Celebrating 5 Years of Blogging

5 years ago today, on 5th January, 2009, I started my first blog: The Island of the Voices.

“After some trial and error, it seems I have created a blog!

In choosing the title, I had in mind the Island of the Voices in C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where Lucy enters a Magician's House to find the Magician's Book, and within that book A Spell to make hidden things visible.

She read it through to make sure of all the hard words and then said it out loud. And she knew at once that it was working because as she spoke the colours came into the capital letters at the top of the page and the pictures began appearing in the margins. It was like when you hold to the fire something written in Invisible Ink and the writing gradually shows up...

I really have no clear idea yet what hidden things I want this blog to make visible. But maybe if I start writing, I will find out...“

3 years ago, for technical reasons, I had to move the blog to a new account, and in connection with that I also changed the name to Beyond the Lone Islands.

What I wrote then also still remains true:

“My very first blog post has remained kind of prophetic to me. I had little idea back then how hooked I would get on blogging, how much it would inspire me to keep up both writing and photography, and how many new friends I would be making around the world... And yet I obviously sensed the "magic" and the spirit of adventure involved already at the very beginning; or I would not have chosen the names that I did.”

Something I consider really amazing is that after five whole years, I’m still in touch with several bloggers that I came across very early on, back in 2009. A special thanks to you. I won’t name names, as time is far from the only factor in friendships. But please know that I’m really glad that you’re still here!

Happy New Blogging Year
to all old and new blogging friends

Monica / DawnTreader

PS. The photo was taken at an art exhibition I visited yesterday together with my aunt and uncle. There will be a few more photos from that occasion coming up in a separate post.

BTT: Favourite Books in 2013

Booking Through Thursday is back, and Deb starts the new year by a look in the rear mirror:

It’s always good to look back so you know where you’ve been, so the first question for the year is an oldie but a goodie: “What were your favorite books last year?”

I keep a Works database list on my computer of the books I read (or listen to). In 2013 I listed 62 titles.

Below is a shortlist of ten that “popped out” to me as memorable reads when I glanced through the longer list. The order is just that in which I happened to read them. The links go to my own reviews published on this blog. (I don’t write reviews of every book I read. For example I usually find it pointless to mention Swedish books here, unless they’re also available in English.)

The Chess Men by Peter May (3rd in the Lewis trilogy)
(I read the previous two books in the series in 2012)

The ‘Psammead’ trilogy: Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, and The Story of the Amulet by Edith Nesbit (children’s books from the early 1900s)

The Unicorn Road by Martin Davies

The Curiosity Cabinet by Catherine Czerkawska

The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

The Birds, the Bees and Other Secrets by Frances Garrood

The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (pseudonym for J.K. Rowling)

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

Just One Evil Act by Elizabeth George

The First Phone Call from Heaven by Mitch Albom

And there was Evening, and there was Morning

And there was New Year’s Eve 2013; and then that year was no more; but lo, it was the first day of 2014.

For those of you wondering, the film we ended up watching this last (!) year was The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (from 2012), with among others Maggie Smith, Penelope Wilton and Judi Dench. (It turned out I was the only one who had seen it before.)

“The New Year never quite starts with a clean slate (plate)...” And if you’re wondering who said that, it was me, this morning! Just a philosphical observation, mind! – not meant to imply that I was left with all the work. (My friends did the first round of washing up after dinner, as well as brought some of the food and drinks consumed during the evening.)

New Year’s Eve is usually the only night in the year nowadays that I stay up after midnight. Even if I weren’t having guests, it would be impossible for me to go to sleep early anyway, because of all the fireworks going on outside all evening, culminating during the hour around midnight.

Luckily, today, on New Year’s Day, I’m free to be as lazy as I please. I think of it as a sort of in-between place, like the Wood between the Worlds in The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis: “It’s not the sort of place where things happen. The trees go on growing, that’s all.”

Hope you all had a good start to the new year.

 

Zzz… And Happy New Year!

Better have one of these ‘zzz’ days today, as tomorrow night I have to stay awake! As has become a long-standing tradition, I will be celebrating New Year’s Eve at home, but with four friends joining me. I think this will be the 14th New Year in a row with two of them (and there were a few times before that too – but not the millennium, which I spent elsewhere). The three of us used to be neighbours as well as friends. The sister of one of them has also been with us for most of these New Year get-togethers. And since a couple of years, also the other friend’s mum.

Our tradition is to eat a little, talk a little, and watch a film. I’ve been trying to recall what films we’ve already seen (together)… and pick out a few suggestions for tomorrow. It’s not all easy… Preferably it should be of the feel-good kind, not overly long, not too complicated (or violent etc) and not too recently seen by any of us.

A bit late in the day (year) to ask for suggestions, as by now I’m restricted to what I already have in my private collection. But I’ll ask anyway. Have you got a favourite film of the kind described, that’s good to watch in the company of friends – and that you would not mind watching again even if you’ve already seen it?

Playing the Drama Queen

As I said in reply to a comment on my previous post…

There’s not much else one can do for entertainment in this weather, than try to dramatise it a little...  

(This is not right outside my door – no need to worry!)