I mean how could I stop right now? Everything can wait!
What typically starts out as a slight perusal, always develops into something more.
And of course, once you get going it is impossible to stop.
But who needs sleep anyway?
For more book filled posts, go to Portrait of a Fangirl
It’s true, they are my home away from home; sucking me into different lives, worlds, people, and experiences.
Yep:
For more book filled posts, go to Rainy Days & Rainy Nights
For more on Colin Firth, go to Always There for You
For more quotes, go to Keep Moving Forward
Yesterday I went to a Christmas party, and everyone there was saying how wonderful Christmas is. There is just something so special about it, how it can truly change attitudes from the miserly Scrooges and grumpy Grinches to love, compassion, giving, etc. It is truly the most wonderful time of the year, just like today’s Christmas Carol says.
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year was written in 1963 and first performed by Andy Williams, being covered many times by others. It was also named by Billboard as one of the top 10 holiday songs. I know I love it!
For more Andy Williams, go to It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
For more Christmas Carols, go to A Cowboy’s Christmas
He lists some well-known Medieval texts. Then the page is torn. The next page is missing. He saw a man burned at the stake, along with a book…a book considered too dangerous to keep.
So this year it has been hard selecting TV episodes. I had quite a few I was going to cover, trying to decided between Grimm and Supernatural, but then I thought I have already choosen an episoide from both those TV shows. It is time to select one from a show I haven’t covered yet. So I settled on Midsomer Murders.
Midsomer Murders is a Britsh TV series based off a book series of the same name. How their Department of Criminal Investigations (DCI) teams works is that they have a county in which they travel all over investigating, similar to the Sheriff’s department. Tom Barnaby (John Nettles) is head of the Midsomer unit and is extremely intelligent and excellent at his job. The series is still ongoing, but I stopped watching after Tom Barnaby retired.
How each episode works is someone is murdered, of course. Tom and his assistant, (in this episode Tom has currently been working with his third assistant, Ben Jones, and who I think is the best of the bunch) and they go around meeting different people and we are told their back stories. Typically more than one person dies, with Barnaby & Jones figuring out who the killer is, connecting every dot, and solving the crime.
So Halloween night is approaching. Everyone is getting ready, including a coven of witches who are currently bringing another woman into the fold.
As part of the ceremony, people around the woman entering hold an knife, arrow, axe, and sword. They also call up demons to their Temple of Thoth.
The next day, the coven leader, Ernest Balliol is watching an interview of Aloysius Wilmington on his new book. Back in the ’70s, Aloysius was a leader of The Temple of Thoth and claimed to have The Book of Thoth. He lead a huge group of witches and warlocks. However, in his new book he claims everything was a lie. He took a bunch of different ancient religions, cut and paste them, and combined it with drugs, sex & rock ‘n roll.
He also goes on to call everyone who has ever followed him to be a gullible and stupid idiot.
Ernest is incensed, telling his wife Estelle he will never be able to get over what Aloysius says,at least not until he is dead.
Meanwhile, someone has taken poison off of poison dart frogs, broken into the community hall and tampered with a magic box. Who would do this and why?
Aloysius’ nephew Simon, has been working in the library on Aloysius’ estate. Everything will eventually go to him, so he is in charge of deciding which books need to be fixed and which need to be rid of. There are all kinds of books from Wilmingtons through the ages, along with strange ones that Aloysius bought in his youth.
What Aloysius doesn’t know, is that Simon is looking for the famed Book of Thoth.
He needs it to pay back a debt to Hugo Cartwright. Simon used to work for Hugo’s antique bookshop, but stole money to feed his drug habit. Now he is clean, but Hugo is blackmailing him to steal books from his uncle for him to sell, telling him the only way to make his tab clear, is if he can find the book.
And he’s not the only one who wants it. Ernest also is after the book desiring it to make him more powerful, so he has his daughter Isolde romance Simon, and convince him to hand it over. She too wants the book, but for a different reason. She wants to use it for her mentally unstable mother, who is convinced that she is possessed by demons. So far, Simon has yet to find it, but the pressure is definitely on.
The next day, Ernest decides to confront Aloysius about what he said on TV. Aloysius continues stating that Ernest is an idiot.
And Ernest becomes so angry he charges at Aloysius’ car, breaking the open door.
Meanwhile, it turns out that the girl who was just brought in the coven is Christine, the caretaker of Isolde and her brother Tristan’s mother Rosemary. As I have said before Rosemary is completely mad, believing that she is possessed with demons. She went through the coven ceremony over thirty years ago and it completely took her over the edge, haunting her. Christine only “joined” the coven so she could see what the ceremony was like, and better understand what ails Rosemary.
Christine is in love with Tristan, but he only focuses on his mother and job as a lawyer.
That day is the day for the magic show, the one the Midsomer Magic Circle puts on every year. The members are Aloysius, Hugo, Jean Wildacre, Anton Thorneycraft, and Felicity Brand. They are doing a wonderful job when it is time for the assistant to go into the Cabinet of Death!.
