This week I got to have a chat with an old mate of mine Beverly Sandford! She was just a youngster when I 1st knew her as the younger sister of my mate's girlfriend. She'd talk all about her love for New Kid's on the Block and I'm sure she was filming a promo as she wanted to be a presenter for some youth TV programme. She seemed very confident and precocious and more than a tad cheeky. Of course, the chances are that I am remembering it all wrong!
Luckily I got to interview her then so we could compare each other's memories of them very old days but mostly to talk about her writing career. She has written books for children and young adults for Badger Learning and has recently got to contribute some stories for Dr Who anthologies from Target books.
With the release of this new set of Game of Thrones inspired stamps from Royal Mail in January 2018 it gives me the perfect excuse to blog about the books and the TV show.
Wow, what a sensation it has been this show, nearly everybody has seen it and talked about it. Social media has been buzzing with it and often it's been avoided to save from getting spoilers. It's one of them shows to watch with friends and get carried away with, to gasp, or sigh or scream at the telly in reaction to whatever has befallen a beloved or hated character this time. Also it's a show to talk about with mates down the pub and in work the day after it airs.
2 of the books are so long they got made into 2 books each!
The show is based on the book series A Song of Ice and Fire which are written by George R R Martin. The 1st called Game of Thrones was published in 1996 and was originally planned to be the 1st of a trilogy but has evolved into a septology (whatever it is you call a group of 7!!), a heptology apparently!! Who knew? At the moment the 5th in the series is as far as it has got with A Dance With Dragons seeing release in 2011. It took George 6 years to write so by that reckoning book 6 The Winds of Winter can not be far off now I suppose. The story is very much influenced by events from history, the wars and political intrigues of medieval times. The Lannisters and The Starks for example are likened to the houses of Lancaster and York from the War of the Roses. Martin has said that, "I take [history] and I file off the serial numbers and I turn it up to 11."
I've not read the books myself so I am not getting spoilers and knowing what fates await each of the characters as I watch, nor am I getting annoyed whenever the programme veers from the book storyline or changes characters or merges them into 1 for the sake of brevity. It's kind of good not to have any forewarning in that way. So often you see a movie or a show and as you know the base content from the raw materiel of the book it can vex you when the programme makers vision veers from your own thoughts on what the story and characters should be. Show co-creator David Benioff describes the translation from book to screen like this, its "about adapting the series as a whole and following the map George laid out for us and hitting the major milestones, but not necessarily each of the stops along the way". The TV series has now passed the books in the story too which is pretty strange! I don't know how much input Martin now has with the TV writers, does he give them the bare bones as he envisages it? Does he even know what is going to happen to the characters himself yet? I am sure he must. It is definitely good cause to read the books as well as watch the show, just to find out what parts I have missed in the adaptation.
I do want to read the books at some point but this is one of those rare times when I want to read the books after the show rather than before it. I listened to the 1st one as an audio book and it seemed to be pretty close to the TV show as I remember it, although it finishes before the events of the 1st series of the TV show does which surprised me. The 5 audio books were all read by Roy Dotrice who was originally going to play Grand Maester Pycelle in the HBO television series but had to pull out for health reasons. He later played Wisdom Hallyne the Pyromancer. I've got to say I might even favour the audio books over reading them myself as he read them magnificently. It's a shame he passed away in October 2017, fans of his style will miss hearing him for the last two books when they arrive.
Roy Dotrice as Wisdom Hallyne
Telltale games even made a game for PS4, Xbox One and PC based on the series which I have played and I have to say it has almost as much shocks and tension as the show does, perhaps even more as you are playing the character whose decisions will have so many ramifications and even lead to their own deaths if you choose poorly.
The seventh season of the show has recently ended and we now have a long wait for the final season. Filming began in October 2017. Season 8 is set to be the shortest of them all in episode count, with only 6 planned, (the 1st 6 seasons had 10 and 7 had 7), it is set to air in 2019!! Each episode is going to be a 1 hour long which is slightly longer than normal but not by much. It will largely consist of original content currently not found in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, and will instead adapt material Martin revealed to showrunners about the upcoming novels in the series, The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring. Whatever happens it is bound to be a momentous battle and afterwards and even during there will be bound to be some treachery to be sure and various characters machinations will either come to fruition or be thwarted. Who will live? Who will die? Who will sit on the Iron Throne and why would you even want to it looks very uncomfortable!! We'll have to wait and see, whatever the outcome I am sure it will be talked about for a long time to come.
