Wednesday Media Consumption Roundup

[mousetrappling]

Books

Fiction: Still reading "Debt of Honour", Tom Clancy. The thing that's striking me about this one is that whilst the Russians were treated mostly as Noble Enemies in the books set pre-end of Cold War, the Japanese in this one are really not. Nor were the Vietnamese in Without Remorse. It's almost as if your skin colour affects how Clancy judges your motivations ...

Non-fiction: still reading Gerald Harriss's "Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461" - now on to the relationship with France in the second half of the period covered. After Richard II's ignoring of France to concentrate on promoting the brand of his awesomeness and Henry IV's concentration on bolstering his domestic support, Henry V is ready to go kick some French arse with an emphasis on conquer rather than raid. He's pretty successful at it too, but then he dies.

Maps: 2010 CE - the end of the book. I'd recommend the book - "The New Atlas of World History: Global Events at a Glance", John Haywood - both as a reference to dip in to and as something to read through like I've done over the last few months, gave me a real feel for the ebb & flow of history.

Hidden Meanings: the next book I'm reading through one bite-sized chunk at a time is "Hidden Meanings in Chinese Art", Terese Tse Bartholomew. So far read the Introduction & sections 1.1->1.1.26, which concern the symbolism of bats. The word for bat is a pun for blessings and for riches, so motifs including bats are generally wishes for blessings.

Listening

Podcasts: ep 1.4-1.11,1.A-1.D of History of India - the historical narrative (numbered episodes) is through to Ashoka (and just after him to the collapse of his empire 53 years after his death). The podcaster is also doing a series of episodes with letters which explore more general topics from the same historical period as each narrative segment - including things like the little that is known about South Indian history during this time.

Sunday podcast: IOT episode about Feathered Dinosaurs - concentrating on the discoveries coming out of the vast fossil fields recently discovered in China which are re-writing a lot of what was "known" about dinosaurs. Full of "ooh, that's interesting" facts, like you can tell the colours the feathers were by the shapes of the melanosomes (? or melanocytes, I've forgotten which) preserved in the fossilised feathers.

Music: while running I listened to "Hands", Little Boots; the first Imagined Village album; "Cruel Sister", Rachel Unthank & the Winterset; "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy", Sarah McLachlan; and "The Greatest", Cat Power.

Live Music: we went to see Fish play at the Cambridge Corn Exchange, supported by Doris Brendel. The support act suffered from a poor sound mix I think - the vocals were very muddy sounding, and even when she was talking to the audience the words felt indistinct. Otherwise quite good with a strong steampunk aesthetic visually - didn't grab me enough to want to check out more of the music tho. Fish was good, as ever, but I think it's getting more noticeable how much he needs to alter the pitch of the older songs to fit his aging vocal range.

Watching

ep 5 of Rick Stein's Road to Mexico - still making us hungry.

The Farthest: Voyager's Interstellar Journey - Storyville documentary about the Voyager missions as it's the 40th anniversary of the launch of the two probes. And Voyager 1 is now in interstellar space, the first man-made object to leave our solar system. Good programme, tho rather focused on the human side as opposed to the science side.

Film: went to the cinema for the first time in a year (for me), to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi. I enjoyed it a lot, can't say much without spoilers tho.