Forgive me if anyone else has already pointed this out and I'm late to the party...

( Cut For Spoilers for Cold Blood and The Beast Below )

( Read more... )

Unforeseen positive side effect of becoming a parent: I've become a reader of books again. In fact I've probably read more novels in the past three weeks than I did in quite a few of the years of my late-twenties-early-thirties (a somewhat shameful statistic). Here's some reviews, in easy-to-swallow capsule form.

( Mistress Masham's Repose, by TH White )

Whoa, I had an interview today! That's only my second real one since 2005 or thereabouts. It was even more surprising given that I only applied for the position at about 11am this morning. The guy liked that I used the word "overgnomes" in my cover letter and recognized that I would probably be a quick learner, but had some very reasonable ( Read more... )

I am becoming immoderately obsessed with this book:


( Read more... )

I don't want to jinx anything, but the writing is going moderately well. I have a short story that I think I will make it to the end of, and another couple brewing for later. I am a slow and indolent writer, and only managing to produce ~1000 words a day, but who cares, I have no NaNoWriMo-style end-of-month target, and at least this is ( Read more... )

The good point is raised by purple_pen that if I can't bear the thought of being a historian (because I wouldn't be able to just make stuff up), then maybe I should try my hand at some historical or pseudo-historical fiction.

I am, as it so happens, doing a spot of writing at the moment. And the question of what to write is enormous, and paralyzing. ( Read more... )

The other night Tessa and I finished the last episode of the 1976 BBC adaptation of I, Claudius, which we enjoyed immensely. It filled in some shameful gaps in my classics knowledge - I never took any of the ancient history options at Oxford, and wouldn't have been able to put the first five Emperors in order if my life depended on it ( Read more... )

For a long time I was steering clear of LiveJournal because (a) it doesn't work as a write-only medium, it's only any good if you read everyone who's reading you; and (b) keeping up with my overstuffed flist had become a full-time job, I had to commit a good number of hours to it a day to do it justice ( Read more... )

Depressingly, they no longer teach Latin in high schools anywhere in British Columbia, and actually I think nowhere in Canada apart from Ontario and possibly Quebec. I quested around for a reason for this appalling state of affairs, and think I have located the culprit: SESAME STREET.

Click to view

How is any child meant to get a grasp on Roman history when ( Read more... )