Wednesday Media Consumption Roundup

[mousetrappling]

Books

Fiction: Still reading "Debt of Honour", Tom Clancy - I'm nearly finished it now, we're well into the endgame of having to break eggs to make omelettes (i.e. people are dying, but it's the enemy so oh well).

Hidden Meanings: 2-2.17.4 - chapter 2 is about motifs that are auspicious for marriages. Most of which mean something along the lines of: may you have a harmonious marriage and give birth to many sons. Sometimes they wish for the couple to grow old together, or other such things, but the emphasis is on harmony and sons, always sons. I'm not sure if the symbolism I was most surprised about was the crabs or the badgers (puns for harmony & joy respectively).

Listening

Podcasts: ep 2.5-2.D of History of India - he took the narrative up past the end of the Kushan Empire and is now into extra episodes about themes from the time period. Quite a bit of the emphasis of the whole 2 series has been outside India - foreign rulers, but also foreign trade and influences.

Music: while running I listened to "X", INXS; "The Hits/B-sides", Prince; "Cross Road", Bon Jovi.

Watching

ep 7 of Rick Stein's Road to Mexico - still making us hungry, but that's the end of the series. Despite the presence of many dishes with too many legs & eyes, it was a good series.

ep 8 of Eight Days that Made Rome - Bettany Hughes finished out her series with the deathbed conversion of Constantine the Great to Christianity. It was a mostly good series - but the dramatisations erred on the melodramatic side even when that was at odds with the narrative, and the narrative could be rather shallow at times.

The Year in Music 2017 - BBC awards, plus a general retrospective of the year. No stunning surprises, nothing we wanted to check out after hearing on the show, but a pleasant enough piece of entertainment.

ep 3 & 4 of Digging for Britain - the last of the main series covering the North, and a bonus episode looking at new work on Hadrian's Wall including a re-enactment/piece of experimental archaeology that demonstrated Roman cavalry techniques. Good series, always enjoy these. And this year there was no pretence at having a second presenter, they let Alice Roberts get on with it herself and it was much better than the forced chemistry with the other chap (chaps? I can't remember if there'd been multiple ones).

A Blackpool Big Band Boogie with Jools Holland - we actually watched this coz it solved a technical issue with my spreadsheet. Reasonably entertaining, but not actually anything special - basically a film of a live performance filmed (or edited/produced) by someone who thought music was inherently boring so one needed to pull out all the dynamic nonsense camera work one could. By the end both of us were wishing the viewpoint would just Stay Still for even a moment.

ep 1 of Rome Unpacked - Andrew Graham-Dixon and Giorgio Locatelli travel round Rome talking about the art (A.G-D.) and food (G.L.). A sequel of sorts to another series (Italy Unpacked), which we've not watched, I should set it to record when it's next on.