In case anyone is wondering…
It’s wet. It’s windy. The outdoors temperature is +8°C (46°F). There are almost no leaves left on the trees. (Even those few in the photo above may have fallen to the ground since yesterday.)
I’m shutting the rain out and myself in; deeply engrossed in a book on my Kindle. I’ll tell you which one when I’ve finished it, but I’ve still got an intriguing 31% left to read!
Remarkable Creatures
by Tracy Chevalier (2009)
Remarkable Creatures is a novel based on real people and events.
Mary Anning (1799-1847) lived in the costal town Lyme Regis in West Dorset in England in the early 1800’s.
As a young child she was struck by lightning and survived. When she was 11 years old, her father died and left the family in heavy debt. Mary and her brother used to search the beaches for small fossils which they sold as souvenirs to tourists.
Around the same time, a middle-class lady from London by name of Elizabeth Philpot (1779-1857) came to live in Lyme Regis together with two of her sisters (all three of them unmarried), after the death of their father.
Elizabeth became very interested in collecting fossils too. In spite of the differences in age and social status, a friendship grew between Mary and Elizabeth, based on their interest in fossils.
When they first meet in the novel, Mary is still a child, Elizabeth a grown woman. Elizabeth teaches Mary to read; Mary teaches Elizabeth about the practical side of finding fossils and the work of cleaning them etc. While Mary depends on finding and selling fossils for a living, Elizabeth can collect them for enjoyment.
Elizabeth Philpot came to specialize in fish fossils, and displayed these in cases in her home; and visitors to Lyme with an interest in fossils came to see them.
One day Mary and her brother found the fossilized skull of an unknown animal in the cliffs. Their first thought was that it must be a crocodile – except that it had a strange big eye that seemed too big…
Little did Mary know at the time that this would turn out to be an even more important find – the first fossil of an extinct creature now known as an ichthyosaur; contributing to turning old scientific and religious concepts of history and creation upside down.
(The idea of extinct animals from a very distant past was shocking to most people in those days, because it challenged a generally accepted belief that God did not make mistakes, and would not have created any animal only to have it die out.)
The novel is written from a double perspective: some parts of the story are told by Mary, others by Elizabeth. Both of them, in their own way, have to fight against the prejudices and gender rules of their time – while influential men tend to take all the credit for their remarkable finds.
I found this book a both enjoyable and interesting read and think it is likely to leave some lasting impressions (as have some of the previous novels by the same author that I have read in the past). I might add that I listened to it as audio book in Swedish and also found it to be the kind of story that is easy to listen to.
I did not really know anything about the characters or events beforehand, except what I read in a short introduction. I waited until I had finished the book to look up some more facts on the author’s own website:
http://www.tchevalier.com/remarkablecreatures
PS. Also found this interview with the author on YouTube:
Another photo from Tuesday night this week.
(Compare my previous post: City Lights.)
For Weekend Reflections.
The last weekend in October we set our clocks back to winter time (or “normal” ditto). While I do appreciate getting the lost morning hour back, the flipside of the coin is that instead the afternoons suddenly seem very short. Just now the sun goes to bed around 4:15 pm – and it will get worse before it gets better!
Having a choice, I usually try to do my errands in town while there is still daylight – and avoiding the afternoon rush hours. Yesterday, however, I happened to be out “late” (as in half an hour after sunset), which offered an opportunity for some “night” photography:
Only three weeks to go before there will be Christmas lights in some of the big old trees in the park as well!
The main reason I was out and about in town in the dusk/dark yesterday was another discount shopping night for club members at my favourite clothes shop…
In Sweden Halloween/All Saints' Day is primarily a weekend when we remember the loved ones no longer with us. I visited some of the family graves last weekend with my aunt and uncle who were visiting. I didn’t take any photos then. It’s been a grey and rainy week, but yesterday the sun came out just before it was time for it to go to bed, and I went out for a short walk then to the cemetery very close to where I live, where we also have one old family grave. Took the camera along this time.
▲This is from the ‘remembrance garden’ within the cemetery.
Linking to Weekend Reflections (the first photo)
The last photo you will also find in my Picture Book Blog, linked there to Friday My Town Shoot Out (Wild Critters).
