There’s a party in my eyeballs and everyone’s invited
Nurse! We need 200 cc of escapist reading, stat!
The last month has been a month and half, with a poorly daughter and my nearest hospital about 50 miles away, my days have been spent working, driving, and responding to texts of desired (demanded) items to ferry back and forth. However, all is good now and life is normal again.
To celebrate this I ordered a couple of Cadfaels from the library. I’ve not actually read any of them, I only know the ones featured in the TV series (don’t judge me), so requested two I’d never heard of before. I went to pick them up yesterday and one of them is
large print.
I know it would be a huge waste of paper if everything was large print, but man alive, it’s fan-bloody-tastic. I lay there in bed last night, snug and cosy in the pillows, without my glasses on. The picture below is both of the books, one typeset by resentful mice for owl overlords, the other, a velvet chaise-lounge for the eyes.
I feel slightly guilty, rather like if I bought a mobility scooter for fun or rode on a Stannah Stairlift out of laziness, but I didn’t ask for this, it’s the only copy they had.
“Brother Oswin!! Have you been at my Blue WKD? It’s almost half empty!
Dead Man’s Ransom is about a death during a prisoner exchange, during the battles of King Stephen and Empress Maud. It’s good and all, but I’m more excited about getting The Summer of The Danes in which according to the blurb, Cadfael gets captured by vikings! I shall read all the viking’s dialogue in my best “I am Uhtred, son of Uhtred” impression. It’s just a shame the owl-friendly font.
Lucy
Sarah
Good to hear your daughter is better. I know Cadfael is a man out of his time but I had no idea he’d invented Blue WKD 😀
What about some fetching pince-nez a la Anton Chekhov for the teeny writing? They’re definitely due a come-back. Or I quite fancy some half-moon glasses that I can look witheringly over the top of, like Joan Hickson in Miss Marple… the possibilities are endless…
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Thanks 🙂 And I saw somewhere pince-nez are actually coming back! Some reading glasses company were hawking them like they were a new invention and the internet immediately corrected them. If I got some of them, and some half-moons, I could have both Poirot and Marple theme days!
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What are those things holding down the pages?
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Those are my awesome paperweights! They would just be paperweights but they get the tittle of awesome as they were only £1 each 😀
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Fabulous!
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Exactly, glasses in bed have to be the worst thing to wear. I’d not thought of looking out LARGE PRINT books, thanks for the tip.
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I’ve broken expensive glasses by falling asleep in them before, from now on my bedside book will be a specs-free zone! 🙂
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A thousand yeses for Brother Cadfael – so deeply enjoyable! The last one I read (years ago) was The Virgin in the Ice, and escapist reading was exactly right.
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Yay! I wish more people knew about Cadfael, then more of my workplace jokes would be funny. Then again, it means I can call people Brother Jerome and they don’t know how serious an insult that is. 😉
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There’s something to be said for the Insult No One Gets.
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Glad your daughter is feeling better.
I know I’ll get an internet bop on the head for this, but that’s why e-books are so nice – I get to choose the size of font whenever (larger if I’m home, teeny tiny if I happen to be reading saucy stuff in the underground)… Plus, they’re now backlit, which means I get to fake insomnia and read in bed without having a groggy-eyed husband asking me if there’s been an invasion.
As for “a velvet chaise-lounge for the eyes,” I’m absolutely stealing that, just so you know!
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Thank you, and ha! That’s what my dad would say. I noticed a while ago he’d stopped wearing his reading glasses and he said his eyes were getting better, then I noticed his Kindle was set to a huge font! Judging by the limited selection of books available in large print, I’m seriously considering a Kindle.
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Glad your daughter’s on the mend and escapist reading is definitely the thing when r/l is awful. Haven’t read a Cadfael for years but I used to love them. As for large print – it pains me to admit it, but I suspect I should go along that route…
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Thank you, and it’s a very comfortable route to go down! It’s just a shame the selection of books is so limited.
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I just picked up the first season Cadfael from the library — I couldn’t remember why I’d put it on hold. Clearly it was from your blog. I can’t believe I’ve never seen it, so thanks!
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Glad to hear your daughter is better – keeping a work/family life balance is hard enough as it is without worry and extra driving thrown in for good measure. I’m all for escapist reading, any excuse! is a good excuse, especially if it involves detectives or monks, and preferably both.
I’m off for my first eye test in ages this week. The time has come to accept that I need varifocals – how rock ‘n roll! I’m also going to try varifocal contacts partly because I can’t believe they can possibly work. I shall report back my findings!
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