Wednesday Media Consumption Roundup

[mousetrappling]

Books

Fiction: still reading Neal Stephenson's "Reamde", a bit over halfway now. I think there's a vague feeling that it's pulling back together rather than opening out now, but nowhere near the endgame yet.

Non-fiction: still reading Gerald Harriss's "Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461" - more about the church (as institution) and monasteries in particular this time. Which never quite recovered from the Black Death to their previous levels of population, might almost say that the monastic way of life was in decline.

Maps: 200BCE-500AD - the rise of Christianity and the decline of Rome. China also falls to pieces over this period. And the first empires in South America arise (Tiwanaku & Wari). Madagascar got settled by Indonesians, which I hadn't realised, and New Zealand is still uninhabited.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 28-33 of Renaissance English History podcast. Mostly been bios of this person or that who was significant during the period, still interesting, but still the least favourite of the ones I'm keeping listening to (so OK but not great).

Sunday podcast: ep 7 & 8 of Our Man in the Middle East - build up to 9/11, the previous career of Osama bin Laden and the buildup of reasons for the US & UK to invade Iraq a second time.

Music: while running I've mostly listened to 80s compilations.

Watching

ep 3 of Reginald D. Hunter's Songs of the South - Mississippi & Louisiana. A good series overall, kept the tone light but didn't feel shallow.

ep 2 of The World's Busiest Cities - Mexico City this time, most of the sprawl is self-built by people just arriving and putting up a house where they found space.

ep 1 & 2 of Dangerous Borders: A Journey Across India & Pakistan - two British journalists, whose families are from the Punjab, making parallel journeys along the border region. Different tone to the other stuff I recorded about Partition, this has a focus on what the countries are like now, what life is like now, and so it rather more upbeat overall. Without sugarcoating the realities of both present & past.

Best Album 2017: Meet the Mercury Prize Shortlist & Mercury Music Prize: Best Album of the Year 2017 - I wasn't that keen on the shortlist, a lot felt bland or if not bland then not interesting enough to investigate further. The interview snippets put me off some of the bands too. For me the stand out act was Kate Tempest, tho I also quite liked the performance from Stormzy. But it was Sampha who won it and he was in the bland category.

Indie Classics at the BBC - one of the Beebs music programmes that strings together various bits of live footage they have in a theme, with facts subtitled over them. The theme here was earlier indie music, it ended with Happy Mondays & the Stone Roses, and was fun to watch. Wasn't just the obvious bands or tracks.