I have been held up reading my Journal and commenting by the simple fact of having lost my glasses! Not only has this proved incredibly inconvenient but it has also cost me £160 to replace them. Grrrrr.
Luckily I have an old pair that have seen me through the worst but I didn't want to read too much as the prescription on them is out of date.
Anyway I have gotten about half way through so I'll say a little about what I've read so far. I enjoyed Tony's culinary Editorial though the overall message of falling subscriptions and failing computers was rather a gloomy one.
I turned firstly to Rob Houghton's ongoing "cookbook" series which is another great and quirky idea from Rob. This one is school themed. School stories are always reliably good Blyton territory and Rob ranges freely over the whole gamut of Blytonian schools. Regrettably the only ones I'm really familiar with are the
Malory Towers books. I've also read
Mischief at St Rollos but for the life of me I cannot remember much about it. I really liked how Rob did not dwell overly long on any one story but kept the narrative moving across all of them. A lively and fast paced article. And how I did agree with the sentiments of Blyton devoting too much time to sports achievements. I was always the proverbial last to be picked for any sports team at school, I hated (and still do) all sports and so I am heartily glad to see that I am not the only one to decry Enid's overemphasis on sports as the key to all that is good.
I then enjoyed John Henstock's Thoughts on the Secret Seven. In conjunction with Julie's article on Susie this makes a good and comprehensive examination of the series. And he gives us finally a plausible explanation for that mysterious reference to the Seven living in Peterswood!
Julie's article on Seasonal Blyton was excellent. I liked her examples of the atmospheric writing in some of the Secret Seven books, particularly the autumn and winter themed ones. The SS books are generally so short that we do not think of them as having very in depth scenes but it is a tribute to Enid that she needed only a few grief words to transport us into some dark and chilling scene. I was waiting for a mention of
Five go Adventuring Again which is my own favourite Christmas themed book but Julie gives me instead a story I don't ever recall reading before. One with really lovely illustrations. I must seek it out.
Anita's second part of
The Mystery that Never Was held my attention as well. I have never actually read this book and have never actually felt motivated to do so but Anita managed as always to weave a very interesting article around what appears to be a very thin plot. I always enjoy Anita when she goes off on little related side trips in her writing such as here when she tells us of Enid's old gardener, describes the cover of her own Armada copy of the book and compares rates of inflation throughout the 70s and 80s. Really interesting also was the unraveling at the end of the article of the story of how the book was almost never published at all and how there was confusion between it and a ninth Adventure novel. Fascinating.
The last article I have read to date is of course Daisy's surprise continuation of her wonderful Anne Kirrin articles. The first two detailing Anne Kirrin's diary were lovely and poignant and this article, told through the medium of old letters was also beautiful. I am sure Ilsa could have been a novelist herself as she has a great way of leading the reader along gently from paragraph to paragraph following the distinctly emerging thread of her story. Once again the period detail is wonderful and it's another really atmospheric piece of writing. And what a surprise twist in the end. Perfect, who would have thought it.
What a super idea to put in a quiz at the end. I can't recall us having one like this before during my time as a subscriber. I found it surprisingly difficult and am eagerly awaiting the answers to see how many I got wrong.
My new glasses should be ready this week and so I hope I will be able to finosh this super edition of The EBS Journal early next week and will then finish my review of it. As at this moment it is yet another fantastic installment and as always it defeats me that subscriber numbers are dropping, on this evidence they ought to be rising instead.