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mousetrapplingIncludes some spoilers for Doctor Who at the end...
Fiction: Finished "Deadhouse Gates" also Steven Erikson - the story is gradually widening past the narrow focus of the first book, with more non-human characters and a greater sense of time. It's one of the things I remember fondly from reading it in the past - Erikson has an ability to convey how short human lifespans and memories are compared to the age of the world (OK, it's a fantasy world not the real world, but this is one that has history on geological timescales).
Started "Memories of Ice" also Steven Erikson - not very far into this yet, just the prologue & a return to some of the characters of the first one.
Non-fiction: Still reading "The Making of the Middle Sea", Cyprian Broodbank - not very much this week though. He's just starting to talk about evidence for possible trade networks c.5-7 thousand years ago.
Podcasts: ep 261a of The History of England - an interview with Diarmaid MacCulloch about his new book about Thomas Cromwell.
ep HoS 30 of The History of England Shedcasts - catching up with the Western Isles, and looking at the beginnings of the highland/lowland divide in Scottish culture which really takes shape during the 14th Century.
bonus ep of The History of Egypt - the full interview with Campbell Price which moves beyond Amenhotep son of Hapu and into talking about Price's new book Pocket Museum: Ancient Egypt.
ep 40-44 of The History of China - more of the Three Kingdoms period.
Music: While running I listened to Tracy Chapman "Tracy Chapman", Laura Marling "Alas I Cannot Swim" and a little bit of Everything But the Girl "Home Movies".
Talk: we visited the Ashmolean Museum with the EEG, and Liam McNamara gave us a tour of the Early Egypt Gallery, focusing on the items they have from the Main Deposit at Hierakonpolis, in particular the ivory figurines and other items. Afterwards J & I also looked at some of the other things in the museum including the Mesopotamian gallery.
ep 3 of A Dangerous Dynasty: House of Assad - covering the period from the Arab Spring onward, basically the civil war, how it started and how appalling it's been. A good series, in the depressing current affairs genre. Tho I'm not sure I learnt anything really new about either the Syrian civil war nor the Assads, just a few details but still a good overview of the situation.
ep 1 of The Lakes with Paul Rose - a series of short programmes about the Lake District, very fluffy (mostly) and a good antidote to the gloom of the Syrian situation.
ep 1 of Dynasties - the new David Attenborough series, each episode will look at a family group from a different species starting with chimpanzees. Followed a few months in the life of a group where the alpha male was challenged. Very good, tho as always with nature documentaries I do wonder how much the story was the real story and how much the story was what they could put together from the footage they had.
ep 6 of Doctor Who - a good episode for Remembrance Sunday, even though not WW1 nor any other war per se, it was still remembrance of those who die in needless conflict. From last week's trailer I'd known it was going to be the Partition of India that was the subject, but I didn't find that a spoiler as such because it added a sense of weight and inevitability to the story from the beginning. I was glad we'd watched the documentaries we'd recorded last year when the BBC marked the 60th anniversary of the atrocities because it meant we had context, but that does mean I'm not sure quite how well it would be conveyed without that background and certainly I didn't have much idea of how badly Partition was handled by the British Empire and the atrocities that resulted before we watched the documentaries. Changing tack slightly - another episode with no villain other than bigoted people, the aliens were benign. And another small scale story, a tragedy but one on a human scale not a universe scale and again with hope at the end. I also thought the ending hinted that Yaz's grandmother had figured out she'd met her granddaughter in 1947 even if she didn't know how or why.
Books
Fiction: Finished "Deadhouse Gates" also Steven Erikson - the story is gradually widening past the narrow focus of the first book, with more non-human characters and a greater sense of time. It's one of the things I remember fondly from reading it in the past - Erikson has an ability to convey how short human lifespans and memories are compared to the age of the world (OK, it's a fantasy world not the real world, but this is one that has history on geological timescales).
Started "Memories of Ice" also Steven Erikson - not very far into this yet, just the prologue & a return to some of the characters of the first one.
Non-fiction: Still reading "The Making of the Middle Sea", Cyprian Broodbank - not very much this week though. He's just starting to talk about evidence for possible trade networks c.5-7 thousand years ago.
Listening
Podcasts: ep 261a of The History of England - an interview with Diarmaid MacCulloch about his new book about Thomas Cromwell.
ep HoS 30 of The History of England Shedcasts - catching up with the Western Isles, and looking at the beginnings of the highland/lowland divide in Scottish culture which really takes shape during the 14th Century.
bonus ep of The History of Egypt - the full interview with Campbell Price which moves beyond Amenhotep son of Hapu and into talking about Price's new book Pocket Museum: Ancient Egypt.
ep 40-44 of The History of China - more of the Three Kingdoms period.
Music: While running I listened to Tracy Chapman "Tracy Chapman", Laura Marling "Alas I Cannot Swim" and a little bit of Everything But the Girl "Home Movies".
Talk: we visited the Ashmolean Museum with the EEG, and Liam McNamara gave us a tour of the Early Egypt Gallery, focusing on the items they have from the Main Deposit at Hierakonpolis, in particular the ivory figurines and other items. Afterwards J & I also looked at some of the other things in the museum including the Mesopotamian gallery.
Watching
ep 3 of A Dangerous Dynasty: House of Assad - covering the period from the Arab Spring onward, basically the civil war, how it started and how appalling it's been. A good series, in the depressing current affairs genre. Tho I'm not sure I learnt anything really new about either the Syrian civil war nor the Assads, just a few details but still a good overview of the situation.
ep 1 of The Lakes with Paul Rose - a series of short programmes about the Lake District, very fluffy (mostly) and a good antidote to the gloom of the Syrian situation.
ep 1 of Dynasties - the new David Attenborough series, each episode will look at a family group from a different species starting with chimpanzees. Followed a few months in the life of a group where the alpha male was challenged. Very good, tho as always with nature documentaries I do wonder how much the story was the real story and how much the story was what they could put together from the footage they had.
ep 6 of Doctor Who - a good episode for Remembrance Sunday, even though not WW1 nor any other war per se, it was still remembrance of those who die in needless conflict. From last week's trailer I'd known it was going to be the Partition of India that was the subject, but I didn't find that a spoiler as such because it added a sense of weight and inevitability to the story from the beginning. I was glad we'd watched the documentaries we'd recorded last year when the BBC marked the 60th anniversary of the atrocities because it meant we had context, but that does mean I'm not sure quite how well it would be conveyed without that background and certainly I didn't have much idea of how badly Partition was handled by the British Empire and the atrocities that resulted before we watched the documentaries. Changing tack slightly - another episode with no villain other than bigoted people, the aliens were benign. And another small scale story, a tragedy but one on a human scale not a universe scale and again with hope at the end. I also thought the ending hinted that Yaz's grandmother had figured out she'd met her granddaughter in 1947 even if she didn't know how or why.