While Aloysius is getting everything set up, Jean tells Hugo she knows what he and Simon are doing. He tells her to watch out, poking her big nose in everything will get her into trouble one day.
Jean goes in, and they close the cabinet. When Aloysius goes to open it up, he finds her dead.
Tom and Ben are on the case.
They investigate and discover that the blades have been tampered with. Instead of retreating back, someone stuffed them with wood so they would stay out, killing Jean. But that wouldn’t have been enough to kill her, so they run a tox screen and discover she was killed from the poison of the poison dart frogs.
They also find the hilt of a knife in the cabinet.
No one knows why someone would murder Jean, everyone seems to love her. When they question about the cabinet, everyone tells them they performed it three times, and nothing went wrong.
Tom goes to Aloysius and ask him abut the knife hilt they found. He tells them it is a ceremonial knife. He gives Barnaby a book, detailing the other objects used: an arrow, sword, and axe.
Meanwhile, Ben has been questioning the rest of the Magic Circle, and discovered that Anton and Felicity did not go to the bar with the others after rehearsal, like they told him they did. When they put a little pressure on them, it turns out that the two love Gilbert and Sullivan, meeting secretly (as Anton’s wife would be very upset) to sing show tunes together.
They aren’t murderers.
The next day, Isolde is doing inventory when she notices certain ceremonial things are missing. Her father tells her not to worry and sends her after Simon, to put some pressure on him to get that book.
Meanwhile, while Aloysius is at church, Hugo decides to head to the Wilmington estate and threaten Simon. Simon wants to stop everything, but Hugo tells him that not only will he reveal everything to Aloysius, but also tell the police that he had motive to kill Jean.
Hugo storms out and doesn’t realize he is being watched by Isolde. That night he receives three ceremonial arrows. He’s next!
The next day, Tom and Ben head over to the magic shop. Ernest doesn’t want to give them any records, stating he is a priest and they should be confidential. He calls Tristian who tells him he has to comply, giving the records needed and showing them to be little help. The only orders for the knife have been online, and no place near Midsomer, a dead end.
Simon has urgently been searching when he’s found a manuscript. It isn’t the book, but may lead to it.
Simon Wilmington: The writer was a monk, working for the Inquisition in the 16th century. Hw was in charge of books that the Catholic Church had prohibited.
Isolde Balliol: Books about magic?
Simon Wilmington: He lists some Medieval texts. Then the page is torn. The next page is missing. He saw a man burned at the stake, along with a book, before he wrote this. A book considered too dangerous to keep.
Later Isolde goes to see Hugo, and warns him to stay far away from the book.
Tom has been reading book Aloysius gave him, and sees that Aloysius spent time in South America, living with the Native Americans and learning their ways of capturing the poison dart frogs. Could he be the murderer?
That night Hugo is walking home after drinking in the pub. He trips in the alley, falling on glass and bleeding.
#2
They find Hugo’s body, same poison as Jean.
Meanwhile, Simon finds a book in which the pages feel strange. When he opens up the page, he finds three pages hidden inside. They are pieces of the New Testament William Tyndale printed.
What a find! Aloysius is pleased, but Isolde most certainly won’t be.
That night, Aloysius is thinking about everything that has happened, with the murders and ceremonial items left behind. He figures out that it is involving the ritual that he made up, the initiation one.
Aloysius Wilmington: It was one of those daft Temple of Thoth ceremonies that I’d invented. Part of the initiation ritual. North is the knife, South is the arrow, West is the axe, and East was the sword.
It turns out that they were all there the night Mrs. Balliol was initiated. Jean had the knife and Hugo the arrow. He has more, so Tom plans to go over to his place the next day. Too bad the killer has something else in mind.
Yes, that night Aloysius hears a noise outside. Thinking it is Simon, he goes out, spots an axe on the ground and is murdered.
#3
Tom and Ben go there and find his notes, trying to piece it together.
Jean was north and had the knife during the ritual, that is why there was a knife found at the scene. Hugo was south which was the arrow, West was the axe and where Aloysius was. E must me Mrs. Balloil, but why was she out of the circle? And who is “R”?
They question Simon and he reveals the book stealing. He tells them he never killed anyone and about the new book he found.
Anton goes to Tom and reveals that he saw someone the night Hugo was murdered. He saw Isolde there. Did she kill him? She did threaten him.
They try to find her, but she is not home. They hurry to see Simon.
Isolde has confronted Simon. She is yelling at him for keeping the book from her. She slept with someone she doesn’t even like for nothing. Simon yells at her that the book doesn’t exist. He shows her the Tyndale manuscript and she becomes enraged that all her work and killing Hugo was over a BIBLE! She throws it in the fire. Simon tries to get it, but Isolde grabs the fireplace poker and starts beating him, she is arrested by Ben and Tom just in time.
Back at Tristian’s. His mother is being taken away, to be locked up once more. He is very upset, nothing Christine can say or do will make him feel better.
Tom and Ben have started to question Isolde.
