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mousetrapplingBooks
Fiction: Finished "By Honor Betray'd", Debra Doyle & James D. Macdonald - the end of the first trilogy of these books, didn't go where I thought it would at all. And continued the Star Wars flavour by ending with a big party.
Started "The Gathering Flame", also Debra Doyle & James D. Macdonald - this goes back a generation and tells the story of the parents of the main protagonists of the first three books. Continues the Star Wars flavour tho definitely the one-to-one mappings for characters are broken at this point.
Non-fiction: Still reading "The Mind in the Cave", David Lewis-Williams - he's now considering the layouts of particular caves in the light of his hypothesis that the art is to do with shamanistic beliefs.
Also still reading "The Rise & Fall of Ancient Egypt", Toby Wilkinson - into the 5th & 6th Dynasties & their increasing disconnection from the people they ruled.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: The Merry Wives of Windsor Act 5 Scenes 2-5 - finished this play, finally. Not particularly keen on it, but the humour (as I think I've said several times already) was mostly lost on me due to having to keep on reading the footnotes to spot the jokes.
Measure for Measure: Introductory material plus Act 1 Scene 1 - haven't read enough yet to have an opinion (tho the Duke is awfully long winded but I think he spends most of the play off-screen as it were).
Listening
Podcasts: ep 17-27 of The History of England Shedcasts - up to David I in the History of Scotland thread & more biographies of Tudor court figures in the more general one (including the one of Thomas Cromwell that I was particularly looking forward to).
Sunday Podcast: an episode of In Our Time about The Iliad - I was particularly struck by the idea that one of the things it's about is the gods learning they need to be more divine & stop caring so much about mortals, and the semi-divine like Achilles learning to be more mortal.
Music: While running I listened to Marillion "F.E.A.R", Paul Simon "Graceland" and some of the Ladykillers compilation.
Heritage Weekend
There were several buildings open in Ipswich for the two weekends of the Heritage Weekend, we only visited a few:
Freemason's Hall - I think J wanted to see if there was any Egyptianising decor inside and we've walked past the building often enough to be vaguely curious. Sadly nothing Egyptianising at all, and personally I found the evangelising from the Freemasons that were hanging about to be deeply tedious not only because evangelising of any sort tends to annoy me but also because of the deep disconnect between the fine sounding words they used and the institutional culture they described. I was spluttering for ages afterwards.
3-5 Silent Street - a late medieval building that used to be part of Curzon's Lodge, and more recently an antiquarian bookshop. Not much to actually see, but it's a building I've wanted to see inside for ages just because of the age of it.
Unitarian Meeting House - built in 1699, so slightly newer than 3-5 Silent Street. Managed to seem peaceful and welcoming, even full of a whole bunch of slightly nosy residents of Ipswich. Doesn't appear to've been modernised much, still a room full of high-sided pews arranged around the pulpit.
Willis Building - much much more modern, it's basically an office building but designed by Norman Foster & Grade I listed. We saw the garden on the roof, which freaked me out as I don't like heights and found the juxtaposition of the height & the garden a bit difficult. And the room where the swimming pool used to be, but now covered over with a false floor (and apparently the cause of the Grade I listing, obtained by the architect to stop them from removing the swimming pool in the 90s, or so said our tour guide).
Watching
ep 2 of Ancient Invisible Cities - this episode was about Athens, and so much more Scott's area of expertise & more suited to the format of the series too as there were underground aqueducts and mines to map out.
ep 2 of Burma with Simon Reeves - we kept putting this off, as it was sure to be depressing and indeed it was. Glad to've watched the series, I knew pretty much nothing about Burma beforehand, but still it was rather depressing.
Horizon: Jupiter Revealed - a look at what we now know about Jupiter after the most recent NASA mission, which included that it has a huge rocky core and that there may be a lot of water in there too (contrary to some previous results).
ep 1 of Ocean Apart: Art & the Pacific with James Fox - this episode focusing on Australia with an emphasis on indigenous art, both the stuff from before Europeans came along and after including much more recent art made by living people.
Workers or Shirkers? Ian Hislop's Victorian Benefits - another of Hislop's programmes that looks at a modern political issue by examining the history of the issue, in this case how the Victorian idea of the "deserving poor" and the "undeserving poor" still reverberates through the debate about benefits today.
ep 1 of Romancing the Stone: The Golden Ages of British Sculpture - Alastair Sooke talking about British sculpture, from the Middle Ages in this episode.
Pump Up the Bhangra: The Sound of Asian Britain - programme about the history of Bhangra music with its roots in the working men's culture of Punjabi immigrants to the Midlands in the 1960s through to the present day.
King Arthur's Britain: The Truth Unearthed - Alice Roberts looking at recent archaeological evidence about life in the Dark Ages (specifically c.400-600 CE). The framing device of King Arthur was a little tedious because they spent too much time building up the "was he real?" question (no, no he was not), but the archaeology etc was interesting.
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Date: 2018-09-19 20:49 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-20 17:51 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-20 19:09 (UTC)