Christmas Specials 2014

My thoughts on the Christmas Specials from our beloved British shows from this year: 

Beware, there are spoilers here!

Merry Christmas!

Dear friends,

I would like to wish all of you and your loved ones a happy and blessed Christmas and 

all the best for 2015, in real life and in blogging!

Christmas cards!

It's December, time to think about sending out Christmas Cards! At LiveJournal, where I also blog, we have the 'tradition' to send each other Christmas cards and I thought it would be nice to do this here on Blogger as well. Would you like to receive a Christmas or holiday card?

If you'd like one, you can leave your address in the comments. You can delete the comment right after you made it (for privacy reasons) as the comments are send to my email address.

Janeite tag!

Joanna from The Squirrel´s Diary tagged me a while (aka a month...) ago in the Janeite Tag. Thanks Joanna, I hope I´m still ´in time´ with my answers ;-)

The rules:
- Thank and link back to the person who tagged you.
- Tell us how you were introduced to Jane Austen and share one fun fact about your Janeite life (this fun fact can be anything from "I stayed up all night reading Emma" to "I visited Chawton and met Anna Chancellor.").
- Answer the tagger's questions.
- Write seven questions of your own.
- Tag as few as one or as many as seven other Janeites and let them know you've tagged them.

How I was introduced to Jane Austen:
I don't remember exactly when I heard about Jane Austen for the first time. I do know I watched Pride and Prejudice '95 on Dutch television when I was around 16 or so. I really loved it and we then also bought the VHS (!) of Sense and Sensibility '95. Sense and Sensibility was the first Austen I read, I read it for a book report for my English class in secondary school. It was also the first full-length novel I read in English! I remember having some nice discussions about the book with my English teacher and got a good grade ;-) I then tried to find all the other adaptations and slowly read the rest of Jane's works in the coming years.

8 Bookish and Not-So-Bookish Thoughts (3)

Bookish and Not-So-Bookish Thoughts is a weekly blogging event hosted by Bookishly Boisterous. It allows
book bloggers (and non-book bloggers) to write about pretty much anything, bookish or otherwise (i.e. sharing
exciting plans for the weekend, rants on things they've encountered during the week etc.)

1. I have a new phone, yay! After struggling with a slow, always full and often crashing Alcatel phone for ages, I now have a lovely, fast Samsung Galaxy Core on which I can download all the apps I want and still have lots of GBs of memory left! There's just one little downside to this: about half a year ago I was browsing through Etsy and came across some great, classic literature inspired phone cases. I then decided: when I get a new phone, I'm buying one of these cases. Unfortunately, these cases are only made for standard model phones like iPhones and Galaxy S. So now my great new phone is dressed in a boring black case, all I could find for this model (#firstworldproblems)

Television review: The Crimson Field

This year, the BBC commemorate the centenary of WWI with a host of special tv- and radio programs. After 37 Days (review), The Crimson Field is the second drama offering of the British. This 6-part series shows the life and work of staff and patients at a field hospital in France. We follow the stories of three VADs, voluntary nurses from (mostly) the middle- and upper classes of society. Though extra hands are desperately needed in the field hospital, the VADs are not welcomed with open arms by the professional nurses who think these women are ill-prepared and naïve. Kitty Trevelyan (Oona Chaplin) has come to France to flee a tragic home situation. Her opinionated and headstrong character soon brings her in conflict with the senior hospital staff. Flora Marshall (Alice St Clair) is a sweet young girl who brightens up the wards and has a steely determination to prove that she can be a good nurse despite her young age. Rosalie Berwick (Marianne Oldham) is seen as an 'old maid' in her home environment and comes to France to 'do some good'. But the constant challenges of the hospital frighten her and her social insecurity alienates her from the rest of the staff. Kitty, Flora and Rosalie have to work together under Matron Grace Carter (Hermione Norris) and assist physicians Thomas Gillan (Richard Rankin) and Miles Hesketh-Thorne (Alex Wyndham).

Book review: All right here

Ivy Darling can't have children and the silent resentment of her husband Nick is slowly driving them apart. When the three kids next door are left by their mother, Ivy opens her home and heart to them and suddenly, she and Nick are foster parent's to the only black children in the small town of Copper Cove. As the months pass, Ivy comes to love the children and considers them as part of the family. But Nick refuses to accept their unorthodox family as permanent. Do Nick and Ivy still have enought in common to make their marriage work?