Wednesday Media Consumption Roundup

[mousetrappling]

Books

Fiction: Still reading "Rainbow Six", Tom Clancy. I didn't take it away with me at the weekend so not made much progress, tho I have got sucked into the story finally (again mostly waiting to find out how the biowarfare plot pans out, the anti-terrorism one is still quite dull).

Read all of "Dark State" Charles Stross - the second book in the current (second) Merchant Princes trilogy. These started off looking like portal fantasy in the very first book but are really multiverse/portal SF/alt-history. I enjoy these :)

Read all of "An Ancient Peace" Tanya Huff - this is the start of a new series continuing on from the Valour series. Mil SF, although as our main characters are now mostly retired from active service I guess it's ex-Mil SF or Vet SF. I also enjoy these (tho in a completely different way to the Stross ones).

Non-fiction: Finished "1177BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed", Eric H. Cline. He spends the last full chapter exploring the possible causes of the Bronze Age collapse, and the Epilogue thinking about whether collapse is an accurate description. The take home message is that there's definitely a change in how society/civilisation is organised around that time and that 1177 BCE is a convenient date to use as shorthand (in the same way that the fall of Rome in 476 BCE is a convenient date for the end of the Western Roman Empire). The causes of that change aren't clear and aren't simple - he thinks the best answer is that the very interconnectedness of the world at the time was part of the problem. As a variety of problems (earthquakes, drought, internal revolts, external threats) hit a variety of places semi-simultaneously the destabilisation of one piece of the network in turn destabilised the rest.

Started "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East", Robert Fisk - from instability in the Middle east 3000 years ago to instability in the Middle East in my lifetime. I've not read very much of it yet, but so far it seems part memoir, part modern history book. Goes quite well with the Jeremy Bowen podcast series we listened to last year.

Hidden Meanings: 7.59.4-8 - finishing up longevity motifs.

Listening

Podcasts: 188-192 of China History Podcast - finishing up the 9 part Chinese philosophy overview.

Music: While running I listened to Texas "White on Blonde", Little Boots "Hands", The Bangles "Everlasting Flame", Imagined Village "Imagined Village", Emily Portman "The Glamoury", Florence + The Machine "Lungs", LCD Soundsystem "LCD Soundsystem", Maxïmo Park "A Certain Trigger", Simon & Garfunkel "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and Paul Simon "Graceland". I also ran 38 miles this week.

Watching

ep 9 of The Vietnam War - it continues to be depressing & appalling; and to remind one of how little has really changed.

ep 2 of Civilisations - Mary Beard looking at sculpture that depicts the human body, and how our inherited cultural perception of the Greeks as having made the "best" human sculptures affects how we perceive other art.

ep 2 of Tones, Drones & Arpeggios - I seem to've forgotten to write about the first episode last week, this was a 2 part series looking at the Minimalism movement in Classical Music. Ep 1 covered La Monte Young and Terry Riley, ep 2 covered Philip Glass & Steve Reich. An interesting (and watchable) series despite the music itself leaving me cold (it's all terribly clever but I like music with tunes).

ep 1 of Immortal Egypt with Joann Fletcher - we've seen this before but decided to watch it again as we'd be recording it in HD this time. It's a sweep through Egyptian history, and is one of Fletcher's better series (I don't always like her stuff).