from the POV  of a girl called Lia, so not a spoiler. Again, I can't tell you, because spoiler. But I was left saying, "Hang on, there's been this flashback going on through the book and it never quite told us what happened to two of the characters and suddenly we find out what happened to one of them, but not how." 

To be honest, of the four Older Readers books I've read so far, I like two equally best, The Flywheel and Cloudwish. Possibly Cloudwish a bit ahead... Freedom Ride was good for the history it brought to life, though there were some familiar tropes in it I've seen before. This novel is, so far, the one I like the least. And I'm a lover of speculative fiction. 

 Sorry! 

I've just started my new Western Chances applications for two young women in our Year 10 class. They are being nominated for leadership skills. I think I may have posted about Western Chances before, but not recently.

Western Chances is a scholarship aimed at students in the western suburbs of Melbourne, where a lot of kids have very little money and not much chance of going to university, apart from the TAFE colleges and small local universities. TAFE is fine, but what if you want to do medicine or engineering? At one of the bigger universities? In theory, everyone can go if they're willing to repay some of the debt once they get a job that will have enough income to do so. In practice, there are a lot of expenses you might not have expected, and even if you have a job at McDonald's to help with your share house, it may not be enough... And some have up-front fees; I remember a student of ours who got into nursing, but ended up taking a year off to work up the up-front fees.

And then there's the time before you go to university. This wonderful scholarship was set up some years ago by Terry Bracks, wife of a former Victorian Premier. (That's a state Governor for my US readers). It's not a government thing or it would have been long gone. It relies on donations to pay the staff and help get scholarships out to students who are very good at something but who just can't afford the costs of even a state education. I made a donation this year and last, taken from my inheritance of a few thousand dollars from my late friend jan howard finder(lower-case intended), who passed away a couple of years ago. Businesses do their bit and the staff, who are amazing people, get all sorts of goodies for their Western Chances scholars, as well as the money. I get phone calls from them offering a place in an engineering camp or a free camp of some other kind, and when one of my students said she was interested in events management, the lady I deal with said she knew an events manager who could help to mentor the young lady.

But here's the thing: kids change their minds. These two went for counselling from their teachers and were advised on the subjects best for them. And the girl who had planned on events management changed her mind and decided on teaching. Specifically Foods teaching. For that, she plans on doing a VET subject, Hospitality. Which will cost her $400. And probably a textbook.

And General Maths - $88 for the textbook and $200 for a special calculator.

And Business Management - if she does that as a VET subject, it will cost $200. The VCE version(I hope that's what she's planning) will cost less, but there's certainly a textbook involved.

And Health and Human Development(I'm not sure of how much the textbook for that will cost, but it's bound to be $70-80).

And Psychology? $108 for the text and workbook.

In some cases, second-hand books are possible, but not always. Psychology's textbook has changed, so this year books had to be bought new. Even if they can get them second-hand this year, there's still the workbook, which has to be bought new because you write in them.

How on earth do most kids manage? Not all the kids at my school are from poor families, but that doesn't mean they can afford all the textbooks, not to mention calculators (a good reason not to do maths! And now the Federal government is talking about making maths compulsory all the way through).

And kids who are doing the expensive practical subjects(VET) are quite often kids from poorer families.

The other girl is not as complicated as this one, but she too has some expensive subject choices. Maths alone will cost her $288 and she may need tutoring. I said I'd see if I can get her some money for tutoring - there's an inexpensive tutoring service in the area, but it would still be around $200 altogether for 20 sessions. I'm hoping that there will be free reconditioned laptop computers available this year - there wen't last year, which is why the boys I nominated were given the money and told to arrange their own. It worked out, but they had to agree to make that their scholarship gift for the year. It was too dear for anything else. They already have their special calculators, thank heaven!

I may have to say, "If we can't get a reconditioned computer, you'll have to make a choice."

I know that textbook authors do a lot of work and have to be up-to-date, but really, do textbooks have to be quite that expensive?

Ah, well, I think the young ladies might have to settle for help towards their needs; I just don't think I can get them money for the lot. It will depend on how many applications WC gets this year - and it is very popular.

This is one of those things I do when I'm not being a library and English teacher or writing books or short stories. The kids deserve a hand up! And a few hundred a year can make a huge difference.

