User blog:BunsenH/Swearing, and A Wrinkle in Time

A couple of times here, I have suggested that if people really need to swear, they should make up their own curse words.

I've been re-reading A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels, and I just noticed that that's exactly what the author did in one of them, An Acceptable Time. One of the characters uses the made-up word "zug". As in "Oh, zug." (Capitalized, Zug is the name of a Swiss town, but you're likely to run into that kind of problem with any short word.)  So the author of some of the best books for teenagers agrees with me.

Of course, it's also possible that I got the idea from having read that book, many years ago.

If you're going to see the Wrinkle in Time movie, I do suugest that you read the book first. Some of the characters have been changed quite a bit. It's a very good book; there's a reason that it's been extremely popular for many years. To me, it doesn't seem to be dated at all. The characters don't use things like tablets or cell phones, but there isn't any reason why that's relevant to the story; the absence isn't conspicuous. There aren't any situations where, if the story was set more recently, the characters would be using newer technology, and it would affect the story. Mind you, I'm biased by having loved the book since I was young, and by not using a lot of the new tech myself. :-)

At any rate, I think it would be good for you to make your own impressions of the characters before the powerful imagery of the movie "sets" them for you. In particular, the three weird ladies (Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which) don't seem to be nearly as weird in the movie as in the book, at least as far as the trailers show. In the book, Mrs. Which appears mostly as just a shimmer of light with an echoing voice. "I ddo nott thinkk I willl matterrialize commpletely.  I ffind itt verry ttirinngg, andd wee hhave mmuch ttoo ddoo."