Purveyor of fine fantasy adventures

Tag: fiction (Page 2 of 3)

Father, forgive me…

…for I have sinned.

I’ve never read George RR Martin.

Don’t ask me why, because I really couldn’t say.  I adore the title of the series “A Song of Ice and Fire”.  I’ve just never found myself motivated to pick up one of his books.  Actually, tell a lie, I did pick up a copy of  “A Game of Thrones” in Waterstone’s once but put it down again before I got to the till.

Before the fantasy establishment mob besieges Cooper Towers with pitchforks and blazing torches, ready to burn the heretic,  let me just say that I am remedying this right this instant.  Since HBO has green-lighted a mini-series based on A Game of Thrones, starring the scrummy Sean Bean, no less, my interest has been piqued.

Piqued enough to go and buy the book.  Gawd knows when I’ll find time to read it, since I’m supposed to be writing one of my own here, but I’ll try.  Really I will.  Now put those pitchforks down before someone gets hurt.

 

Whatever happened to the heroes?

The unsung ones, now quietly dropping off their respective perches and we never know anything about them until their obituary shows up in the newspaper. And you read it, and you think to yourself: “Bloody hell!” and sit there, quite stunned.

Freddie Spencer Chapman is one such. Worked behind enemy lines in the Malaya campaign of WWII, cheerfully blowing up the enemy with bamboo-and-gelignite bombs and inflicting so much damage with two comrades that the Japanese thought they were being taken on by 200 crack commandos. A life that, if it was fiction, would be dismissed as unbelievably far-fetched.

Read his obit, and I dare you not to be moved, inspired, uplifted, and also saddened that we don’t seem to make ’em like that any more.

 

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024 Elspeth Cooper

Theme by Anders NorénUp ↑