What are you reading, watching and listening to?

[clawgrip]

I watched the Star Trek episode "Return of the Archons" last night. I have seen it several times, but it never ceases to be ridiculous.

[Izambri]

1st trailer of Game of Thrones (season 3)

[Torco]

I think I'd describe TLHOD best as 'quiet'. It's not 'difficult' in the literary sense - it's actually written really clearly and approachably - but you have to listen carefully to it, you can't expect to have the message shouted at you.

yeah, i got that impression with it and the lathe as well: like "I'm sure there's something here, but i don't get it". I tried listening to crime and punishment [which i enjoyed immensely when i read it as a kid] and ended getting the same feeling.

The Lathe of Heaven is also a really moving, worthwhile book--I think that on paper you'd find it pretty easy going (and it's very short).

yeah... sucks that I'm somewhere english lit, especially scifi lit, isn't readily available. mostly we get translations of uberbestsellers like the hunger games and asofai, but original language stuff is hard to come by <and generally limited to, again, stuff that sells well and is current>. And i know its kind of hipstery of me to go "I only read original language stuff" and I don't, I mean, if the original language is russian or japanese, but have you read the spanish translations of poe, tolkien or lovecraft? much is lost.

You know, maybe I should get a kindle... i hear those things are sweet

[Izambri]

Today I finished John Williams' Augustus.

A beautifully written epistolary novel. Many have compared it with I, Claudius, but Williams' is enough different from Graves' to be great by itself. The final chapters are touchingly sad.

[Salmoneus]

Another Brick in the Wall (Pink Floyd)
Anything is Possible (Will Young)
Apologize (Timberland featuring OneRepublic)
Bad Day (Daniel Powter)
Ballad of the Green Berets (Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler)
Band on the Run (Wings)
Barbie Girl (Aqua)
Bat out of Hell (Meat Loaf)
Be My Baby (The Ronettes)
Beat Again (JLS)
Beat It (Michael Jackson)
Beautiful Day (U2)
Because You Loved Me (Celine Dion)
Believe (Cher)
Best of My Love (The Eagles)

Best of the above: Bat out of Hell
Worst of the above: Bad Day

[Viktor77]

If only my life were narrated by Two Steps from Hell. Life is just more epic with epic background music.

[Hallow XIII]

I'm reading random articles on Beo! because that's the only immediately available source of Irish-language prose.

Albeit not necessarily very good prose.

[Salmoneus]

Whereas I have books and books of Irish prose... despite not being able to read Irish!

[Hallow XIII]

I propose we strike a deal. I take your books and books of Irish prose and in return...

Uh...

I just realize I don't actually have any assets whatsoever.

[Radius Solis]

I have just finished reading The Mists of Avalon, probably the most compelling Arthurian retelling to appear in 20th century. You'd think after a whole millennium of retellings the tale would have gotten a little stale by now, but no, not in the hands of Marion Zimmer Bradley. Few can do sheer pathos so well.

I think next I will turn back to Le Morte d'Arthur, which was the best from the 15th century; I once tried to read it in my early teens, but I was not really old enough to grapple with the language and I couldn't get very far into it. But a couple months ago, after I was going through some old books and it turned up, pharazon read it. So now I'll have to give it a go. (Apparently Zompist recently read it too; this is coincidence.)

[Salmoneus]

I have just finished reading The Mists of Avalon, probably the most compelling Arthurian retelling to appear in 20th century. You'd think after a whole millennium of retellings the tale would have gotten a little stale by now, but no, not in the hands of Marion Zimmer Bradley. Few can do sheer pathos so well.

I think next I will turn back to Le Morte d'Arthur, which was the best from the 15th century; I once tried to read it in my early teens, but I was not really old enough to grapple with the language and I couldn't get very far into it. But a couple months ago, after I was going through some old books and it turned up, pharazon read it. So now I'll have to give it a go. (Apparently Zompist recently read it too; this is coincidence.)

It's (Mallory) very popular. It's on my forum-voted-for list of the 100 genre books to read.

But seriously: I haven't read MZB, but do you really think it's better than The Once and Future King? That's... pretty high on the sheer pathos scale. I lent it to a hardened veteran of a thousand gritty modern genre novels last year, and he couldn't even get through The Ill-Made Knight it was so depressing. I dread to think what might have happened if he'd attempted Candle In the Wind.

[Izambri]

I heard a few seconds of the song, probably from the television I have on the kitchen, and needed to listen to the whole song.

