Something I read: I finished the book The Just City - I've already tipped my main reactions to the book, but in sum, I do feel positively about it - I found myself putting off finishing it because I was enjoying the ride - but not stunningly so. I liked the idea of it more than the execution, I guess. Minor point:
I was narked to find, on reading the end-notes, that the wonderful Etheldred May (of The Daisy Chain) was being fingered as the source/inspiration for one of the three POV narrators - that eager, lively, hungry, questioning mind claimed as the inspiration for the vapid, don't-question-this-it-must-be-right, downright dull Maia (oh, I get it now - the name) - absolutely no way, nowhere, no how!
Something I began to read: I saw on
oursin's blog a mention of The Last Man, a story by Mary Shelley set in 2073 (there's so much around that I've never heard of!) and dashed off to find it, because what a fascinating thought, the view of 2073, from 1826.
It's on Gutenberg, so I plunged into it and am now up to Chapter Four, but am not sure if I'll finish. It's very fast-moving - in three chapters there's been gambling addiction, lots of early death, abdication of a king, orphans reduced to destitution, declaration of a republic, Heathcliffy youth, arrests, plots to reclaim/usurp the throne, parliamentary debates, someone being shut up as insane, love, foreign service... heaps of things! Fast-moving and very Romantic - and for me, heavy going, what with the incessant flashing eyes and heaving (manly) bosoms and so on. (It would be hard to find a more marked contrast to the habits of The Just City.) So far, some interesting views of republicanism and independence movements (Greece) but hard to winkle them out from all the Romance non-stop action. I hope the pace slows down soon so that I can get to grips with things more.
Something I won't get to see: I like the sound of this
exhibition in Cambridge about illuminated manuscripts.
Something I did actually see: I saw another episode in the eighteenth season of Doctor Who! I'm seeing them in order, very slowly, as life permits. This was the one about Meglos,
who was a great villain, in four different bodies, and quite a lot of fun, apart from the disgracefully shallow science/religion dichotomy and very sketchy plot.
I enjoyed the double joke about "aggressive vegetation", and enjoyed even more the vaguely Genghis Khany-costumed space pirates - they were pantomime villains, and a lot of fun, and also out-acted - even the non-speaking ones! - pretty well everyone else in the cast. (It was an especially bad show from Romana, I thought.) Tom Baker showed intermittently that he had the skills to have made this storyline a real knockout - especially if they'd given it room to develop - but in the event didn't. His acting was very uneven, I thought - almost convincing in parts - for very brief moments actually almost chilling, but then making it all a joke again. Maybe they were all just pantomiming, and that got to him.
In sum: storyline and script sloppy, acting patchy, costuming, makeup and special effects - great! (Yes, of course the special effects look feeble now, but I still liked them.)
On Sunday, there were signs of great weariness from my laptop - it's been just about two years since I was told it could go at any minute. Its great weariness was showing at first in temperamentality, and, then these last few days, in it making a great laborious business of recharging, and then increasingly in clicking noises! and sparks! and smoke! and then... the computer fainted!
Well...sort of. anyway, I unplugged it and declared it hors de combat, pro tem. (how many non-English phrases could one string together and still be intelligible, do you think? ) But now it's fixed again, thanks partly to the gentleman who took apart the black box on the power cord to diagnose its ills and partly to a helpful local phonecard seller and phone fixer, who has of course a little soldering iron, and put on a dab of solder and waved away all thought of payment. So the weekend had a happy ending. :)