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mousetrapplingBooks
Fiction: Still reading "The Lion Returns", John Dalmas - has continued rather unpromising tho not as bad as I feared when the wife got fridged within 45 pages ... it also turns out to be third in a trilogy. I do kinda want to know how it turns out, but it's going to be off to the charity shop after that!
Non-fiction: Still reading "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East", Robert Fisk - continuing with a look at the regime in Syria & the transition of power to the current man in charge. Written way before the civil war broke out, of course, so it's the atrocities in Hama that we're looking back to rather than the current batch.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: The Two Gentlemen of Verona Act 5 Scene 3-4 - and it all wraps up with everyone ending up about to marry who they should (ie Proteus & Julia (why she wants him I do not know) and Valentine & Silvia). I found that rather more entertaining than I did The Tempest, although things like the speed with which it all wrapped up did show it was maybe not as well written.
The Merry Wives of Windsor introductory material & Act 1 Scene 1-2 - so far suffering a bit (again) from having to read the footnotes to understand the double entendres, which does rather spoil the humour.
Listening
Podcasts: ep 233-251 of The History of England - I'm nearly up to date with this podcast, and he's approaching the end of Henry VIII's reign. Still one of my favourites of the podcasts I'm listening to.
Sunday Podcast: an episode of In Our Time about Roman Slavery. In some ways their equivalent of the Industrial Revolution - the advantage that let the Roman Empire suddenly take off and be so successful.
Music: While running I finished off the 50s compilation then listened to Counting Crows "August & Everything After"
Watching
ep 3 of Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 2017: Language of Life - and finally looking at speech, are we the only animals that can produce/understand speech and a look at the difficulty of getting machines to understand speech. Rather fun set of lectures, obviously aimed at kids but not dumbed down.
A Syrian Lovestory - a Storyville documentary, and as often seems the case with the films in this collection it didn't quite go where we expected but was nonetheless good. It looks at the life of a Syrian family over the years of the civil war, when the film starts the woman is in jail for her political activism, subsequently they flee Syria to first Lebanon & then France and it's the exile that tears the family apart as she wants to/needs to go back to keep fighting but her husband & children would rather settle down now they're safe even if they do miss Syria. Quite difficult to watch at times, but good.
ep 5 & 6 of Africa's Great Civilisations, covering the last couple of centuries so looking at the colonial era & the slave trade. Remained true to its remit as a history of Africa, it concentrated on the African history & perspective rather than the European one. A good series, reminded me of how little I do know of sub-Saharan Africa.
Egypt Unwrapped: The Screaming Mummy - went into this with some trepidation coz people talk a lot of nonsense about this mummy (his mouth is open & somewhat contorted). But actually it was a good programme, presented the various theories as to who he might be and why he was mummified/buried how he was in a pretty even handed fashion, without portentously "solving the mystery".
Egypt Unwrapped: Rameses the Great: The New Evidence - pretty sure we watched this only a couple of months ago, but we watched it again anyway as we weren't 100% sure. Still thought it was rather well done.
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Date: 2018-07-25 20:59 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-25 21:30 (UTC)