Spice Girls - Spice Up Your Life

[Izambri]

The pointer sisters - I'm so excited

[Shm Jay]

The pointer sisters - I'm so excited

I hate to tell you this, Izambri, but they weren’t singing about Catalan independence. But I think this may be the whole album that song was on. However, this song may be pertinent.

[Izambri]

The pointer sisters - I'm so excited

I hate to tell you this, Izambri, but they weren’t singing about Catalan independence. But I think this may be the whole album that song was on. However, this song may be pertinent.

XD!

This one is also pertinent, at least given the current state of things.

[Torco]

just finished it again; Battlestar galactica is an awesome series, but the ending is such a dumb deus ex machina copout it kind of make for an aticlimax to the expeirence of watching it. Its still pretty good.

[Gulliver]

We watched The Ides of March last night, and it was like an overlong episode of The West Wing without the likeable or developed characters. It was moderately enjoyable, and kind of reminded me of Doubt in mood, but without the ambiguity. And there was just too much swearing, and I say this as someone who works with problem teenagers. There's saying fuck because people say fuck sometimes, and there's saying fuck because that's how fucking screenwriters fucking think fucking people fucking talk because it fucking makes it fucking gritty.

[Salmoneus]

just finished it again; Battlestar galactica is an awesome series, but the ending is such a dumb deus ex machina copout it kind of make for an aticlimax to the expeirence of watching it. Its still pretty good.

Presumably by 'the ending' you mean 'the whole of the last season'.
Or, wait, no, don't tell me, "everthing after the Pegasus episodes in the middle of the second season, with the exception of the first last two of the second season, the first three of the third season, and the last ten minutes of the fourth season"?

BSG had moments of greatness, but was extremely variable in quality. And is a cardinal example of what can go wrong if the writers don't know where they're going ahead of time.

[Torco]

I get your point, and you're not wrong, but in BSG there are worse and better moments and then there is basically the last three episodes [which is one episode that lasts as much as three but still]. It makes everything else that happened meaningless, artificially closes a lot of arcs, and is basically the sort of lazy ending of a tabletop rpg game where at 5AM the DM goes "well, I'm kind of tired and/or drunk, so it was god's plan all along, you die, you die too, and the rest of you become farmers and loose your memory forever. I'm going to bed now guys, see you tomorrow" with some anti-technology bullshit thrown in. The only redeeming moment of those episodes is when the lawyer guy goes "really, guys? let's become cavemen? really? I mean, isn't this a tad stupid? no? okay, then..." That is the perfect illustration of those episodes.

The whole thing had been kept confortably ambiguous until the producers went "guise, we need to wrap this up, probably midway into the last season". after that they might as well have put their hands inside a turkey's leg and punched me with it.

[Izambri]

I have some books pending, but I think I'll take Machiavelli's The Prince.

About what I'm watching... Nothing yet. In less than a month, though, Game of Thrones. If the third season is as good as the third book... God.

[Radius Solis]

But seriously: I haven't read MZB, but do you really think it's better than The Once and Future King? That's... pretty high on the sheer pathos scale. I lent it to a hardened veteran of a thousand gritty modern genre novels last year, and he couldn't even get through The Ill-Made Knight it was so depressing. I dread to think what might have happened if he'd attempted Candle In the Wind.

I read The Once and Future King only in my early teens - that's twenty years back, now, so I can't remember many specifics. But I first read The Mists of Avalon around the same time (this time was the second - it's been long enough for it to be fresh again), and I remember my relative reactions between them when I was 14.

I remember that The Once and Future King was good. But I don't remember, say, crying afterwards, not enough for that to be memorable. Whereas when I first finished The Mists of Avalon I was sufficiently destroyed as to go outside, late at night in the dark and despite the rain, and lay down in the front lawn and bawl like a little baby. Possibly the strongest reaction I've ever had to a book. Even this time it was bad.

It's also a lot more interesting along the way. It is no tale of knights on valorous quests, nor your standard deceased-equine flagellation of shepherd-boy-comes-of-age-and-becomes-king. That's avoidable even in an Arthurian story: make it mostly not about Arthur. Most of them haven't been mostly about Arthur for about 700 years now... but T. H. White fell right into it. At the time perhaps it seemed like a good idea to return to that, but I have a hard time granting it after reading a good fraction of the modern fantasy genre. Whereas Avalon comes with a surprisingly low quotient of obvious recycled tropes - avoided, probably, to counteract the fact we all already know how Arthur's story ends - so the details and specifics feel unpredictable and fresh the whole way through. Even the violence and incest and adultery and unrequited love. The main characters are the women most at the center of things over the course of about three generations, characters we've all seen flat renderings of before but never gotten to know remotely so well from any other story, and this adds an awful lot of interest.

