It's an epic retelling of the Arthurian legend from the standpoint of the
women in the piece, especially Arthur's half-sister Morgan la Faye, who in
this retelling appears as the Lady of the Lake, the High Priestess of
Avalon. More to the point, it deals with the struggle between the new
Christianity and the ancient teachings of the druids. It's absolutely a
work of fiction, and the author frankly admits this, but there's a wealth of
meaningful philosophy to be found in this book. Whatever your belief system
might be, this work will challenge you to re-examine its tenets and broaden
your perspective. Initially it may offend some readers, but if they hang in
there until the end, most people will recognize that this is a wise and
carefully-sculpted work.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Grant Hardy" <granthardy@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <bookport@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2005 12:03 AM
Subject: [bookport] Re: File sizes
Out of curiosity, what is the Mists of Avilon about please?
----- Original Message ----- From: "David Bennett" <david382@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bookport@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, October 23, 2005 6:54 PM
Subject: [bookport] File sizes
Yes, you'd be surprised at how small BRF files can be. Gone With the Wind is a little over 2 megabytes, An American Tragedy about the same, as is the case with David Copperfield, and Little Women maybe a tad smaller. The nine original "Little House in the Prairie" books comprise sixteen rather small Braille volumes and will combine into a mere 2.2 megabytes. I've never done it, but have done the math. The Bible comprises some 3.6 megabytes. Braille volumes on the whole are bigger than they used to be; they're generally from 185 to 200 kilobytes in size, though children's books such as the Little House books and the works of Madeleine L'Engle will utilize smaller volumes, most being around 140 kilobytes in size. NLS just produced a 24-volume Bible containing the apocrypha for Web Braille, and that's about how large 4.8 megabytes is, perhaps five. Personally, I wouldn't want a single-file Bible anyway, unless I had proprietary software to reference it with, which is certainly out there. Really, though, a four-megabyte book would be a monster of a thing, and you'd have to go looking for it. They don't turn up every day. Bookshare.org has a BRF version of Marion Zimmer Bradley's "The Mists of Avalon," and I thought, "Aha, this must surely be that large," but it isn't quite. That's probably the longest novel I've ever read. It was also one of the best.
David Bennett
