Recent media consumption
Watching: Recently finished the second and, alas, last series of The Hour, which was really the perfect thing for me to watch right now. It's one of these shows that gets you hooked despite its flaws -- by the end, I was even rooting for Freddie and Bel to get together, even though they're both workaholic egotists, the course of whose relationship was dedicated more by narrative necessity than characterisation. People talk a lot about Abi Morgan's writing, but I actually found the script to be a lot of inconsistencies held together with style and some really brilliant acting. (Peter Capaldi, how are you so awesome?)
But honestly, what appealed to me most about The Hour is that it's a fantasy of agency -- all these beautiful, well-dressed people who love their jobs and are really good at them. The show tries to tell you that it's journalism that's the Truly Important Thing, but if this was a coffeeshop AU where they were having affairs in between being fanatically dedicated to making good coffee, I imagine I'd be just as invested.
Listening: Just done with the audiobook of Rivers of London. I don't tend to get on with audiobooks -- I just can't process them somehow -- but this actually worked really well; it was more like listening to Radio 4, which is what I usually do while puttering about the flat. Undemanding urban fantasy that does well by both the "urban" and the "fantasy" parts, with interesting characters and a protagonist who keeps trying to figure out how the magic works with Science!. I might read the sequels if I come across them, maybe even in print.
Reading: Still Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety -- it's a massive book, and I haven't got much time to sit down with it, so I'm only 1/3 of the way through. I don't mind too much, though -- it's the sort of epic that you could wallow in for weeks, a rich and fully-realised world. This was Mantel's first novel, although it wasn't published until later, and you can see her experimenting with the techniques of historical fiction -- tenses, point of view, use of documents. It doesn't all work, I don't think, but that doesn't matter, because the characters and dialogue are so amazingly good. These people -- you root for them and 'ship them and want to shake them all in equal measure. Each time the story focuses on a particular character, I think, that one's my favourite, but it keeps making me change my mind.
I was saying to hedda62 that I'd really like to write an essay about Mantel's use of history, though I suspect everyone else has already got there first, what with her winning a double Booker and all. Both A Place of Greater Safety and the Cromwell books are focused on a particular historical crux -- the French Revolution, the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn -- as if trying to explain how and why it happened; I think Mantel says outright somewhere that that's her goal. And yet they never quite answer that question: I felt this in Bring Up the Bodies, that surely the real turning point must have happened somewhere off-page. It's the same in APoGS -- we know the Revolution's coming, it's coming and coming and coming for 300 pages, everyone can see the signs, and yet when Camille whips up the crowd and they take the Bastille, it's an oddly tautological sort of moment: it happens because it happens. I think the downfall, when it comes, will probably feel the same way. It's as though no explanation is enough.
But honestly, what appealed to me most about The Hour is that it's a fantasy of agency -- all these beautiful, well-dressed people who love their jobs and are really good at them. The show tries to tell you that it's journalism that's the Truly Important Thing, but if this was a coffeeshop AU where they were having affairs in between being fanatically dedicated to making good coffee, I imagine I'd be just as invested.
Listening: Just done with the audiobook of Rivers of London. I don't tend to get on with audiobooks -- I just can't process them somehow -- but this actually worked really well; it was more like listening to Radio 4, which is what I usually do while puttering about the flat. Undemanding urban fantasy that does well by both the "urban" and the "fantasy" parts, with interesting characters and a protagonist who keeps trying to figure out how the magic works with Science!. I might read the sequels if I come across them, maybe even in print.
Reading: Still Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety -- it's a massive book, and I haven't got much time to sit down with it, so I'm only 1/3 of the way through. I don't mind too much, though -- it's the sort of epic that you could wallow in for weeks, a rich and fully-realised world. This was Mantel's first novel, although it wasn't published until later, and you can see her experimenting with the techniques of historical fiction -- tenses, point of view, use of documents. It doesn't all work, I don't think, but that doesn't matter, because the characters and dialogue are so amazingly good. These people -- you root for them and 'ship them and want to shake them all in equal measure. Each time the story focuses on a particular character, I think, that one's my favourite, but it keeps making me change my mind.
I was saying to hedda62 that I'd really like to write an essay about Mantel's use of history, though I suspect everyone else has already got there first, what with her winning a double Booker and all. Both A Place of Greater Safety and the Cromwell books are focused on a particular historical crux -- the French Revolution, the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn -- as if trying to explain how and why it happened; I think Mantel says outright somewhere that that's her goal. And yet they never quite answer that question: I felt this in Bring Up the Bodies, that surely the real turning point must have happened somewhere off-page. It's the same in APoGS -- we know the Revolution's coming, it's coming and coming and coming for 300 pages, everyone can see the signs, and yet when Camille whips up the crowd and they take the Bastille, it's an oddly tautological sort of moment: it happens because it happens. I think the downfall, when it comes, will probably feel the same way. It's as though no explanation is enough.