Wednesday Media Consumption Roundup

[mousetrappling]

Books

Fiction: Still reading "The Gathering Flame", Debra Doyle & James D. Macdonald - it's not just a direct prequel to the first three books but also contains within it interleaved backstories up to that point for the three main characters of this book, definitely definitely not Star Wars with the serial numbers filed off now, as the character that I assume was Luke once upon a time has a much darker backstory than that.

Non-fiction: Still reading "The Mind in the Cave", David Lewis-Williams - getting near the end of the book now, the bit I've just read is about how somatic rather than visual hallucinations might be the source for some of the imagery in the caves.

Also still reading "The Rise & Fall of Ancient Egypt", Toby Wilkinson - just read about the 1st Intermediate Period, and the way that the concept of single kingship for Egypt was so ingrained after a thousand years that the forms were still nominally observed for some time after the centre had no effective leadership.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Measure for Measure: Act 1 Scenes 2-5, Act 2 Scene 1 - the various bits of the plot are being set up, and thanks to jesuswasbatman's comments I've paid a little more attention to the Duke than I might otherwise have done after the longwinded opening speech.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 27-30 of The History of England Shedcasts - (which was actually a lot of episodes as there's different numbering for different strands) and I'm now up to date with those for now. I'm enjoying these, definitely worth the membership for me :)

Sunday Podcast: an episode of In Our Time about Automata - not robots, not AI, but a more medieval concept of mechanical things (although of course it began to overlap with the other categories). Not just what examples there are, but also how they fed into questions about things like "what is a living thing?".

Music: While running I listened to the rest of the Ladykillers compilation, and Voice of the Beehive's "Let it Bee!".

Watching

ep 3 of Ancient Invisible Cities - Istanbul in its many incarnations. A somewhat shallow series but still interesting, a shame that the Cairo episode was the weakest of the three.

ep 2 of Ocean Apart: Art & the Pacific with James Fox - looking at Polynesia this time, with a theme of how it's been fantasised about by Western culture as a paradise whilst exploited and destroyed by those same people.

ep 2 of Romancing the Stone: The Golden Ages of British Sculpture - looking at Victorian/Industrial Revolution era sculpture this time, with a certain amount of puncturing the tendency of the interviewed academics towards pomposity by Sooke.

Sylvia Plath: Inside the Bell Jar - a look at both the book and Plath's life (tied together as the book is semi-autobiographical and it is published not long before her successful suicide). In our depressing TV slot and as anticipated it was pretty depressing, I'm not particularly interested in Plath myself (tho J owns a collection of her poems) but it was still an interesting programme presenting a different side of 1950s/60s USA.

The Secret Leopards - a piece of fluff to lighten the mood, a Natural World special presented by someone who was quite clearly the biggest leopard fanboy ever. A charming look at all the reasons why leopards are the most awesome big cats that exist.

ep 7 of Andrew Marr's History of the World - the Industrial Revolution, the opening of Japan to the outside world, we're nearly up to modern history.

ep 1 of Can You Feel It: How Dance Music Conquered the World - this will be a three part series looking at the influence & history of dance music through a variety of lenses. This was the 4/4 beat as the soundtrack to our era. Of course as someone who was more of an indie kid by the time we got to "my era" I (and J) was muttering a bit about how that wasn't the whole story of what was going on then. But then that wasn't the point. Rather good so far.

The Joy of AI - Jim Al-Khalili doing a primer on the field of AI, what AI is and the various sorts, the history of the field & where it goes from here. With the main theme being how far we have to go before getting anywhere near the sort of AI that science fiction imagines.