Nosemonkey > Recent Status Updates

This is good fun so far. Popular historiography - whoever would have thought?

I've vaguely decided that we're likely to see a more obvious Russian incursion into EU / NATO territory and/or a more explicit Chinese move to take over Taiwan soon, and this is so far proving an excellent (worrying) primer for the former...

This is really rather good...

I've been getting back into watching films again lately, thanks to grabbing BFI Player and Mubi subscriptions in sales, and Prime Video having more classics on offer. And to think I was a film critic for a decade...

Forgot I'd not finished this...

This is decent so far, but as ever with histories of Japan I wish there was more emphasis on the pre-Meiji era. Getting there around the halfway mark is better weighting than with some books, but still...

Up to Plato. This is pretty decent, accessible stuff.

This is quite fun, considering it's all about the end of the world...

I'm enjoying this the most so far. The first book is a bit too light and innocent in touch, the second made me kinda hate the narrator. Here, we're moving onto a little bit more direct analysis of French (high) society and politics around the time of the Dreyfuss Affair, and it's far, far more interesting as a result.

This has been sitting on the shelf for ages - should have started it sooner, as it's really rather good.

This is rather decently done, I'd say. Just made the Thirty Years War seem almost comprehensible...

I can't pretend I'm following all of this, but the language is at times glorious.

Now up to 1350, and realising how little of that medieval period I remember much about, despite studying it - the rise of Islam through to the Crusades - for A-levels. A crucial foundational period for many aspects of modern European identity and life, and part of the book to come back to.

I was unconvinced by the first chapter going back to pretty much the foundation of the Habsburg Empire, but then I started to understand the necessity more and more. Interested to see if this finally helps me actually *understand* Gödel - especially considering I'm someone who uses their fingers to count...