{"id":4891,"date":"2013-09-26T07:57:37","date_gmt":"2013-09-26T07:57:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soundslikewish.wordpress.com\/?p=4891"},"modified":"2013-09-26T07:57:37","modified_gmt":"2013-09-26T07:57:37","slug":"journey-to-the-centre-great-middle-lines-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=4891","title":{"rendered":"Journey to the centre: Great middle lines – 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

The War of the Worlds. <\/em>Read the blurb on the front cover of this 1910 edition: ‘It is a story which no ordinary reader can possibly put down half finished.’<\/p>\n

\"\"
Cover of 1910 Hodder and Stoughton edition of ‘The War of the Worlds’ – courtesy Andrew Cox on http:\/\/drzeus.best.vwh.net\/wotw\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And that’s because when you’ve half-finished reading it, you’re at a point of suspense that drives you onwards through the chapters.\u00a0 I’ve been reading this book online, having succumbed to the temptation of instant literature.\u00a0 Normally I go to a library and get the physical book to read, which should be possible with any classic.\u00a0 But not this time.\u00a0 To my disappointment, my local libraries don’t have copies of it;\u00a0 it’s either lost, available only as an audio-book or video, or is held in a faraway place.\u00a0 You’d think that libraries in a capital city would ensure they have copies of every classic on their shelves.\u00a0 Of course, I could always go out and buy it but then it would be yet another book to store in my house.\u00a0 Libraries are a gift.<\/p>\n

Searching for the centre of The War of the Worlds<\/em> online, I took the plain text version which is 111 pages long, then went to p. 55 and read these tense lines in the chapter ‘The Exodus from London’ which follows a number of chaos-filled chapters where Martians had invaded the suburbs of London, killing citizens with their Heat-Ray and a black vapour they discharged into the streets:<\/p>\n

‘All the railway lines north of the Thames and the South-Eastern people at Cannon Street had been warned by midnight on Sunday, and trains were being filled.\u00a0 People were fighting savagely for standing-room in the carriages even at two o’clock.\u00a0 By three, people were being trampled and crushed even in Bishopsgate Street, a couple of hundred yards or more from Liverpool Street station;\u00a0 revolvers were fired, people stabbed, and the policemen who had been sent to direct the traffic exhausted and infuriated, were breaking the heads of the people they were called out to protect.’<\/p>\n

Header:\u00a0 artwork by Alvim Corr\u00e9a for a 1906 Belgian edition.\u00a0 Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The War of the Worlds. Read the blurb on the front cover of this 1910 edition: ‘It is a story which no ordinary reader can possibly put down half finished.’ And that’s because when you’ve half-finished reading it, you’re at a point of suspense that drives you onwards through the chapters.\u00a0 I’ve been reading this … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Journey to the centre: Great middle lines – 5”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,461],"tags":[241,468,2,462,463,226,469,270],"class_list":["post-4891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-not-wwii","category-great-middle-lines","tag-19th-century-literature","tag-hg-wells","tag-literature","tag-middle-lines","tag-novels","tag-postaday2013","tag-the-war-of-the-worlds","tag-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}