A Week In Review
May. 17th, 2009 09:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearStill too much stuff going on to keep up with reviews on a daily basis...
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
Definitely a triumph of style of subtance with this one. It refutes my usual claim that stories need depth and decent character development in order to be good. The book follows Nick Guest, a young gay man, as he travels amongst the upper classes in London of the 1980s. It touches upon politics, sex, drugs and AIDS, but doesn't really have a plot as such, and none of the characters are either memorable or particularly likeable. However, the prose is so equisite as to render those thing immaterial.
Waiting for Godot
Again, not much for plot or character development, and yet by far the best play I've seen in years. Watching Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart on stage was marvellous, and the play itself was both engrossing and very funny. I preferred the sections where Vladimir and Estragon were alone to those that involved Pozzo and Lucky, but the whole thing was amazing to watch, and thoroughly enjoyable.
Royal Institution lecture on Grimoires
This was given by Owen Davies and discusses links between and development of attitudes to magic, religion and science through the ages. He was an engaging speaker, and the subject matter was very interesting. Apart from the first question, which was more of an incoherent ramble than an actual question, the whole evening was very good, not least for the opportunity to sit in the lecture theatre where Faraday gave his famous lectures on electro-magnetism in the 19th century.
Penny Arcade D&D Podcast
My gym listening over the last few weeks has been a podcast of a group of guys, including Wil Wheaton, testing out D&D 4th Edition. It did not make me want to play D&D, since there was no actual roleplaying involved and they just moved from fight to fight in a dungeon, rolling a lot of dice. However, it was still very funny in places and generally entertaining because of what happened to various characters and what they talked about in between times.
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin
I didn't really get on very well with this. I thought it was a bit slow and the prose was a bit dreary. It picked up a bit towards the end, but not enough to make me want to read the rest of the trilogy. The main character wasn't remotely appealing, and the story thus seemed a little pointless, as I didn't much care about what happened to him.
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
Definitely a triumph of style of subtance with this one. It refutes my usual claim that stories need depth and decent character development in order to be good. The book follows Nick Guest, a young gay man, as he travels amongst the upper classes in London of the 1980s. It touches upon politics, sex, drugs and AIDS, but doesn't really have a plot as such, and none of the characters are either memorable or particularly likeable. However, the prose is so equisite as to render those thing immaterial.
Waiting for Godot
Again, not much for plot or character development, and yet by far the best play I've seen in years. Watching Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart on stage was marvellous, and the play itself was both engrossing and very funny. I preferred the sections where Vladimir and Estragon were alone to those that involved Pozzo and Lucky, but the whole thing was amazing to watch, and thoroughly enjoyable.
Royal Institution lecture on Grimoires
This was given by Owen Davies and discusses links between and development of attitudes to magic, religion and science through the ages. He was an engaging speaker, and the subject matter was very interesting. Apart from the first question, which was more of an incoherent ramble than an actual question, the whole evening was very good, not least for the opportunity to sit in the lecture theatre where Faraday gave his famous lectures on electro-magnetism in the 19th century.
Penny Arcade D&D Podcast
My gym listening over the last few weeks has been a podcast of a group of guys, including Wil Wheaton, testing out D&D 4th Edition. It did not make me want to play D&D, since there was no actual roleplaying involved and they just moved from fight to fight in a dungeon, rolling a lot of dice. However, it was still very funny in places and generally entertaining because of what happened to various characters and what they talked about in between times.
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin
I didn't really get on very well with this. I thought it was a bit slow and the prose was a bit dreary. It picked up a bit towards the end, but not enough to make me want to read the rest of the trilogy. The main character wasn't remotely appealing, and the story thus seemed a little pointless, as I didn't much care about what happened to him.
