Back, a bit dazed

[heliopausa]

It's been a full-on few weeks, including (as was always on the cards) a funeral.  I feel like such an idiot to need to learn again and again (I am so sick of this) about the finality of death and what living in time means.  Time is change and things not being the same.  Yes, of course.  Everybody knows that.

Well.  Well, so back to Dreamwidth.  What can I write about?  Books and video/television viewing?  Okay...

My reading took a huge dive - I abandoned both the books I was properly, attentively, reading, and will have to start them all over again. Mostly, I just read scraps of things picked up from what was around.  Two such things were:
Sallust, Jugurtha and The Cataline Conspiracy, as translated for a Penguin Classic, I think - it was an oldish paperback, anyway.  I read them because I was pleased to be learning even one name of an African king, even if he was a ratbag (according to Sallust), and also because I vaguely wondered if looking at pre-Caesar Roman evolutions might give me some ideas of how to look at how things are changing politically, now.  But mainly just because the book was to hand.
I also read great chunks of the Iliad, in an online translation by Ian Johnston of Vancouver Island University, in order to argue (amiably) with someone about whether Paris was a coward etc.  (I would be delighted to discuss such stuff while it's fresh in my mind, if anyone's interested.)

I've watched three oldish British television renderings of PD James novels featuring the detective Adam Dalgliesh.  The first one I saw was about the residents of a stately old abbey, stuffed with priceless art, facing the prospect of its shutting down.  The second one was about the residents of a stately-home-turned-museum, facing the prospect of its shutting down.  The third one was about the residents of a stately home, facing the prospect of... but I gave up on that one before we'd even got to the second murder, because I thought I was getting the drift.

I watched - now this is good! - parts of several episodes of an Australian six-part mystery, called Seven Types of Ambiguity - yes, of course the title's a steal, and that's not something I like, in general, but the Empson book is part of the plot, sort of.  The acting and the writing is mostly very, very good, and the cinematography as well.  I had to leave and so have missed the closing episodes, but what I saw was very good indeed, good enough to have conversations with strangers about.  (What?  I'm not sure if that's a sane measure of anything.)

Comments

[asakiyume]

LOL the PD James-based television series ;-)

I definitely understand what you mean about something that's good enough to have conversations with strangers about, too--it's great to have something like that up your sleeve.

What are the pro and con arguments about Paris as a coward?

[blueinkedfrost]

Sorry to hear about your friend. I think everyone learns the same lesson over and over again - we heal, and know we will be wounded again.

I have Jugurtha and The Caitiline Conspiracy on my bookshelf - I think it might be the same one. I found Jugurtha very sympathetic, and the Catiline Conspiracy rather dull (although I read the book twice, so it can't have been that dull).

[moon_custafer]

I suppose it's hard to keep death always in mind because unless you're in the middle of a plague or a war, the days when you lose someone you know are greatly outnumbered by the days when you don't, and so it slips to the back of your mind for a while. That's probably necessary, or it'd get in the way of living; even people who've lived through plagues or wars say that grief doesn't scale.

[autumnia]

I've got the Adam Dalgliesh series on my future reading list -- do you think I'd be better off reading the books or watching the tv adaptations?

[sovay]

It's been a full-on few weeks, including (as was always on the cards) a funeral.

Their memory for a blessing.

Sallust, Jugurtha and The Cataline Conspiracy, as translated for a Penguin Classic, I think

I have really good memories of reading both of those in Latin—I don't know what the Penguin translation is like, but it's very compressed, character-sketch, archaic (with showers of neologisms) style. I'm sure Sallust wrote about somebody he didn't think was a ratbag, sometime.

(I would be delighted to discuss such stuff while it's fresh in my mind, if anyone's interested.)

I am always down for Homeric debate.