heliopausa (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
heliopausa) wrote2016-07-26 06:16 pm
heliopausa) wrote2016-07-26 06:16 pm
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The weekend went swimmingly
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 (difficult, because I don't have enough language to follow the debates) and romance in places (pah, humbug!) and obligatory funny bits in places (ummm) but still - exciting production, and I loved the sets and the acting, and the ideas, very much.
The lightning storm - how far away does lightning have to be, to be completely silent? It was amazing and beautiful, a huge storm around a whole quarter of the sky.
I started, and read most of, The Just City - which I'm enjoying, though not without niggles; it feels a bit two-bob-each-way between a novel and a fable, as if in all fairness (because it's a fable,a thought experiment) one shouldn't fret too much about characters or history or finicky pedantic points. (Not every number, Apollo! You mean every number up to twelve!) But it's fun watching the experiment work out (doomed to fail! - at least, it seems to me that it has been, but I see there's sequels, which suggests the experiment doesn't end in this volume, anyway) - and in general it's very enjoyable, and a huge step up from Hild. (I bought them both in the same bookshop swoop, last March.) It reminds me of how Martin Gardner used to wrap up his mathematical/logic problems in very appealing and amusing mini-stories.
The music was - still is - the Sydney Piano Competition, available via internet for a limited number of days - I think it's four weeks from when they were broadcast. Here's the first set of three finalists, in the 19th/20th Century concerto section, playing Saint-Saens (an odd choice for competition playing), Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev. So there were swathes of music throughout the weekend.
and swimming for hours! This is a rare treat, and the opportunity was not wasted, not for a minute, in this hot weather! I say, swimming, but a good bit of the time - nearly all the time - was also just splashing about, or standing chatting in the watery shade. ahhhhh... :)
So, all up, a great weekend. :)
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 (difficult, because I don't have enough language to follow the debates) and romance in places (pah, humbug!) and obligatory funny bits in places (ummm) but still - exciting production, and I loved the sets and the acting, and the ideas, very much.
The lightning storm - how far away does lightning have to be, to be completely silent? It was amazing and beautiful, a huge storm around a whole quarter of the sky.
I started, and read most of, The Just City - which I'm enjoying, though not without niggles; it feels a bit two-bob-each-way between a novel and a fable, as if in all fairness (because it's a fable,a thought experiment) one shouldn't fret too much about characters or history or finicky pedantic points. (Not every number, Apollo! You mean every number up to twelve!) But it's fun watching the experiment work out (doomed to fail! - at least, it seems to me that it has been, but I see there's sequels, which suggests the experiment doesn't end in this volume, anyway) - and in general it's very enjoyable, and a huge step up from Hild. (I bought them both in the same bookshop swoop, last March.) It reminds me of how Martin Gardner used to wrap up his mathematical/logic problems in very appealing and amusing mini-stories.
The music was - still is - the Sydney Piano Competition, available via internet for a limited number of days - I think it's four weeks from when they were broadcast. Here's the first set of three finalists, in the 19th/20th Century concerto section, playing Saint-Saens (an odd choice for competition playing), Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev. So there were swathes of music throughout the weekend.
and swimming for hours! This is a rare treat, and the opportunity was not wasted, not for a minute, in this hot weather! I say, swimming, but a good bit of the time - nearly all the time - was also just splashing about, or standing chatting in the watery shade. ahhhhh... :)
So, all up, a great weekend. :)
no subject
It's not just the reader's unanswered questions - as you point out, the characters are weirdly incurious about all sorts of things. (Like which baby came from which parents, for starters - or why, after the concealed infanticides, the number of babies didn't match the number of births. You'd think at least Simmea would have noticed, with her penchant for statistics.)
and I agree with you to about their odd docility re: lack of sexual choice (as well as in so much more) - and also about the chanciness of the Ikaros/Maia/Klio business. There would surely have been rumours and resentment and probably huge rifts.
You say: "completely screws up the subject of rape, revenge, and forgiveness." Interesting - the author does attempt those then? Not so much revenge, which is horribly easy to write/attempt, but to work out how forgiveness happens - that's intriguing! (even if screwed up.)