One Man's Notes

Ah, Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in Star Wars, no doubt about it. This is long before the metal bikini incident in Return of the Jedi, as well, so no smuttiness from the peanut gallery.

I have destinct memories of being obsessed with a card I had of her from a bubble gum collection, and having no idea why I was obsessed with it. All I knew was that looking at it made me happy and gave me an odd feeling of longing.

Puberty (and the metal bikini) were many years away.

Bernard Cornwell's best-known series, the Sharpe books, have never grabbed me. My brother loves 'em, and my Dad was fond of them, but Napoleonic-era derring-do has never been my thing. The Uthred series, of which The Lords of the North is the third, are right up my street.

The 9th century is a time of intense struggle, with the idea of England being born in the south, and nearly being destroyed by the Vikings before it takes root. King Alfred ("the Great") not only defeats the Norsemen, but steadily brings the whole country under the banner of Wessex. The first two books take us through Alfred's near total defeat and fightback, through the lens of Uthred, a young Saxon from the north who was raised by Vikings.

This books sees Alfred put on the back-burner while Uthred heads north to deal with personal quarrels, and gets caught up in the machinations of a would be king of the North. It's a page turner, as one would expect from Cornwell, with a huge twist in the middle that caught me completely by surprise. But it's not a book I can recommed to those who aren't already reading the series. It's a book of tranistion, tying up plot threads from previous books, and clearling the decks for the next major steps in the major arc of the books: the rise of King Alfred. We pay occasional visits to that story, and get ideas of how it's going, but this feels like an attempt to reconnect Uthred with his roots before returning to a struggle that is only just becoming his own.

An enjoyable read, sure enough, but only as part of a series. It's too clearly a chunk of filler between the key events in Alfred's reign to stand alone as a novel. Pick up The Last Kingdom and start from the beginning.

I'm not sure why I enjoy Peter Ackroyd's writing as much as I do. It's clearly not polished prose; in fact, his literary style tends towards the brutal at times. Part of it, I suspect, is the fact that he can give even non-fiction a narrative drive and a clarity of idea that makes reading it a compelling experience. And just as important is his strong streak of the contrarian, a desire to challenge the pre-conceived and ill-thought.

Take this brief, but enjoyable, biography of Newton, the founding father of modern scientific thought. Ackroyd plunges the depths of his genius and his obsession, and sheds new light on familiar stories, as one would expect. But he doesn't shy away from the areas of  his life that cleave less to the modern idea of what a scientist should be: his deep, abiding and ever-so-slightly heretical Christian faith and his life-long flirtations with alchemy.

He also doesn't play down the difficult, arrogant and insecure nature of the man, and delves into the conflicts with others and periods of seclusion that defined his life. What makes this book, like earlier efforts in the series, so compelling is that they take the greatness of the subject's work for granted, and delve as best as one can, into the reality of the man behind the work. And that can't help but be fascinating.

This video was shipped as an example of Quicktime on an Apple installation CD - probably OS9 - and it was the first time I'd ever watched a music video on a computer. I remember, back in the 90s, watching this tiny wee TV showing this slightly surreal video, and thinking that this was the start of something.

Little did I know…

Good morning! For the first time in a fortnight, I feel like I've had a good night's sleep and I'm actually facing the world with a positive attitude.

Well, a positive attitude and a big pot of coffee.

I do wander whether my good night's sleep has anything to do with the two glasses of wine I had at the Mashup event Piers and I attended last night. (There's coverage over on One Man & His Blog) Maybe it relaxed me enough that I actually slept properly.

I've become dangerously close to a teetotaller in recent years, so maybe a little gentle boozing is the way forward…

UGC meets MSM...