You have forgotten to clean your sword

[vovat]

I recently re-read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which didn't take very long. Having all of the Chronicles of Narnia together in one volume with small print and few pictures makes me realize just how short the individual books are. It's a little weird to re-read a book so soon after seeing the movie, as it's difficult to get the film's images out of my head. I did notice a few interesting differences between the book and the movie, though, some of which I thought were true while I was watching the film, but now I know for sure that they are.

• One thing I did remember was that the children's last name, Pevensie, actually wasn't provided until The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Neither was Professor Kirke's, but I can't recall whether they said his name in the movie.
  
• The film made the Pevensies more reluctant to fulfill their destiny. Of note is how Peter kills the wolf pretty much immediately in the book, but struggles with it in the movie. I actually thought this was a nice touch on the part of the filmmakers, because it made the children more realistic.
  
• There are a few tidbits of trivia given in the movie that weren't in the book. Lucy says her mother's name is Helen, and Tumnus explains that his father had gone off to war before the long winter. I'm pretty sure C.S. Lewis never gives the Pevensies' mother a name, but the cab-driver's wife who becomes the first Queen of Narnia is given the name Helen by Aslan.
  
• A bit of trivia that's in the book and NOT in the movie is Mr. Beaver's statement that the White Witch is half a Jinn and half a Giantess. I've seen some people argue that this is contradictory to the origins that Lewis eventually gave her in The Magician's Nephew, but I don't know that it really is. Besides, Mr. Beaver could have been wrong, I suppose.
  
• The lion at the Witch's house no longer has his moment of annoying enthusiasm in the movie, but he IS retained for a later joke, where the glasses and mustache that Edmund had drawn on him are still there at the coronation scene.
  
• Mr. Beaver's line late in the book about how Aslan isn't a tame lion is given to Tumnus in the movie.
  
• The movie has Professor Kirke admitting to Lucy that he had tried to enter Narnia through the wardrobe himself. He doesn't say this in the book, but it's consistent with his character.
  

I'm planning on re-reading the rest of the series, although I'm not quite sure what order I'll read them in. The collection I have puts them all in chronological order (with The Magician's Nephew first), which seems to be the general standard nowadays. When I was a kid, however, they were numbered in the order in which Lewis wrote them (with The Lion) first. I think I might actually move ahead to The Magician's Nephew now, and then read the rest in the order that the book I have uses. For a new reader, though, I'd probably recommend reading them in the written order, rather than the chronological one. Actually, I guess Nephew doesn't necessarily have to be saved for sixth, but I think it should definitely be read after The Lion. That's just me, though, and no one actually asked my opinion.

bethje and I have now finished watching all of the episodes on the first three discs of the Simpsons Season 7 DVD set with commentary. I remember the episode capsule for "Bart on the Road" including a debate on what "Langdon Alger" is referencing. It turns out that he was a childhood friend of one of the writers.

Speaking of The Simpsons, it says here that next week's episode has Homer thinking someone other than Abe is his real father. I really hope this isn't another one along the lines of "The Principal and the Pauper" or "Viva Ned Flanders," where the writers totally ignore established continuity and decide that a ridiculous new fact about a character is true. I guess I'll wait until it actually airs before I judge it, though.

You scored as English. You should be an English major! Your passion lies in writing and expressing yourself creatively, and you hate it when you are inhibited from doing so. Pursue that interest of yours! </td> English 83% Journalism 83% Linguistics 75% Biology 67% Sociology 67% Theater 67% Anthropology 67% Philosophy 58% Engineering 50% Dance 50% Psychology 50% Art 42% Chemistry 42% Mathematics 8% What is your Perfect Major? created with QuizFarm.com

I could never have been an English major. While I usually enjoy reading, knowing it's homework tends to automatically lower my level of enjoyment. I've never really been into the literature interpretation thing, either. I prefer looking for plot holes and getting to know the characters, rather than searching for hidden meanings. In Oz fandom, there's a distinction between discussions of Oz as literature and Oz as history (i.e., looking at the books as if they're accounts of true history). I've always been more interested in the latter.

That actually leads quite well into a topic I was thinking of recently, which is that of, for lack of a better term, sub-interests. Just because two people are interested in the same thing, it doesn't mean they'll be interested in the same aspects. I guess a good example is how a lot of people on my friends list have They Might Be Giants listed as an interest, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're interested in discussing the songs or albums to death. I DO enjoy that kind of thing, but other people are perfectly satisfied to just listen to the music. Then there are people who are concert junkies, or music collectors, or interested in the technical aspects of their music. So if I write something about TMBG, it doesn't necessarily mean other TMBG fans are going to want to read it. Similarly, within Oz fandom, there are those who are more interested in the movie than the books, or who are primarily interested in collectibles (something that I've never really cared about), or who memorize all the bibliographical details. So someone else sharing an interest doesn't mean they'll like it in the same way.

Comments

[jenhime.livejournal.com]

I'm rereading The chronicles of Narnia right now. I just started on the Magician's Nephew yesterday. I'd forgotten how short all the books are...

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know. I'm sure they seemed a lot longer to me when I was a kid.

[loz]

As regards interests, though, I think it's really great when someone likes what you like in a completely different way. It shows how different perception and personality affects how something is consumed, absorbed, interacted with.

On an amusing note, I scored as Journalism in that major quiz. Oh, oh. English was 83%... hmm. I wish I'd known that before ;)

[vovat.livejournal.com]

My actual major wasn't even included on the quiz.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

I swore all my life-- well, all the small part of my adolescent life when I was considering such things in the first place-- that I would be an English major because my favorite things were writing and reading, then I actually became an English major and it sucked. Stupid literary analysis! Anyway.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I tend to think one problem is that our society frowns upon reading fiction on its own terms, and instead has to come up with Deeper Meanings for everything. Apparently, whether the characters can symbolize other things is more important than whether they're interesting. Admittedly, I don't know much about what English majors study, but I get the impression that there's a lot of figuring out What Things Mean (which usually means finding out what your professor thinks they mean, and then copying that). Maybe I'm wrong, though.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

No, that sounds EXACTLY like my Lit Analysis course, which was why I almost failed it for awhile (though through some miracle at the last minute I pulled off a B). I think lots of stuff has Deep Meaning, but you're not going to find it by following a symbolism dictionary or forcing your own ideals on a character's actions. Ah well. --Anyway, that was one of the only English classes I actually took though. There might be others that are better. I did take a few more English classes, but they weren't of that variety-- creative writing, adolescent literature, and structure of English (which was a grammar class, and surprisingly more interesting than you would suppose)-- which I took to get an English specialization after I went El Ed.