Michael Seselja > Recent Status Updates

Some good Christmastide reading

Abbott describes a struggle in Australia’s early colonial history between emancipated convicts and the upper echelons of society. What he sees as being at stake was how similar Australia would be to Britain. Would there be a distinct Australian identity or would we be Britons living overseas?

Good old Tony is presenting some interesting thoughts about what makes up our identity that are now swirling in my head.

This is way quicker to read than 19th century fiction

On Ricky Ponting’s batting in the 2006-7 Ashes…”his forward and backward defensive shots seem like mandatory foreplay before the real humping start”

I think this is the first time in a decade that I’ve read a fiction book written before my grandfather was born. I’m turning into a modernist.

This book has some truly cringeworthy lines.

First two books, and Odysseus is conspicuous mainly by his absence. Not sure how much we will actually get of his story and how much of his son’s (who I keep imagining as Tom Holland, thanks Nolan for that one).

Time to start Odysseying

I haven’t always been able to follow the theological reasoning in the book. But the passage I just read on St Joseph’s reaction to the Annunciation was quite convincing and has changed my opinion on that.

I know this is meant to be a pretty basic history but the author does seem to deal in a lot of oversimplifications. For example, the Muslim invasion of Spain is described as saving the local Jewish population from Christian persecutions. Then a few pages later, the next mention of Jews is when they are getting pogrommed by their new overlords. What great saviours!

Just decided to pick this up and turns out the feast of the Holy Family is in 33 days. Perfect timing.

Book XXII

This was pretty sad actually.

“A cannonball travels only 1500 miles a second. Light travels 180 000 miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.”

This is really good wow

Achilles going into the battle knowing he will die anyway is the archetypal Western hero before that was probably a thing. Love it.

About to get to my favourite part of any revolution; the counter revolution.

Just started with the introduction to the audiobook. Chesterton’s style so far appears to be “repeat essentially the same thing over and over again but in slightly different ways”; and yet it’s somehow captivating.

Over 900 pages in and I’m still waiting for the revolution to start revolutioning.

Like most modern historians the author is quite left wing. Conservatives are usually the bad guys. Sometimes it seems that he really sympathises with the radical left of the time.
One might say, well the radical left of the 1840s is probably centre right now! That might have a bit of truth to it but reading accounts of radicals from the time I think many of them would still fit on the far left of the spectrum today.

Achilles is loading up for his grand entrance like a big chad. Unfortunately while I was reading Plato he spoiled the ending of this for me. A bit annoying. It’s only been out for 3000 years after all.

Chapter 5 done. Some important themes I’m noticing that are relevant today;

1. The revolution always eats itself. The French revolutionaries of 1830 were successful but then overthrown in 1848 by those who felt they hadn’t gone far enough. Not too hard to see this playing out today (JK Rowling is the most obvious example).

2. The left is really keen on rule by the people. Until the people vote against them.

One thing I’ve noticed is that Hugo seems to think social problems and crime will be solved if everyone just gets an education. Looking at this in 2025, the naive optimism is kind of funny.

Still enjoying the story.

As things ignite across Europe the author wisely begins by ordering events geographically rather than chronologically. As revolutions in one part of Europe affected those in others this is difficult, but he does an admirable job. The reader is given little reminders of events going on in Vienna as Berlin is discussed for example, which helps to focus on one place at a time while keeping the grand narrative in mind.

The author is quite good at painting a picture of events across so many countries in Europe leading up to 1848 without getting bogged down in unnecessary detail. I’m finding it more readable than most history books of this length. Or maybe that’s because my attention span is finally improving after years of being nuked by my phone.

Loui still wants to eat the book so nothing has changed there. The story continues to heat up as more people are brutally killed and I ponder whether the Trojan War really happened.

This period of history (the mid nineteenth century and the age of revolutions) is particularly interesting to me because you can see modern politics starting to form; socialism, liberalism, nationalism and conservatism are all being defined. This means that the ideological boundaries were a lot more blurred than we’ve been used to for decades. I think there’s a decent parallel to the present day there.

The book starts with a description of the conditions of the poorest of the poor in 19th century Europe and it is very easy to see why socialism became so popular.

Now that the book has reached early 2020 I’m being uncomfortably reminded of the crazy Covid times.

Although the Cardinal was dismissive of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations in Volume 1, I think he did have something of the Stoic in him.

Part Two. Hugo has been weaving the narrative (which is really interesting to follow) in with his own musings about nuns. On the one hand the disdain the nineteenth century liberal has for a convent is clear; he sees it as a bygone relic of a superstitious age. But as a nineteenth century liberal (not a twenty-first century one), he hasn’t abandoned belief in God and is intrigued by the life of prayer led within.