The best aspect of The Once and Future King may be its reinterpretation of the old story to explore issues in modern morals. But on that point Avalon does at least well: it's an exploration of a religious conflict as protectors of the old pagan ways fight against being swept away by the newer Christianity; most of the classic Arthurian events are reinterpreted as part of this tale of two religions while, as with the other, remaining true to the classic general outline of events. Everyone is a complex individual, their aspects as archetypes present but downplayed, and people that mediocre storytellers would cast as evil or wicked are instead cast as likeable but with glaring character flaws, or else their unfortunate actions are based on motivations you were led to sympathize with. If my scraps of memory and Wikipedia's plot synopsis of The Once and Future King are anything to go by, its moral lessons are simplistic ones about legitimate use of power and heavy-handed enough that even at 14 I was put off by it (c.f. Narnia). Avalon's moral lessons are complex and murky, deal more with the topic of how people of different belief systems believe they should deal with the beliefs of others, and leave most of answering that question up to the reader. A satisfyingly mature moral treatment, overall.

[Salmoneus]

Yeeeaaahhhh.... no.

OK, I haven't read TMOA. And I should and will, thanks for moving it up my to-read list. But you need to re-read TOAFK too.

It's not about Arthur at all - indeed, Arthur plays a mostly minor role, outside of the first book, where he isn't really Arthur as we think of Arthur. It's actually about the people who bring him down - the Orkney Knights and Launcelot. And yes, all the main characters are sympathetic - except maybe Mordred, and even he's pitiable. It's not a book about the shepherd boy becoming king - it begins with the shepherd boy becoming king (well, after a book of set-up) and then shows how everything falls apart. And yes, there are simplistic and heavy-handed moral messages telling you what's right and what's wrong - and then it shows how actually following these ideals, as Arthur does, leads to everything ending up a bit shit.

Where you are right is that it doesn't pretend not to be about the Arthurian Cycle - it's not yet another of those books that just happen to have a bunch of characters with the same names an plot arcs as the Cycle while 'reinterpreting' everything to make a new story. It does take on the legends (and in particular Mallory) head on, allbeit undermining it through several layers of irony.

[Bristel]

Reading: Syrup by Maxx Barry
Watching: Star Trek: Enterprise
Listening: La Leyenda album by Selena

[Ser]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOD6xzbBf3I

Lerê, lerê, lerê, lerê, lerê
Lerê, lerê, lerê, lerê, lerê
Lerê, lerê, lerê, lerê, lerê
Lerê, lerê, lerê, lerê, lerê

Vida de negro é difícil, é difícil como o quê
Vida de negro é difícil, é difícil como o quê
Eu quero morrer de noite, na tocaia me matar
Eu quero morrer de açoite se tu, negra, me deixar

Vida de negro é difícil, é difícil como o quê
Vida de negro é difícil, é difícil como o quê
Meu amor, eu vou-me embora, nessa terra vou morrer
Um dia não vou mais ver, nunca mais eu vou te ver

Vida de negro é difícil, é difícil como o quê
Vida de negro é difícil, é difícil como o quê

Lerê, lerê, lerê, lerê, lerê
Lerê, lerê, lerê, lerê, lerê

Vida de negro é difícil, é difícil como o quê
Vida de negro é difícil, é difícil como o quê
Eu quero morrer de noite, na tocaia me matar
Eu quero morrer de açoite se tu, negra, me deixar

Vida de negro é difícil, é difícil como o quê (Lerê, lerê, lerê, lerê, lerê)
Vida de negro é difícil, é difícil como o quê
Meu amor, eu vou-me embora, nessa terra vou morrer
Um dia não vou mais ver, nunca mais eu vou te ver

Vida de negro é difícil, é difícil como o quê (Lerê, lerê, lerê, lerê, lerê...)
Vida de negro é difícil, é difícil como o quê

[Izambri]

Reading: GÜNZBERG i MOLL, Jordi; Vida quotidiana a la ciutat de Barcelona durant la Pesta Negra (1348)
Watching:
Listening: B.o.B & Hayley Williams - Airplanes