I'm off work today after a sleepless night; if you work in an office you can sit at your desk and try to focus, but not when you have kids to teach. It's not a job you can get away with being tired. The kids know when you're faking it.

So, off to rest a bit.

Well, I had to go at some stage, didn't I? I have loved Star Trek since discovering it in my teens. The original cast are either old or have passed away. So it has been wonderful seeing the new young cast who have grown into their roles over the last three movies.

I'm around 70 pages in since last night. This one has already won some awards, including the Aurealis, and been shortlisted in another. It's a dystopian novel in which a small village is located in a valley formed after a rockslide long ago. It's run by the Mothers and girls are valued more than boys because they can be sent, if good enough, into the mountain to harvest mica, which, in this world, is useful for heat and light. They need an alternative to wood fires because in the winter the snow comes right up to the top of the houses and smoke can't escape theough the chimneys, though they do have escape pipes.

And today I read the lot, finishing a few minutes ago. It's one of those "just one more chapter" books. It was a Saturday and the book was on the CBCA shortlist, so... 

It has a lot of charm and humour. It reminds me, oddly, of one of Will Kostakis's novels, without the Greek family or the gay boy. This one is about being a gay girl and trying to run the family restaurant to give her Dad a chance to have a break and an overseas holiday after years of no holidays and a wife who left him for another man and moved from Sydney to Melbourne. But Del(short for Delilah)has troubles when the manager is deported over visa issues and she can't find another one.

 Like the vengeful barista she had to sack when he was lazy and stole money. Like the franchise cafe competing with hers. And then there's her friend Charlie who has moved in to hide from the police after he punched out the father of a young woman he had a crush on. And the beautiful flamenco dancer Rosa whom she watches performing at the tapas bar across the road every night from her window. And the bullying at school for being gay and having had a romance with a girl who is now denying it and telling everyone who will listen that Del had the wrong idea about her. 

Somehow, despite all the disasters, and a case of insta-love, the book is funny, the voice delightful. 

I'll be interested to see how the book will go over with our students. They don't seem to mind the gay boy books - Will Kostakis and David Levithan's books go over quite well in our library, though usually after a teacher recommendation. One of our boys is currently reading and enjoying The Sidekicks, but then, he's a Kostakis fan in general. It was so nice to be able to introduce them last year at Reading Matters when Will came over to say hi. 

I'm sure there are some girls out there not admitting to their sexuality, but I don't know. Even if they aren't around at my school, there's plenty for everyone. 

Interestingly, if Cloudwish was a love letter to Melbourne, this novel is a tribute to Sydney. I've been in Glebe, where it's set, in the YHA, probably the hostel mentioned in it. It's a fairly posh suburb near the sea. I haven't been to the library which the characters campaign to save, but you can check it out in Google Images. It has tourists wanting a bus to Bondi beach, Rose Bay, where two of my nieces live, Central Station and Redfern. You don't have to live there to be able to picture it. 

This novel won the Ampersand Prize given annually by Hardie Grant Egmont for a debut novel.

I now have most - not all - of the Older and Younger Readers books for this year in my library and I've decided to make my way through them and comment as I go.

I've already read and commented on Soon by Morris Gleitzman and Cloudwish by Fiona Wood.

I'm nearly finished reading Sue Lawson's piece of historical fiction set in a small NSW town in 1965, Freedom Ride. It is, of course, about the Australian Freedom Ride led by Charles Perkins, who makes a brief appearance in the novel.

The hero is a white boy, Robbie, who lives with his father and his grandmother. He is not very happy in this life, which includes a school bully, an unpleasant grandmother and a father who goes to the RSL every Friday night and has some secrets her has never shared with Robbie.

And, of course, there's the small-town racism and ignorance and a local policeman who isn't interested in looking after the rights of the local indigenous people, even when one is killed, let alone when they're bashed up.

When Barry Gregory, a young man who has been in London, returns to his hometown to help his mother run the caravan park, things improve for Robbie, who takes a job with him and learns about the outside world and the fact that racism isn't nearly as bad in London as in his town.

I'm enjoying the 1960s references, including to OZ Magazine, which Barry reads.

It does take most of the book to actually get around to the Freedom Riders arriving in Walgaree, Robbie's home, though they're mentioned earlier - and abused by Robbie's father and grandmother.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see what else is available on this year's shortlist. There are some good books so far.

Anyone else reading them?