conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a description for a book titled Treasures Of Time about Booker, Prize, Award with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Contemporary?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger. Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra's Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began. She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year's Honours List, and DBE in 2012. the author lives in London.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first two paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Treasures Of Time
  The school, when at last they ran it to ground amid Birmingham's proliferation of ring-roads and fly-overs and dual carriage-ways, turned out to be spread out over a large area, and of fairly recent construction. It was light and bright, set down in blocks of sage green and dull orange amid playing fields and its own internal road-system of tarmac tracks with sign-posts about Language Blocks and Sixth Form Units and Remedial Teaching Centres. A satellite colony of terrapin buildings suggested a staged expansion. The windows snapped in the sunlight and children drifted about the place, many of them West Indian and Pakistani. There were motor-bikes and scooters among the push-bikes in the sheds alongside the car park. They went into what appeared to be the main building, in search of the teacher who was supposed to be expecting them. Kate inspected the doors and windows. 'Can it be locked? Sorry, Mr – er – Mr Sanderson, but some of the exhibits are real, you see, and quite irreplaceable.'
  Cherry put her head round the door. 'Anyone for beer and a banger? There's quite a nice pub down the road.'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about Tom, Island, Heritage, appeared, bearded, followed.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Treasures Of Time
  The school, when at last they ran it to ground amid Birmingham's proliferation of ring-roads and fly-overs and dual carriage-ways, turned out to be spread out over a large area, and of fairly recent construction. It was light and bright, set down in blocks of sage green and dull orange amid playing fields and its own internal road-system of tarmac tracks with sign-posts about Language Blocks and Sixth Form Units and Remedial Teaching Centres. A satellite colony of terrapin buildings suggested a staged expansion. The windows snapped in the sunlight and children drifted about the place, many of them West Indian and Pakistani. There were motor-bikes and scooters among the push-bikes in the sheds alongside the car park. They went into what appeared to be the main building, in search of the teacher who was supposed to be expecting them. When he appeared – young, bearded and jeaned, looking, Tom thought, more like an actor than anyone's stereotype of a schoolmaster – they followed him to the room set aside for the display of the 'Island Heritage'. Kate inspected the doors and windows. 'Can it be locked? Sorry, Mr – er – Mr Sanderson, but some of the exhibits are real, you see, and quite irreplaceable. '
  Cherry put her head round the door. 'Anyone for beer and a banger? There's quite a nice pub down the road. '
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know another paragraph? Start with the sentence 'He felt disgruntled, both with himself and with the way the day had turned out'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He felt disgruntled, both with himself and with the way the day had turned out. He hadn't done at all well. He had bewildered rather than enlightened. Whether through accidents or circumstance or personal inadequacy he had managed to give an impression of a place in which the theatre was childish, the amusements quaint and irrelevant, the landscape baffling and the history incomprehensible. In which university graduates were obliged to repair churches and famous men were insufficiently honoured. In which, apparently, nothing is quite what it seems to be; whose architecture is either pretending to be what it is not, or in a state of disintegration.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The title was suspended against a glittering backcloth of gold cups and jewellery: Treasures of Time; Hugh Paxton, archaeologist. Tom's mother, alerted by the title sequence, said 'Paxton? Wasn't that...'
  Tony's voice introduces other voices, who in turn expound and explain. The viewer is painlessly conducted to inconvenient or obscure places, given a bird's eye view of Maiden Castle and Cadbury, a peek inside Maeshowe. It is the converse of Tony's motorway map; this is a mirror England where roads and buildings do not exist, a place of turfed bones and melancholy stones, of scrawled markings in a field of corn, of a million broken pots. 'The splendour of Wessex', someone says, and the screen shows weaponry and brooches and a great gold drinking-cup. Accounts of what Hugh Paxton said and did are neatly inter-cut with the basic descriptive task: information must be given, but not offence, people don't like to be made to feel ignorant. It is all very skilfully done.
