Wednesday Media Consumption Roundup

[mousetrappling]

Books

Fiction: Finished "Rainbow Six", Tom Clancy. It did finally click and I got sucked into the story. Nonetheless I was still somewhat appalled by the final solution to the problem of the tree-huggers-who-want-to-kill-humanity ... whilst leaving them to survive in the jungles of Brazil with nothing but their wits (literally, not even clothes) has some poetic justice there's too much of an indication of authorial approval, that Clancy feels this is how government agents/soldiers should operate and that law & order & the justice system just get in the way.

Started "The Bear & The Dragon", also Tom Clancy. Last of my Tom Clancys, after which they won't be my Tom Clancys as they'll go to the charity shop. I may write up something at some point about my conflicted feelings about them as a whole.

Non-fiction: Still reading "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East", Robert Fisk - enjoying this so far, tho enjoying is perhaps not the right word. After a first chapter about his meetings with Osama bin Laden in the 90s he's gone back to talk about the roots of al-Qaeda and that sort of Islamist terrorism (or "freedom fighters" as we called them when they were convenient) in the 80s. Starting with the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and now moving on to the overthrow of the Shah in Iran. He's telling it via what he actually saw & did whilst reporting on the events, so it's very much one man's view but it's not pretending to be anything else. (And given the book continues up to ~2004 when it was written/finished it's not like we're far enough away from the events for authoritative history to be written about them.)

Hidden Meanings: 8.1-8.29.2 - motifs for peace, which unsurprisingly overlap a lot with earlier chapters (particularly longevity, wealth & blessings).

Listening

Podcasts: 192-196 of China History Podcast - I'm up to date with this now. There were a couple of bios of people who either emigrated to the US in the 19th Century or from the US in the 20th Century, then the last couple of episodes were a history of the British East India Company (which he'd done to accompany the Taboo miniseries, I think? For an airline's entertainment package? I didn't pay enough attention to the details).

ep 158-162 of History of Byzantium - the ongoing narrative had got to end of Basil II's reign in the early 11th Century, so he's currently doing an overview of what the state of the world (from a Byzantine perspective) is at that point.

Sunday Podcast: ep 7 & 8 of Living with the Gods, looking at beliefs & rituals surrounding birth and coming of age ceremonies respectively.

Music: While running I listened to Deacon Blue "Our Town: The Greatest Hits", Everything But the Girl "Home Movies", Joni Mitchell "Blue", Duran Duran "The Greatest", Elton John "The Very Best of Elton John CD1"

Museums & Exhibitions

National Portrait Gallery - we just pottered about in the Stuart rooms for a bit, then I looked at the Tudors (including my favourite piece there, the cartoon for the Whitehall Mural) and J looked at Enlightenment scientists etc. A warm-up for the exhibition below (literally, we had half an hour to kill and it was too cold to hang about outside on Saturday).

Charles I: King & Collector - exhibition at the Royal Academy. I'm glad we went, I liked the concept of the exhibition (the first time the bulk of Charles I's art collection had been reunited since his head was cut off), and there were some impressive pieces to see. But my take home message was I wasn't keen on his taste in art in general ;) Nor his wife's - I was particularly appalled by the Orazio Gentileschi paintings she had in the Queen's House in Greenwich, I found the paintings themselves and some of their subjects rather creepy (e.g. Lot and his daughters; or e.g. Potiphar's wife).

Watching

ep 10 of The Vietnam War - one of the more depressing things we've watched, in the appalling horror for those who lived through it, the awful behaviour of pretty much all the senior figures in both military & government on all possible sides, and also for the inescapable resonances with more recent wars. Despite the soul crushing depressing nature of the series I highly recommend it, particularly if like me you're not from the US and/or are both too young for it to ever have been current events but are too old for it to've been history when you were at school. (If I write up my thoughts about the Clancy books, this'll tie in too.)

ep 3 of Civilisations - Simon Schama looking at landscape painting, starting with Chinese landscapes.

ep 2 of Immortal Egypt with Joann Fletcher - the 1st Intermediate Period & the Middle Kingdom. A few more places where I don't think I agree with her in this one but it continues to be entertaining & well filmed.

ep 2 of From Ice to Fire: The Incredible Science of Temperature - the middle temperature range, where water is liquid and how this is important for our very existence. Also looking at how temperature affects living things.

Putin: The New Tsar - bio of Putin to date (well, his career). Felt oddly like something he would approve of - in the "useful propaganda to keep people/countries from challenging him" sort of sense. Lots of emphasis on how ruthless he is etc. And a classic rags to riches story with an emphasis on how he just accidentally became president. Which may be true, I don't know one way or the other, but sounds like it was written by Tom Clancy.

The Irish Rock Story: A Tale of Two Cities - the story of rock music in Ireland, with a focus on Belfast & Dublin. Both how it brought people together and how it was affected by the violence tearing people apart. As an aside, I had no idea that Thin Lizzy were Irish, nor that their lead singer was black.

ep 2 of A House Through Time - this ep covered the late 19th Century, when the house was twice a lodging house rather than a family home.