Wednesday media consumption roundup

Books

Fiction: finished "Girl Reading", Katie Ward. I enjoyed this, each of the vignettes was long enough to be a satisfying story, and characters were all very distinct. I did lose the thread a bit in the last one tho, so while I had a sense that it was all supposed to cohere into one thing it didn't quite gel for me. Started reading "Reamde", Neal Stephenson, so a bit of mental whiplash from the change of style ;) (I'm reading my way through a small handful of books we bought a while ago that I haven't read).

Non-fiction: still reading Gerald Harriss's "Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461" - tensions between the leadership of the towns & the general populace, and how this didn't actually break out into open conflict very often (in part because the lower sorts were kept very busy earning enough to live off).

Maps: the set from ~100,000ya to 2000 BCE. Covering migration of people to everywhere but New Zealand, Madagascar & the Arctic, development of agriculture & early urbanisation. I didn't know that agriculture developed in Papua New Guinea that early.

Listening

Podcasts: ep B36-B43 of The Ancient World podcast - I'm up to date with where he's got to now. Don't think that's the end of the sequence, although he has got to Xenobia and how you can't actually quite tie her into the descendants of Cleopatra (which he discovered whilst researching this).

ep 96-98 of The History of English podcast - up to date with this again. He's been looking at the end of John's reign, and amongst other things words to do with charters and words to do with debate.

Sunday podcast: first two episodes of Our Man in the Middle East - Jeremy Bowen presenting a history of the modern Middle East as he's seen it through his over 25 years of reporting on it. Started with the first Iraq War in 1990, which is just before I really started to pay attention to current affairs, I mean, I knew there was a war in Iraq at the time but I was more worried about my GCSE results.

Music: while running I've listened to a metal compilation called Corrosion, the Spawn soundtrack and the first CD of 100 Hits Rock.

While sewing I listened to an HMV Playlist CD from June 04 which was mostly unmemorable (there was a track by a band called Bell x1 on it, that was one of the unmemorable ones). Also an EP by Bella, which reminded me a little of Sarah McLachlan in terms of genre. And several things by Belle & Sebastien, we have half a dozen singles & two albums. I'd forgotten I like their stuff.

Games

Diablo 3 - got our characters up to level 50 and finished the first Chapter of the season.

Watching

ep 2 of Secrets of Silicon Valley - how the tech developed in order to target ads better is also being used to manipulate us and has a significant effect on modern politics. And how you can pretty much be uniquely identified by your facebook likes/browsing habits in order to make this targeting work - they don't know who you are in the sense of having your street address, but they do know who you are in terms of your personality etc. This is the obvious case of unintended social consequences of what Silicon Valley is developing coming back to bite the hand that made it - facebook & other social media giants actively helped the Trump campaign but they aren't personally pleased with the result. Despite buying that there's a problem I still thought the presenter was far too keen to fling out the baby with the bathwater. But I've no good ideas for solutions either.

ep 2 of From Russia to Iran - Levison Wood travelling through the Caucasus, which is mostly visiting countries that the FO thinks one shouldn't. This episode include the Dagestan region of Russia & Azerbaijan. I think I forgot to mention we watched ep 1 last week. We really enjoyed his Walking the Nile series, and this series is shaping up to be as good.

ep 1 of My Family, Partition & Me: India 1947 - Partition was 70 years ago, so there are several BBC programmes about it, I've recorded two or three of them but not the whole lot. This series looks at 4 families & their experience of Partition via a family member revisiting the scene. This ep had a Hindu family who fled a village in what became Bangladesh, a Muslim family who fled from the bit of the Punjab that didn't become Pakistan, and a British Colonial family whose pater familias remained to help efforts to stop the violence. Every bit as depressing as you might expect.

ep 1 of Yorkshire Wolds Way - Paul Rose walking the Wolds Way, just two half hour episodes, fluffy feel good travel TV - this one was a good antidote to the depression of Partition.

How to Make a Number One Record - the BBC making good use of their archive footage of music. A bit of a shallow programme but fun to watch - more of a retrospective than any attempt at analysis.

Birthday

I decided that for my actual birthday I'd have a complete day off (well, as close as I could). I did have to feed & water the entities, as J put it, i.e. feed the cat, water the plants, make J's sandwiches (we did have a takeaway in the evening tho) but otherwise no housework . I also decided I wouldn't do any of my current on-going projects, instead I'd pick up my embroidery for the first time in years and do a bit of that.

 

I think this penguin frieze project was the first Xmas present J bought me, so I've been working on it off & on for 20 years. Mostly off, it has to be said! So I'm quite pleased at another bit of a penguin stitched :)

And in the evening after we'd had our takeaway we played Diablo 3 for a few hours - getting our characters up to level 50. With a pause for surprise birthday cake - J had bought one & sneaked it into the house while I wasn't looking :D