  And now we are out of doors again. It is the end, the summing-up. Voices pronounce; the camera roams the landscape, rooting out lumps and bumps and circles and trackways like white bloodvessels on green hill-tops. A carefully selective view of things; again, much lurks off-stage. There is music; the credits roll: that's that. 'Very interesting,' says Tom's mother.' She plumps up cushions, makes ready for bed; it is nearly twelve, culture is a late-night offering.
  Tony said, 'Well, I suppose it could have been worse. Not quite what one would have liked, but the background traumas didn't show, which is the great thing. By the way, have you...?'
  On the other side of the windows of the London train, the country was autumnal: bleached and harvested. It had a cropped and tidy look, as though it had had its fling and would now go meekly enough into hibernation. To Tom, conditioned by the calendar of the educational year, September seemed always a time of renewal rather than of completion. A beginning, not an end. He sat, now, in contemplation of the landscape, whose ambiguities he was beginning to appreciate, drinking the measure of British Rail coffee which had cost what felt like a sizeable proportion of his remaining assets, and experienced a certain zest. Which could come only from perversity of spirit, since it was not justified by anything in the immediate circumstances. Prospects, insecure; liquidity, proving unreliable; status, not clear. Notwithstanding which – and the atrocity of the coffee, the torment induced by a heating system apparently designed to roast the thighs of passengers, the ghoulish satisfaction of the station announcement that the train was running approximately twenty-one minutes late – notwithstanding all this, it was possible to look out of the window with pleasure, and to feel a distinct twinge of well-being. I'm not altogether without resources, he thought: we shall get by. We might even enjoy ourselves in the process.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about enjoyed.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The title was suspended against a glittering backcloth of gold cups and jewellery: Treasures of Time; Hugh Paxton, archaeologist. Tom's mother, alerted by the title sequence, said 'Paxton? Wasn't that... '
  Tony's voice introduces other voices, who in turn expound and explain. The viewer is painlessly conducted to inconvenient or obscure places, given a bird's eye view of Maiden Castle and Cadbury, a peek inside Maeshowe. It is the converse of Tony's motorway map; this is a mirror England where roads and buildings do not exist, a place of turfed bones and melancholy stones, of scrawled markings in a field of corn, of a million broken pots. 'The splendour of Wessex', someone says, and the screen shows weaponry and brooches and a great gold drinking-cup. Accounts of what Hugh Paxton said and did are neatly inter-cut with the basic descriptive task: information must be given, but not offence, people don't like to be made to feel ignorant. It is all very skilfully done. 
  And now we are out of doors again. It is the end, the summing-up. Voices pronounce; the camera roams the landscape, rooting out lumps and bumps and circles and trackways like white bloodvessels on green hill-tops. A carefully selective view of things; again, much lurks off-stage. There is music; the credits roll: that's that. 'Very interesting,' says Tom's mother. 'I enjoyed it – some lovely photography. ' She plumps up cushions, makes ready for bed; it is nearly twelve, culture is a late-night offering. 
  Tony said, 'Well, I suppose it could have been worse. Not quite what one would have liked, but the background traumas didn't show, which is the great thing. By the way, have you... ?'
  On the other side of the windows of the London train, the country was autumnal: bleached and harvested. It had a cropped and tidy look, as though it had had its fling and would now go meekly enough into hibernation. To Tom, conditioned by the calendar of the educational year, September seemed always a time of renewal rather than of completion. A beginning, not an end. He sat, now, in contemplation of the landscape, whose ambiguities he was beginning to appreciate, drinking the measure of British Rail coffee which had cost what felt like a sizeable proportion of his remaining assets, and experienced a certain zest. Which could come only from perversity of spirit, since it was not justified by anything in the immediate circumstances. Prospects, insecure; liquidity, proving unreliable; status, not clear. Notwithstanding which – and the atrocity of the coffee, the torment induced by a heating system apparently designed to roast the thighs of passengers, the ghoulish satisfaction of the station announcement that the train was running approximately twenty-one minutes late – notwithstanding all this, it was possible to look out of the window with pleasure, and to feel a distinct twinge of well-being. I'm not altogether without resources, he thought: we shall get by. We might even enjoy ourselves in the process.