2010/11: History Play -- Rodney Bolt

History Play -- Rodney Bolt

This book has not been an attempt to prove that Christopher Marlowe staged his own death, fled to the Continent and went on to write the works attributed to Shakespeare. It assumes that as its starting point... By assuming the seemingly preposterous I have hoped to shake up our notions of the possible, or at the very least to look a little more sharply at how we construct truth. I have done this in a spirit of fun, and with the intention of a little saucy iconoclasm. (p.314)

( non-spoilery review (can you have spoilers for a non-fiction book?) )

What I did on my holiday

Beach
Originally uploaded by tamaranth

Only cameraphone photos so far, as camera is stuck in Aggravation mode.

Anyway: this is Why Fuertaventura. Count the people on that beach. Count them again. And the sea is not only a pretty colour, but is warm enough to swim in (warmer than average summer day in Brighton, for sure.)

2010/12: Lucky You -- Carl Hiaasen

Lucky You -- Carl Hiaasen

Grange, which initally had impressed Squires as a prototypical tourist-grubbing southern truck-stop, now seemed murky and mysterious. Weird vapours tainted the parochial climate of sturdy marriages, conservatively traditional faiths and blind veneration of progress -- any progress -- that allowed slick characters such as Bernard Squires to swoop in and have their way. (p.379-80)

( non-spoilery review )

On e-books

I'm getting somewhat disillusioned by commercial e-books. I'm working on a sample of four authorised e-books in MobiPocket format, purchased for actual money, and two of them have distracting typographical issues.

I've mentioned, in a previous post, the ligature problem in Whiskey and Water, where the ligature 'fi' has been rendered throughout as 'f' -- giving offce, fne, fngers etc. Bear's Ink and Steel is peppered with random paragraph breaks, and there is something odd about the italic text -- words beginning with L are often capitalised unnecessarily, double-l is also often capitalised (giving you'LL, aLL).

This is annoying, and it is sloppy. If these were dead-tree books, I would expect typographical errors of this magnitude to be fixed pre-publication. After all, until very recently I was paid good money to do this level of checking for the place up the road ...

Have emailed vendors of affected ebooks (W H Smith, Mobipocket) though I suspect they'll both say they're only distributors. Watch this space.

[concert] Mahler Resurrection Symphony, Philharmonia, RFH, 11.02.X

Philharmonia cond. Eliahu Inbal; Caroline Stein soprano, Ekaterina Semenchuk mezzo.

I still haven't quite got to grips with Mahler's orchestral work: it feels lush and late-Victorian and keeps reminding me of Beethoven and Brahms.

This was lovely, though long. Caroline Stein stepped in at short notice, the original soprano being off sick: Stein has a splendidly warm, lyrical voice, and had a better feel for the acoustic of a full RFH than Semenchuk (who was very quiet for her first few bars).

Slightly disappointingly, they haven't finished putting the RFH organ back together -- we got about half of it, and it wasn't really loud enough.

Also, have been ruined for good seats by becoming accustomed to sitting in the choir (which was, last night, occupied by an actual choir). From the back of the hall the orchestra looked a very long way away, and were remarkably quiet ...