Igenlode Wordsmith > Recent Status Updates

After 150 pages they haven't even managed to START crossing Greenland yet, but are still negotiating the coastal waters...

A nice easy chapter, as we'd already covered the prepositional case in the very first chapter of the other book!

Ironically, two of the words I had to learn for this chapter (смелый, courageous and горло болит, my throat hurts) both subsequently turned up in YouTube videos yesterday: virtue rewarded! (As, oddly enough, did представитель, министерство and торговля, albeit all in separate contexts - one phrase I *never* thought was going to be useful outside the context of the Soviet 1960s!)

"The stress tends to be capricious in the short form of many adjectives. The reader should not worry about this unduly at the present stage. He may even be comforted to know that in some cases Russians themselves fail to agree on the stress of the short form of the adjective" - always nice to see a textbook with a sense of humour!

I had forgotten how very, very good Pratchett was back when he was still good...

It's an interesting twist to meet Tristan in the middle of his tale and have him narrate his own story in disguise, but overall I think the author is a bit hamstrung by fidelity to Mallory and his repetitive format of jousts and quests - it feels formulaic rather than heroic...

The 'pairs of words to fill in the model sentence' format is actually a very useful and effective drill, especially for the solo student. The trouble is that with no teacher and no key to those exercises there is no way to check if you actually got all the endings right...

I thought I'd read this before, and now I see that I definitely have. Quick, light going.
(They say there may be a new series in the offing now that the children are older...)

Apparently I read this book in 2022.
I have absolutely no recollection of its contents, although it is very readable!

roué: literally, 'a man who has been executed by being broken on the wheel' (who has been 'wheeled') and by extension, a man deserving of such punishment :-p

I assumed this was fiction, but apparently it isn't!
I don't actually know, or don't remember, what the famous "affair of the Queen's necklace" was, so shall be able to read this without foreknowledge of how it turns out...

Interesting that rats and mice were apparently introduced to Europe - as subsequently so many islands - only by human traders, and are unknown in the fossil record before the Iron Age!

Sadly the "Turakina"/"City of Perth", named as being a survivor in 1912 along with the "Cutty Sark" as "two of the fastest and most beautiful ships ever built", was according to the records broken up shortly afterwards, in 1914 :-(

"leur roi et leur reine, dont ils étaient privés depuis une année" - historically probably true, but Dumas has only shown us a couple of months of winter since Athos and Aramis left to save the English King :-p

We have now had 12 years of outward tables, and space and, no doubt, the patience of the reader are both growing exhausted...
:-D

"Like all converted steamers she was a very fast sailer" - odd, I should have expected the opposite to be the case!

And I thought a romance between the Comte de La Fère and Madame de Chevreuse was an invention of Khilkevich for the purposes of his film.... but Athos, do I see you *flirting* with her? Inviting her to stay with you....?

A fascinating alternate history suggestion to go with the alternate religion - Edward II is still alive, put in secret captivity by Mortimer (which means that everybody, including his son, has a motive to see him dead...)

I was originally extremely sceptical of the typically romantic fan-theory that Aramis is the secret father of the son of Madame de Longueville... but d'Artagnan is undoubtedly seen to hint explicitly at just that here.
"M. de Longueville est de race royale. Son fils, Madame... doit en être, puisque le mari de sa mère en est" :P
In other words, the baby is *not* the son of "his mother's husband" :-p

Manipulation of Aramis: "Distrust Porthos and Athos, who may be moved by pity". Manipulation of Porthos: "Distrust Aramis, who is selfish, and Athos, who is too unselfish to appreciate that men like you and I may have legitimate desires". Manipulation of Athos: "Do this to save my life".

:-(