She claims to have used magic to kill Hugo, but did nothing to the others. Ben goes to the house to check her room, making her father Ernest angry as he goes for Tristan’s help. There Ben finds nothing, but a picture of her and a poison dart frog. He brings it back and they find out that on her trip to South America, Tristan accompanied her. She also reveals that Estelle is her step-mother and she was after the book to heal her mother, Rosemary.
So that means Rosemary is “R”, then who is E? Isolde tells them her father Ernest. And if Isolde isn’t killing them, that leaves only one other to avenge their mother…Tristan. And where did Ernest go, the last one needed to be killed? To see Tristan.
They rush over to try and save him.
Ernest has gone to see Tristan who has knocked him out with a shovel. He tied him up and placed him in the backyard, cutting shallow cuts for the frogs to stick their poison in. Before he can do it, in comes Ben and Tom, Ben knocking him down; and accidentally into the frog’s glass cages. Tristian is killed by the very thing he has been using for justice.
The next night is Halloween, and Ernest has seen how Thoth has torn apart his family, turning his back on the coven and leaving.
Tom and Joyce are throwing the party, Tom trying to have a happy Halloween amid all this craziness.
To start Horrorfest IV from the beginning, go to You Cannot Conquer It. It Has Conquered You!: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)
For the previous post, go to There’ll Be Somebody With My Name…But She Won’t Be Me!: The Stepford Wives (1975)
For more on Midsomer Murders, go to Please Excuse My Dear Fan Lady
For more on witches, go to What Have You Done to Him?: Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
For more mysteries, go to There are Thirteen Chairs at the Table…And That’s Unlucky: Mystery of the 13th Guest (1943)
For more books turned into TV series, go to A Haunting We Will Go: The Hardy Boy and Nancy Drew Mysteries (1977)
So the other day I was reading the beginning of Northanger Abbey and I realized that Jane Austen is the queen of opening lines
Yep in all her novels she has some of the best opening lines that just pull you into her work and make you want to read on and find out what’s coming next. Check it out!
1) Sense and Sensibility
“The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance.”
Right away you pick up on a few key words, had and was.
“The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance.”
Immediately we know something dramatically changed this family’s fortune and it probably wasn’t a good thing. Now you’re sucked in and you have to find out what happens next? Why can’t they live there anymore? Who are the Dashwoods?
2) Pride and Prejudice
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in posession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
So I actually did a longer post on this, It is a Truth Universally Acknowledged…. But when you read these words, admit you are ready for the adventure of the book. In fact this hook is one that has continued to be entertaining for ages. I mean that saying never gets old, but constantly draws you in no matter how many times you have read it.
3) Mansfield Park
“About thirty years ago, Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet’s lady, with all the comforts and consequences of an handsome house and large income.”
Oooh who is this Maria Ward now Maria Bertram? Is she an upstanding lady and we should be happy at her fortune? Or she is a harlot and we hate that she used her charms to win Sir Bertram?
Either way you are intrigued and want to know more about her and her family.
4) Emma
“Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.”
So Emma seems like she is a blessed woman and everything is fine in her life. Or is it?
Sound suspicious
It sounds to me like there is a big ol’ but coming this way and that something going to happen to change her pristine life. What? I don’t know, but now I need to know.
5) Northanger Abbey
“No one who had ever seen Catherine Moreland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be a heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her.”
So here we have a girl that has nothing to make her life seem interesting. Pretty bland…but just those words no one “would have supposed her” means that she is going to beat all the odds and have a fantastic story! After all:
And we can’t wait to read about it!
6)Persuasion
Sir Walter Elliot of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who for his own amusement never took up any book but the Baronetage: there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed. This was the page at which the favorite volume always opened: — “ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH HALL. “Walter Elliot, born March 1, 1760, married, July 15, 1784, Elizabeth, daughter of James Stevenson, Esq. of South Park, in the county of Gloucester; by which lady (who died 1800) he has issue, Elizabeth, born June 1, 1785; Anne, born August 9, 1787; a still-born son, November 5, 1789; Mary, born November 20, 1791.”
Yes that paragraph is only two sentences.
I know, but the rest of the book isn’t like that. So I’m sure you’re first reaction was what an egotistical man.
Ugh men
But this pretty interesting opening. It’s the only Jane Austen book that doesn’t open about a woman or a family, but instead focuses on a man. Very different. And we see that he has three daughters, Elizabeth, Anne, and Mary. So that begs the question which girl is this book going to focus on? Or will it be about all three?
Hmm
You’ll just have to read them to find out the end
After all:
For more on Sense and Sensibility, go to A Bit Pottery About Jane Austen
For more on Pride and Prejudice, go to First Impressions
For more on Mansfield Park, go to Part IX: Adventures in Movie Lines
For more on Emma, go to It’s All Jane Austen’s Fault
For more on Northanger Abbey, go to Part VIII: The Little Movie Line List
For more on Persuasion, go to Part VI: It Was Said One Night
For more on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, go to You Can’t Have Just One
For more on Downton Abbey, go to That’s What You Get
For more on Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century, go to Friday Night Fun
For more of my favorite quotes, go to A Little Bit of Love
For more book loving posts, go to You’re Doing It Wrong
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