white_hart (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
white_hart) wrote2016-02-06 06:12 pm
white_hart) wrote2016-02-06 06:12 pm
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There are worse ways to spend a Saturday
I'm fairly sure that lying in bed listening to the first series of Cabin Pressure would be a perfectly valid way to spend a rainy Saturday in February even if I wasn't feeling grotty, but it's a perfect antidote to the feeling-grottiness.
I have also finished reading The Mask of Apollo, which I picked up secondhand years ago and was finally prompted to read by the fact that every time I go into Blackwells I notice that it's shelved in the SF section and think 'but surely it isn't SF?'. Which it isn't. Maybe next time I'll point that out to them. I enjoyed it; after the stark bleakness of The Bone Clocks, and even Lymond where if anything can go wrong it almost certainly will in the most complicated way possible, it came as something of a welcome relief to read something where the narrator has a generally happy and safe life, and all the unpleasantness - the sack of Syracuse is quite chilling - is offstage (which I've just realised reflects the way it's dealt with in Niko's plays as well). I liked Niko as a narrator, was as impressed as Nicola Marlow by 'the fab delirious bit where he dreams he's acting Hamlet' and found the glimpse of Alexander in the coda quite shivers-down-the-spine.
So yes, there are definitely worse ways to spend a Saturday. And hopefully I'll be a bit more lively tomorrow and get at least some proper weekend before going back to work on Monday.
I have also finished reading The Mask of Apollo, which I picked up secondhand years ago and was finally prompted to read by the fact that every time I go into Blackwells I notice that it's shelved in the SF section and think 'but surely it isn't SF?'. Which it isn't. Maybe next time I'll point that out to them. I enjoyed it; after the stark bleakness of The Bone Clocks, and even Lymond where if anything can go wrong it almost certainly will in the most complicated way possible, it came as something of a welcome relief to read something where the narrator has a generally happy and safe life, and all the unpleasantness - the sack of Syracuse is quite chilling - is offstage (which I've just realised reflects the way it's dealt with in Niko's plays as well). I liked Niko as a narrator, was as impressed as Nicola Marlow by 'the fab delirious bit where he dreams he's acting Hamlet' and found the glimpse of Alexander in the coda quite shivers-down-the-spine.
So yes, there are definitely worse ways to spend a Saturday. And hopefully I'll be a bit more lively tomorrow and get at least some proper weekend before going back to work on Monday.