Reading, Watching, Cooking, Enjoying and... TitanCon
Yes, dear friends, sometimes life is very much a joy. Warm weather and blackberries. Good conversation and better cooking. Right now, I'm working my way through the Oh, She Glows cookbook, making everything from puddings, to salt'n'vinegar roasted chickpeas to breakfast cereals. Tonight, it's enchiladas.
By day, however, the nourishment is more intellectual. I'm writing up a storm -- nothing I'm allowed talk about, but definitely stormy. In a relaxed, balmy kind of way.
And then, when all the work is done, it's time to play...
READING
I'm on one of those good streaks in books that seem to come more and more rarely. Judith Herrin's Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire gave me lots to chew on when I ran out of roasted chickpeas. Yes, yes, I knew the Byzantine Empire was a sort of a successor state to ancient Rome, but I had no idea just how complete the continuity was. "Very complete" is the answer.
Right up until the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the people of the city referred to themselves as "the Romans" and wrote all their documents in an ancient Greek that Plato would have understood.
On the very last day, as the last Emperor lead the last charge against the Ottomon besiegers, he spurred on his followers with the words, "Hurl you javelins and arrows against them... so that they know they are fighting... with the descendants of the Greeks and the Romans."
Cool stuff!
Yet, it's not quite as cool as N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season.
Now, I have a confession to make. I met this author at a convention a few years ago and thought she was great. Yet, I couldn't bring myself to like her books. I bounced off The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms so hard I broke a tooth. While The Killing Moon left me... indifferent.
So, I swore that no matter how compelling the hype, I was never, ever going to read another of her novels. Luckily for me, I broke that promise, because 30% into The Fifth Season, my skull is creaking under the strain of holding in so many great ideas. Books like this are the reason I love speculative fiction. Books like this keep me up at night, partly in delight and fascination, and partly in a rage of jealousy.
I won't spoil it for you, because I'd cry if somebody did the same for me, but in the unlikely event the rest of the story lets me down, I've still got more out of it than the last five novels I read (or tried to read) put together.
WATCHING
I really enjoyed Narcos on Netflix. No spoilers here, but if you know nothing about Pablo Escobar, you'll think the whole story is a ridiculous, drug addled confabulation. Watch it!
And I've just started a British crime series (also on Netflix), called The Fear. One episode in, and I'm marvelling over how good it is. Has anybody else seen this?
TITANCON
TitanCon is very, very soon now. Anybody toying with the idea of going, should just give in to the impulse right now. Seriously, guests from the Belfast-made Game of Thrones -- including the rascal known as Miltos Yerolemou -- will just be lounging around or posing for photographs. And then, there are the writers: Sarah Pinborough, Joe Abercrombie, Pat Cadigan and more.
Feel free to stay home and weep. But feel even freer to make a new, albeit temporary home for yourself in Belfast, where weeping has been banished, and only ecstasy remains.
More soon.
By day, however, the nourishment is more intellectual. I'm writing up a storm -- nothing I'm allowed talk about, but definitely stormy. In a relaxed, balmy kind of way.
And then, when all the work is done, it's time to play...
READING
I'm on one of those good streaks in books that seem to come more and more rarely. Judith Herrin's Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire gave me lots to chew on when I ran out of roasted chickpeas. Yes, yes, I knew the Byzantine Empire was a sort of a successor state to ancient Rome, but I had no idea just how complete the continuity was. "Very complete" is the answer.
Right up until the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the people of the city referred to themselves as "the Romans" and wrote all their documents in an ancient Greek that Plato would have understood.
On the very last day, as the last Emperor lead the last charge against the Ottomon besiegers, he spurred on his followers with the words, "Hurl you javelins and arrows against them... so that they know they are fighting... with the descendants of the Greeks and the Romans."
Cool stuff!
Yet, it's not quite as cool as N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season.
Now, I have a confession to make. I met this author at a convention a few years ago and thought she was great. Yet, I couldn't bring myself to like her books. I bounced off The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms so hard I broke a tooth. While The Killing Moon left me... indifferent.
So, I swore that no matter how compelling the hype, I was never, ever going to read another of her novels. Luckily for me, I broke that promise, because 30% into The Fifth Season, my skull is creaking under the strain of holding in so many great ideas. Books like this are the reason I love speculative fiction. Books like this keep me up at night, partly in delight and fascination, and partly in a rage of jealousy.
I won't spoil it for you, because I'd cry if somebody did the same for me, but in the unlikely event the rest of the story lets me down, I've still got more out of it than the last five novels I read (or tried to read) put together.
WATCHING
I really enjoyed Narcos on Netflix. No spoilers here, but if you know nothing about Pablo Escobar, you'll think the whole story is a ridiculous, drug addled confabulation. Watch it!
And I've just started a British crime series (also on Netflix), called The Fear. One episode in, and I'm marvelling over how good it is. Has anybody else seen this?
TITANCON
TitanCon is very, very soon now. Anybody toying with the idea of going, should just give in to the impulse right now. Seriously, guests from the Belfast-made Game of Thrones -- including the rascal known as Miltos Yerolemou -- will just be lounging around or posing for photographs. And then, there are the writers: Sarah Pinborough, Joe Abercrombie, Pat Cadigan and more.
Feel free to stay home and weep. But feel even freer to make a new, albeit temporary home for yourself in Belfast, where weeping has been banished, and only ecstasy remains.
More soon.