Batgrl (Book Data Kept Elsewhere) > Recent Status Updates

Canto XIV, 45
...there is a certain disdain in the man coming at
him without a sword, relying on blows
and jabs with a spear as against some dandiprat.
----------
Which of course, makes you wonder what a dandiprat is.

Canto XIV, 44
...he will not
carry another sword (he promised then)
but the one Orlando carries that Hector fought
with long ago. It turns out, gentlemen,
that Durindana, which he is so eager for,
was used against the Greeks in the Trojan War.

Orlando's a man in black, though I'm vague on the precise cause of the grief (Angelica? war? something in the previous book/poem?):

Canto XIV, 36
...in his sadness thought it best
to show a black exterior that would label
him as a knight who grieved. It was to his liking,
and we can agree that it was very striking.

Canto XIV, 22
...Now Soridano passes by with the bold
soldiers of Hesperia. (All these names
are sure winners, I'd think, in Trivia games.)

Canto XIV, 16
Bavarte, Largalifa, Doriconte,
and Analardo too (great names for a cat!)
are there...
--------------
Long section listing all the new leaders in France's army (which goes on and on) - I appreciated the cat comment. Artisto also makes jokes on the length of this section.

Canto XIII, 36-37
...It is fun
of the kind a brave youth might have if he had found
a nest of vipers sunning themselves and he
picked up a good sized rock with which to pound
them all into a disgusting pate. You see
one wriggle off in a hurry across the ground
but missing a tail...

Isabella, yet another woman in the story that has to deal with near-rape, and by a man she (and her lover) had trusted:

Canto XIII, 22
"What kind of world is this, and how can it be
that a girl must always be deeply suspicious of men?"

Canto XII, 87
Is he thinking what we are thinking that these
caves are good, eerie holes in the earth
and full of narrative possibilities?
Does he know he's in a story? Is it worth
asking such questions?

Canto XII, 83
It is a vivid abattoir tableau.

Orlando fighting, squishily:

Canto XII, 77
...Both
to left and right, he smites them, inflicting a wound
of lethal effect as he cuts a bloody swath
through their astonished ranks with a squishy sound.
Heads are lopped off, and arms, and they fly in the air
as if Death himself had come to visit there.

Angelica plans to use a man as bodyguard (she's dealt with multiple attempted rapes so far) then dump him:
Canto XII, 23
...plans to return to India - and would bring
Orlando with her or Sacripant. She still
rejects them as suitors but as she is traveling
through so many cities and towns over the wide
expanse of the earth, she'd welcome a masculine guide.

Oh and earlier when I was wondering how Orlando would treat the naked woman he rescues? Turns out it was someone he already knew - funny how easy it is to bump into people that way. And he behaved himself. Amazing, since so few of the men in this book are able to do so around beautiful and/or naked women.

Canto XI, 81
...Orlando walked the walk
and left it to lesser men to talk the talk.
.....
Which reminded me of the 1970s tv show theme with the line: "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time." ...Damn earworm.

Canto XI, 74
in the empty houses where plenty of gowns remained
behind after their wearers had been fed
to the orc. (This should not have to be explained.)

Aristo "oogling a heroine" (Olympia) in writing (this is not the first time, mind you) (oh dear, I've caught Aristo's parentheses problem):

Canto XI, 67
...And her breasts! Oh, there was such perfection there
that all other women would envy and be sad
that theirs were not like hers. Beyond compare!
Snowy white, like cheeses on display,
with that cleavage in between them...(Look away!
68
And yet we can't.)

Another BBC radio drama: GK Chesterton - The Club of Queer Trades - odd stories, seemingly mysteries - not sure if I like them or not. Wiki on the written work here. Much satirizing Sherlock Holmes stories within.

Oh wait, no, that's not Ruggiero - we're back to Orlando's story, I forgot. So now it's 1 naked woman for Ruggerio (and one near rape of Angelica) and 1 naked woman for Orlando. And now we'll see how Orlando treats said naked woman post-saving. Assuming he can defeat the orc/sea monster thing.

Ruggiero has now bumped into his second naked woman of the day. (Or maybe it's been two days?) The last one he tried to have sex with after saving (and no, he didn't ask her if she was interested) - let's see how he treats this one. Oh and apparently you have to strip the woman naked before you feed her to the sea monster. But I somehow doubt the monster requires this.

Aristo is VERY anti-cannon. Total rant is 7 stanzas:

Canto XI, 26
...Many brave lords and knights will find their rest
in the wholesale carnage of this new era in fighting,
so bloody and disgusting, but not exciting.

27
...Our battlefields are lakes of gore
because of this machine of metal and fire
that the devil was the inspiration for.
Let its inventor rot in hell. ...

Canto X, 34
...A mind flies free
and leaves the body behind when it suffers a shock.

On falling in love:
Canto X, 9
...The summit
of human emotion beckons to you now,
but avoid young men who are often callow and dumb. It
is like picking fruit - neither too ripe nor too green.
You're better off with something that's in between.

Canto IX, 79
...He raises his sword and hacks the king's helmet in twain -
to show white bone, red blood, and pale grey brain.

80
Oddly enough, he sits on his horse upright
for a moment or two until Orlando touches
him, and he falls over, as he well might
in his condition.

Canto IX, 34
...for each ill I now suffer I would be willing
to suffer a hundred more, to be had at
by wild beasts, or endure some other killing
entertaining to such a kakistocrat
as he was...

--Am also finding more interesting (unknown to me) words in this translation...

Canto IX, 19
All these old guys and maidens make it tough
to keep a story running in a more
or less straight line.

--It does seem like every other page a new maiden or a new old man pops out of the woodwork. This is probably the most self aware poem/book I've ever read.

Canto IX, 17
How sturdy a ship looks in port, and then
how fragile it is when it puts out to sea,
as delicate as cut crystal goblets when
lovers quarrel and scream intemperately,
and start to throw things like some tragedienne
doing her mad scene.

From the wikipedia page: "Worlds of Fun, an amusement park in Kansas City, Missouri, was conceived using the novel as its theme." - This was the park that I was allowed a trip to on one birthday, taking a friend. And we rode the now retired Orient Express roller coaster. And I had no idea the park had an Around The World theme.

...on the 13th, Mocha, surrounded by its ruined walls whereon date-trees were growing, was sighted, and on the mountains beyond were espied vast coffee-fields. Passepartout was ravished to behold this celebrated place, and thought that, with its circular walls and dismantled fort, it looked like an immense coffee-cup and saucer.

"You see, a man of sound sense ought not to spend his life jumping from a steamer upon a railway train, and from a railway train upon a steamer again, pretending to make the tour of the world in eighty days!"
-- Poor Passepartout, he is going to be disappointed.

Passepartout's worry:"My gas-burner, which I forgot to turn off, and which is at this moment burning at my expense. I have calculated, monsieur, that I lose two shillings every four and twenty hours, exactly sixpence more than I earn; and you will understand that the longer our journey—"
--This is going to worry me for the rest of the book. It's the kind of thing I worry about when setting off on a trip!

Touching the Book: "The exhibition explores the development of embossed reading and writing practices for visually-impaired people prior to the adoption of braille in the late-19th century" - first link is to photos of various books. Exhibition is only available to those who can make the trip to Birkbeck, University of London.