Entry #132
- Listening to:
- Saint-Saëns, symphony no. 3 (Organ). This symphony gets
its moniker from the very impressive inclusion of an organ,
which introduces the last movement. The organ doesn't usually
feature in symphonic works, but it works very well in this one.
- Holiday reading:
- Patrick O'Brian, H.M.S.
Surprise. This is the third in the series and sees
Aubrey and Maturin journey in the eponymous (hee!) ship around
the Cape of Good Hope, into the Indian Ocean, to India and then
onto the East Indies. Maturin gets plenty of opportunity to
look at weird and exotic fauna, and there are battles with big
French fleets. The principal characters' romantic lives are
also advanced.
One thing I found slightly frustrating with this installment in
the series was that it was not at all obvious when it was set.
I think in retrospect that it was after the Battle of Trafalgar,
but this is not very clear. I definitely enjoyed it though, and
appreciated the way in which more and more of the historic world
was revealed. Here we got to see the East India Company, India
and the tropics.
- A lost comic:
- Waiting for
Bob. An intelligent, comic soap. No talking animals, and
elegant line drawings.
- Just read:
- Now that I'm back from the holiday, I am back onto the reading
list. I finished London:
portrait of a city on Sunday. It has great art,
mainly nice prints of paintings, and some of the excerpts were
pretty good too. For example, it was interesting to read of the
Carlyle family moving into Chelsea in the late 18th/early 19th
century and finding it nice and rural, while still being
conveniently close to the bustling metropolis. I think it's
fair to say that Chelsea is now central London by most metrics.
Other excerpts by people like Dickens, Kipling and Virginia
Woolf were also good.
- To read next:
- Boethius, The consolation of philosophy. This was
apparently written while the author was imprisoned by a Roman
emperor. Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western
Philosophy, reckoned it the most appealing Christian
philosophy of the period, preferring it to that of people like
Augustine and Jerome.
In the interests of getting work done, I've decided to reduce my 'log
frequency somewhat. Over two weeks, I'll do logs on
Monday-Wednesday-Friday-Tuesday-Thursday.
To close: the moral of this
story is that not even academics can mess with the entertainment
industry in America. I wouldn't mind industry moguls throwing their
weight around if it wasn't for the fact that the governments of this
world seem to bend over backwards to make things as cosy as possible
for them. Protect (legislate in favour of) the consumer, not the
business.
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