The weekend went swimmingly

[heliopausa]

Literature!  Theatre!  Music!  and a swimming pool!!  It was a brilliant, brilliant weekend.  Oh, and on Friday night, a spectacular and silent lightning storm.  amazing!

The theatre wasn't really on the weekend - it was on Thursday night, but near enough, near enough - and it was terrific.  Sombre in places, and theatre-of-ideas in places (

Comments

[puddleshark]

The silent lightning sounds eerily wonderful!

I found The Just City clever and thought-provoking, but I actually found the next book in the series a more likeable book. I haven't got my hands on Necessity yet...

[heliopausa]

The lightning was! I wish I had your way with words to describe it.

Yes, it's a clever book - though, as with the Apollo arithmetic issue, not precise in its cleverness. Certainly thought-provoking, with major matters (like: is it possible to construct a just society? is it desirable? and why a god would incarnate, and when is labour slavery) as well as in dinner-party question ways (like: what great lost art of the Western canon would you choose to save, and why?). I enjoyed that aspect.
In fact the degree to which I've been enjoying it is shown by my reluctance, right now, to finish it - I don't want a good thing to end! (I didn't like the rapes, though - that's part of what I meant about it uneasily straddling the space between novel and fable/thought experiment.)

[asakiyume]

How cool that you saw a play!

And very interested to hear your reaction to The Just City--it's another that lots of people I follow have been reading.

[heliopausa]

I saw the same company put on Hamlet a few months back - which was much easier to follow, though I understood fewer words. :D In that production, I was most struck by the willingness to question - well, actually condemn - Hamlet Senior's rule, in the matter of the irresponsibility of his (canonical) treating a whole province as a personal possession to be wagered in a male-ego duel. (See also: David Cameron, Boris Johnson)

In this production, too, there was the question of how to deal with bad/poor leadership, first in wartime (a bad decision costs lives), then in peacetime (a bad plan threatened the environment). The environment won, but not unambiguously - i.e. it was (as it seemed to me, reading tone and theatrical body-language - I couldn't follow the language at that point) still very much under threat - the sense that this poor/corrupt decision had been averted, but that constant vigilance would be needed for the future.

Oh, lots of thoughts about The Just City! I've just written some in the reply above. Have you read it

[asakiyume]

Constant vigilance being needed seems like a good message to leave an audience with.

I haven't read The Just City yet, but I've been enjoying hearing about it. Baby abandoned to die? I feel instinctively wary; that sounds like a plot element that could be badly handled.

[heliopausa]

Oh, bother! I thought for sure you would have, on the grounds that I'm usually last to read anything. I'm sorry for spoiling - it's not a major plot element.