I have always been a lover of books, my mum loved to read and her delight in reading was passed on to her children. I can not remember ever learning to read, I doubt I was born with the ability but I must have certainly picked it up quick.
I remember taking a reading test when 1st attending infants (or maybe it was juniors school and I remember being quite proud of myself for being able to read the word 'Refrigerator'!! It's funny the things that our young minds retain sometimes isn't it?
I don't know what books/comics I started reading with but I certainly remember reading plenty of these Ladybird Books in my formative years. They had such a wealth of great subjects. There were all manner of fairy tales like Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Jack and the Beanstalk and history books too about the kings and queens, Robin Hood, Vikings, The Great Fire of London, The Romans, the list seemed endless.
At school we had the numbered series of learning books, I don't recall how the numbers ran but they started off with easy words like 'ball' and 'dog' and got incrementally harder. As I said in the video the book started in 1940 and are still going strong today, helping children to learn to read and opening their minds and imaginations. They have cool art too :D
Now I certainly can not recall all the Ladybird books that I read nor do I have any of them now, except for this one book! Well I say 1 but I actually have 2 copies of it!! It is the GREATEST Ladybird book EVER!! Heck maybe the greatest book by any publisher ever full stop!! haha well I certainly loved it as a kid. Those scaly terrible lizards enthralled me as a boy and probably still do. Dinosaurs, simply put, are cool as heck!!
I dare say this book was my introduction to dinosaurs and the wonder of our world's prehistory, they were amazing, awesome, terrifying!! How I wished I could see one!! The sheer size of them! The claws, the spikes, the teeth!! Dr Who fought the Dinosaurs I seem to recall, and there were those great Ray Harryhausen special effects in films like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), One Million Years B.C. (1966) and The Valley of Gwangi(1969).
Then came later blockbusters like Jurassic Park and it's sequels, absolutely great films in regards to special effects, I remember seeing the 1st one in the cinema and that early scene where they 1st spot the enormous sauropod Brachiosaurus plodding along and stare at it in amazement. I was doing the same in my seat, smiling like a loon.
I'm not the only person who thinks they are cool either, dinosaurs are every where! In books and TV shows and films and comics, there are even 2 heavy metal bands aimed at children where all the band members dress as dinosaurs!!
Hmm I went off on a bit of a dinosaur shaped tangent there! I was talking about Ladybird books and got distracted... dinosaurs are cool though aren't they? Which one is your favorite? I find it very hard to choose just one. I like Brontosaurus because it was a dinosaur, then it never existed then it was a dinosaur again!! Ankylosaurus and Stegosaurus are kind of cute but them big carnivores though!! Oh my!! Whoops sorry I was meant to be talking about books!
Yes, recently Ladybird Books have launched a great irreverently fun range for 'Grown-ups' with some amazing titles. They pay homage to the old books of the 60's, 70's and 80's even using the same art and writing style but the subjects are treated a lot differently.
Comedy writers Joel Morris and Jason Hazeley, adapted Ladybird’s archive to create a series of titles that includes The Ladybird Book of the Hipster, The Ladybird Book of the Hangover and How it Works: The Husband. In an article from The Metro they say "Our books are loving pastiches, not savage parodies, so they’re done with enormous affection: the joke isn’t at the expense of the publisher. The joke is that life looks bloody silly from some angles." One thing is for the sure, the joke, whoever it is on, is damned funny. Check out some of these titles they are going to make great stocking fillers for Christmas, I will have great fun working out which one is best to buy for which relative or friend! How it Works: The Cat for my dad for sure, torn between How it Works: The Mum or How it Works: The Sister for my sister! Perhaps I'll treat myself to The Ladybird Book of The Sickie ;)
inspired stamps from Royal Mail in January 2018 it gives me the perfect excuse to blog about the books and the TV show. 
