My Idea of Fun

I think Jazz and Folk will always be my favourite genres of music to play as well as to listen to - but one of the great benefits of being a recorder and flute player is the sheer breadth and depth and timespan of the performance repertoire. These guys are absolutely amazing. Listen and be awestruck.

Is it just me?

So, this was the first volume in a series, right? Maybe a four or five novel series? If the answer to those questions is 'bien sur' or similar (languages - few. I'm a late c20 Brit, what do you expect?) then Good. I'm pleased. If the answer is 'No' then not only will I be disappointed at the destruction of my hopes for future purchases, but also at the realisation that 'Transition', desite being entertaining and moderately inventive, was actually an ultimately shallow and meaningless diversion.

I really want a series. I want to explore the universe Banks has setbup, here. I want to find out if Mrs Mulverhill was right - is l'expedience a force for good or a force for evil? And what is it with her eyes? And how did Tem end up in the hospital? And how did he develop his extra special powers?

This book should have been three times as long. Minimum. The only excuse for cutting it off so abrubptly (frankly, in such a 'and with one bound' manner) would be if it's just the first volume in a long running series. I can't be the only person who feels this way, surely?


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Chichen Itza

Mayan. Not Aztec, not Inca. Pyramids!
























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It's An Ill Wind

Today, my flight from NY to Cancun was delayed by more than 6 hours. This was Not Good for all the obvious reasons. However, there was a definite silver lining - together with my colleague I took the opportunity to head back into Manhattan, to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It was utterly magnificent. I wondered around in a state of dazed awe - I was practically in tears in the Monet rooms, the paintings were so gorgeous. I didn't want to leave (and I shouldn't have bothered since the flight was delayed further after we got back to JFK). The whole MMA interlude was absolutely perfect - an oasis of loveliness in an otherwise frustrating and depressing day.

And now for some pictures......

































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So good they named it twice

I love New York. I loved it when I worked here. I miss travelling here every month. It's lovely to be back if only overnight. The view from my hotel is spectacular - this crappy iPhone photo through glass doesn't do it justice, really......




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Fear of Flying

I don't enjoy flying. I don't enjoy being thousands of feet above the earth in sn aluminium death tube. I also don't enjoy the whole interminable process - it's such a faff. Packing is always a nightmare; travelling with a suitcase is difficult for a handy person let alone someone with dyspraxia. Hanging around at airports is like a preview of one of the seven circles of hell. Immigration, customs and security- three words to strike fear into even the stoutest of hearts.

I really wish they would hurry up and invent the teleport. You know it makes sense.




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The Unsympathetic and the Dead

Her Fearful Symmetry presents the reader with a pantheon of prisoners. Two sets of twins, all of them imprisoned by their relationships to and with each other. Imprisoned by secrets, lies, and mistakes from the past. Ghosts, imprisoned by the artificial limits placed on their ghostly forms- trapped inside the flat in which they lived as humans. A man, imprisoned by grief and later, guilt. Another man imprisoned by OCD and agrophobia in his flat - and further imprisoned by the OCD in a complex web of ritual and abasement. A wife, imprisoned emotionally by her husband's illness, even though she has escaped physically. And all the corpses rotting away in Highgate Cemetery, imprisoned in their graves, tombs and coffins.

And me. Imprisoned by a poor purchasing decision prompted by the wonderfulness of Niffenegger's previous book, and forced to read this shallow, nasty, poorly paced tale.

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Appointment Telly.....

......There's quite a bit of it about at the moment. Sarah Jane Adventures. Strictly. Flash Forward. Wossy. The one that has really grabbed me by the throat and won't let go (as, to be fair, it does every year) is Spooks. A show that used to be all about the pace and the suspense and the frying tonight possibilities, which then became all about Rupert Penry Gorgeous is now most definitely all about Harry's sad yearning eyes. Which are sad. And yearning. In equal (impressive) measure. Harry knows where the bodies are buried (and, as it turns out, the uranium. But clearly not the gas). But he doesn't know how to tell Ruth he loooooooooooooves her. And women of a certain age all over the country just melt.

The thing about UST though is it does have to be resolved at some point within the window or it just becomes annoying. Look at Lost. Look at Sports Night. Look at Studio 60. Obviously The West Wing has one counter example in Josh and Donna but one example of how it can all go tits up if not handled properly in Toby and CJ. Let's hope that the writers of Spooks want Harry and Ruth to get some happiness before one of them (Ruth, inevitably) gets eviscerated. Or similar. I'm sure they will be as inventive as always.

Decline and Fall

Lustrum is probably the most enjoyable book I have read all year. I was predisposed to like it - the first volume in Robert Harris's trilogy, Imperium, made a long night in Tallinn pass almost bearably a few years ago. I'm not fond of Tallinn for various reasons, and for a novel to make any time spent there at all anything better than a living hell was a major achievement. So - Lustrum had significant goodwill with me before I started reading.

The goodwill was justified. Lustrum is an excellent read - I devoured it during two long rail journeys in one day. The pacing is fast and furious but never rushed. The characterisation is sharp and well crafted. It plays against some of the more recent populist characterisation - the 'Rome' television series in particular - but that's certainly not a problem. As the plot sped to it's denoument I was genuinely outraged at Ceasar's actions- despite having been totally 'on his side' when watching 'Rome'.

Lustrum - so named because it covers a full 'lustrum' ir five year period - opens at the start of Cicero's consular year - the peak of his political career (maybe). The five year period covered by the book charts Cicero's journey from Consul to exile ( an exile which is undeserved and engineered by his political and personal enemies). And it's utterly gripping.

Poor Cicero barely has any chance to enjoy his consular year, his moment of triumph - he is immediately embroiled in conspiracy, treason and threats - to his life and to the Republic itself. That the reader knows already how this will play out makes it all the more poignant and no less suspenseful. The consular year is eventful - and apparently highly successful, in that Cicero survives and foils the Catalina rebellion. But of course he fails to take down the eminence grise behind all the plotting and calculating - Ceasar. And he makes more enemies along the way - specifically Clodius Pulcher and Crassus. And he makes mistakes, after the consular year has ended. He borrows money. He may take bribes. He buys a swanky house. And he loses his grip on the events of the day. With far reaching consequences - none of them good (for him).

It's all desperately sad - but inexorable. Still - at the end of the book we know that events have a long way yet before the story plays out to its inevitable conclusion. The third volume in the trilogy can't come too soon for me.

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