Wednesday Media Consumption Roundup

[mousetrappling]

Books

Fiction: Finished "The Gathering Flame", Debra Doyle & James D. Macdonald, and started "The Long Hunt", also Debra Doyle & James D. Macdonald - from the generation before to to the generation after. This is the book I hadn't read before, it seems to be fairly standalone which is why it didn't cause me problems having not read it before the next two. The theme seems to be the consequences of past decisions coming home to roost.

Non-fiction: Still reading "The Mind in the Cave", David Lewis-Williams - didn't have much chance at the weekend to read otherwise I would've finished it, and I'm pretty much through the drawing of the whole thing together with just an epilogue to go. Essentially his thesis is that there was a change in type of intelligence between Neanderthal and modern Homo sapiens, and that this change involved us remembering and thus having to make (communal) sense of altered states of consciousness (which includes dreams). And the cave art of the Upper Paleolithic is a way of fixing and and making permanent visions induced by trance states (like shamanic rock art of more modern times). So not drawing a representation of reality but using paint as part of the vision experience. He's convincing (to someone who's not got expertise in this area), but I'm always rather wary about explanations of anything that start by postulating some qualitative difference between us & other animals, so many of those have fallen by the wayside after further observations of the rest of the world. And how do you know if Neanderthals could remember & talk about their dreams?

Also still reading "The Rise & Fall of Ancient Egypt", Toby Wilkinson - the current chapter I'm on is about the changes in afterlife beliefs during the First Intermediate Period & the Middle Kingdom, which is when a lot of what we think of as Ancient Egyptian afterlife beliefs were actually developed.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Measure for Measure: Act 2 Scenes 3-4, Act 3, Act 4 Scenes 1-2 - Angelo is both harsh and easily tempted, and the Duke meddles while approving of the harshness.

Listening

Podcasts: changing up how I catch up with the podcasts I'm following that are on going, so this week has been rather bitty as I attempt to get up to date with everything at once.

ep 253-255 of The History of England (plus a couple of bonus episodes) - this has been an overview of the European situation of the 16th Century so that we have Henry VIII's successors in proper context.

4 mini-episodes of The History of Egypt - the theme for this run of mini-episodes is music & poetry. Particularly interesting was the interview with a composer who has written music intended to be evocative of ancient Egyptian music, he talked about things like working out what sort of scale they probably used by counting strings on ancient harps between the octaves strings (which you can tell as exactly half the length is one octave up).

ep 206-207 of the China History Podcast - a biography of Robert van Gulik who wrote the Judge Dee detective novels, and a discussion of the Chinese labourers who worked for the French & the British during World War I.

ep 169-170 of The History of Byzantium - he continues his tour of the empire c.1025 CE, moving to the east & into Armenia.

ep 115 of The History of English - a look at words for measurements, which are very often words for body parts, and how the measurements were beginning to be standardised during the 14th Century.

ep 3.K of The History of India - a look at the life of an Indian monk who translated Buddhist texts into Chinese (at the end of his long life).

Music: While running I listened to Wham!'s greatest hits, and The Cure's greatest hits, in the same run just for a bit of mental whiplash.

Watching

ep 3 of Oceans Apart: Art & the Pacific with James Fox - looking at New Zealand and the Maori, which was the most optimistic story of the three as the Maori weren't completely wiped out or marginalised. A good series, although more depressing history than I'd originally expected (but in retrospect I don't know why I didn't expect it, you can't tell the story of the art without the story of how the artists' cultures were treated).

ep 3 of Romancing the Stone: The Golden Ages of British Sculpture - and modern sculpture to tie up the series. Including the Angel of the North, which J & I have been planning to visit on our upcoming adventure in the NE. I enjoyed the series, tho I think J was less keen, but much of the sculpture was not my cup of tea.

ep 8 of Andrew Marr's History of the World - the 20th Century, with the horrors of the World Wars and the Cold War. I like this series, some of it is clearly oversimplified, but it's well presented with the little vignettes to go with Marr's narrative generally entertaining rather than cringe-worthy.

ep 2 of Can You Feel It: How Dance Music Conquered the World - this one about clubs & club culture, and it really felt like the narration and the things they showed us did not match. The narration was the upbeat tale of how British club culture took the club scene of the US and through the entrepreneurial spirit of the 80s & 90s went on to become a global phenomenon that underpins the modern world. And the things we saw felt to me much more like how the club scene of the 80s & early 90s (i.e. raves & "private parties" in warehouses & fields, all about the music, dancing & the drugs) sold its soul to the capitalist devil and is now parading about like a zombie with £100,000 tables for nights in Vegas and big luxury "shows" as clubs in Ibiza.

BBC Proms: Pioneers of Sound - featuring music by Delia Derbyshire (who is best known for her arrangement of the Doctor Who theme music) amongst others. Not really my cup of tea, but interesting.

Hyundai Mercury Price 2018: Album of the Year Live - featured a performance by everyone on the shortlist before the announcement of the winner. I think Nadine Shah should've won, she stood out from the rest for me. Tho J has since listened to her album and to the winning one (by Wolf Alice) and says the Wolf Alice one is more varied when you listen to the whole thing whereas the Nadine Shah one feels a bit more samey by the end.