Outside communication restored

[flemmings]

My copy of The Mortal Word arrived today, five and half weeks instead of the usual five and a half days after it was mailed. Am much relieved; the PO has been known to generate spontaneous black holes.

Otherwise we stagger through the last eight working days till Christmas. It is not I who am working ten hour shifts without breaks, presumably voluntary; and I hope those who are have a lovely ten day break. God knows they deserve it.

Finished?
At some point, Foxglove Summer, The Furthest Station, and Moon Over Soho.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse, Mycroft
-- enjoyed this in spite of that will/ shall thing, and the fact that hearty athletic fist-fighting Mycroft has a long torpid way to go before he becomes the lethargic overweight Mycroft of canon. But much can happen in the course of four decades or so. It's very pleasant to have one's CoCs in pastiche written by an actual PoC. I can see why it's rare, but lord does it make a difference. And frankly, Douglas is a much more interesting character than Mycroft.

Reading?
Now on Whispers Underground, not my favourite Rivers book because I can't see the things Aaronovitch is describing, like railway cuts with false houses in front of them and hidden doors in the cuttings themselves, and the interior of sewers that also have doors in them. Of course, Broken Homes is even worse in this respect. Also Agent Reynolds annoys me and Madame Teng is introduced and then dropped, which also annoys me, and I still can't figure, after three readings, why the murder happened in the first place, though maybe this time I'll get it.

Two-thirds of the way through the Purgatorio.

Have started on The Mortal Word but it needs the sit down straight-through treatment so after WU, probably.

Next?
Mortal Word, as above. Also located my copy of Eco's Baudolino, which should do for holiday reading, perhaps after Broken Homes.

Or I could see if Yangsze Choo or Zen Cho's latests are in at Bakka (no- Choo comes out in February, Cho in March. Oh well) I could read the latest Phantom Moon Tower, then, and about time.

Comments

[kore]

Yeah, I think one of the things that really drew Young Moi is how emphatically Dante sees the metaphysical landscape as a real place, you can just about breathe the air. And there are all his great homely comparisons, like a demon popping a sinner out of a boiling kettle the same way a housewife tests meat in a stew to see if it's done.

Dore is great! so beautiful! but I dunno, he has a very definitive Style that I associated with Ancient Mariner as a kid (had a storybook), so it was kind of startling to see that applied to Dante and Don Quixote as well.

[flemmings]

But it's an eye-opener to me that the landscape is metaphysical. I mean, hell was a place in pre-Vatican II Catholicism (as is heaven, and I used to draw pictures of it in grade school) so of course there are mountains and lakes and ridges and paths and whatnots. Which still owes a lot to Dore, of course, and his very tulgy tulgy wood in the midst of life.

I'd think Dore would suit the Ancient Mariner as he suits the Inferno: very dark and (well, of course) Stygian. Quixote OTOH... all wrong, I'd say.

[kore]

Ahahaha, whereas I grew up in the weird sorta-Christian Science offshoot where there was no hell. No devil either. But there definitely were Jesus and angels. A little confusing.

The Dore Mariner is GORGEOUS. -- Didn't he do Paradise Lost too? I don't think I've seen those....

[flemmings]

Have googled the oeuvre of Dore, and must say his Mariner is a lot like his Inferno is a lot like his Paradise Lost, except that the latter two let him indulge in his obsession with wings. God, the man loved drawing wings. It would be odd if he *hadn't* illustrated Paradise Lost.

His Quixote OTOH looks a lot lighter and less sinister than those three. Somewhat. I can never think of steelpoint engraving as being anything but menacing now.