Thursday, May 22, 2008

I Claudius

Well, in spite of my negative comments a couple of posts ago, I finished it, and intend to look out for Claudius the God. This book makes our modern politics look ethical. Almost.

We still haven't watched the remaining episodes of the DVD.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

The Glass-Blowers - Daphne du Maurier

I picked this up in the pile of secondhand books sold for charity at my local Co-op.


It's a fictionalised account of the life of du Maurier's own French ancestors around the time of the French Revolution. Must look up the newish biography of D du M.

The central character is sister to a master-craftsman glass-blower, and married to another. They become involved in the new revolutionary politics, dispossessing the old aristocracy and later end up being attacked in their turn, when the political wheel moved round. An absorbing story, full of warmth, and strong characters. I used to think that such inhumanity to others in times of economic hardship belonged to the dark ages, but now the story has too many resonances with what we see daily in news bulletins.

More on this I hope, when I have time.

Friday, May 16, 2008

I, Claudius

What's to be done about Claudius?

I loved this episode, showing how he developed into a young man. Plenty of comedy too to lighten the darker manipulations of Livia.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

I Claudius, continued

I guess Graves deliberately chose a pretty dry style for most of this, as Claudius is supposed to be a historian and an admirer of factual historical accounts. I've also discovered a family tree of the characters - in itself not simple to follow with second and third marriages, step-relationships and so on.
According to the intro, by Barry Unsworth, Livia may not have been as evil as portrayed in the book, though people who got in her way did have a habit of dying conveniently.
We watched the next episode, and my main impression is that people aren't generally very pleasant, especially when political ambitions and wealth enter the equation.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

I, Claudius - film and book

Well, it's a TV adaptation from 1976. I think this will keep us occupied for a week or more, since there are around a dozen episodes.

We watched the first couple last night, and I found them much more understandable than the Robert Graves book. The book reads a bit like an academic treatise with bits of gossip intermingled, and the huge number of characters, with their many marriages and interrelationships is difficult to follow. In the TV version with Sian Phillips as evil Livia, and Derek Jacobi as Claw-claw-claudius, things are clearer. So I'm going to read the book alongside the film.

Friday, May 9, 2008

All'aeroporto by Marina Mizzau

This is part of my attempt to keep up my Italian. Ideally I shall read at least a page each day. I'm working my way through a collection of short stories - Italian Women Writing, edited by Sharon Wood.

This is a short story (less than 3 pages) concerning the dilemma of the narrator who has arranged to meet a colleague at the aiport. How is he to recognise the man? Simple. 'Io sono brutissimo.' (I am very ugly). The two pages examine the messages that either recognising the man or not will give. The situation is unresolved at the end.

Of course, holding a placard with his name on it would have solved the quandary, but then there would have been no story.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Catching up

I'm copying down a few notes I made while staying in Tuscany for a week - a quiet cottage, with a few books and no internet connection, except in the office. I have not made any very meaningful comments, here.

Some of the books were there already -

Alexander McCall Smith: The Good Husband of Zebra Drive
No 1 Ladies’ detective agency, with its determinist view of characters – people should be happy as they are and not attempt things that are beyond them.
Problems as her husband Mr J L B Matekoni decides he will investigate a case of an errant husband, and mistakes a photograph for that of his own wife. Then one of his mechanics decides to start a taxi service. Mma Ramotswe’s assistant wants to change her job because she is about to get married.
They investigate thefts from a local office supplier, and only solve it by giving the culprit the keys to the cupboard – he takes the lot. The deaths at the local hospital – the cleaner is turning off the ventilator to plug in her vacuum cleaner.
A general feel-good series, set in Botswana, where McCall Smith spent some time.


Karen Essex – Leonardo’s Swans

Isabelle d’Este, her sister Beatrice, daughters of Ercole d’Este
Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua. M. Isabella
Ludovico Sforza of Milan marries Beatrice
There are intrigues involving the French kings etc, and all through this Leonardo is at Milan. Il magistro, who doesn’t eat meat because he doesn’t want his body to be the tomb of another animal, but invents machines of war, never finishes his commissions.
Isabella’s great ambition is to have her portrait painted by Leonardo, though this never happened – there was a drawing, which is now in the Louvre. She also appears as a pregnant muse in the centre of a Mantegna painting – Venus and Apollo on Mount Parnassus, in the Louvre. Soap and sex and history mixed together.

Carol Drinkwater – The Olive Season
An actress and a film producer buy an olive farm in Provence, then get married. She has a miscarriage, and they put all their energy into olive growing. It is full of local characters, such as the Arab gardener, Quashia, the local olive farmer and builder, Rene, the local celebs and minor aristocrats, and the incoming Russian Mafia and a dose of superstition as she employs water-diviners and takes photographs where the subject disappears from the picture, and soon dies. The life-style of jetting off to London, NY, Australia is a little out of my range. Nevertheless, written in a down-to-earth manner, apart from the odd spiritual bits. All in spite of the two MCs not being conventionally ‘religious’.


I bought this one in Radda-n Chianti, when I realised I was running out of reading material.
Anne Tyler –Digging to America

Two families in Baltimore adopt Korean babies and keep in touch as they grow up. The main character (though the viewpoint shifts) is Maryam Yazdan, an Iranian immigrant in her late fifties/early sixties, the ‘grandmother’ of Susan (Sooki), and her relationship with her son, his wife and the child, then later with the other family and in particular Dave, the ‘grandfather’ of Jo-Hin ( the other Korean adopted child). Her difficulties in fitting in either in America, or in Iran even if she were to return. Exile, pride, self-sufficiency – being an outsider. There are also a couple in Vermont, Farah (Maryam’s cousin) and her husband, William – who are more Iranian than the Iranians.

This is a book Harry bought in the airport.
Carolly Erickson – Brief Lives of the English Monarchs
From William the Conqueror to Elizabeth II – well written and researched, easy to read, though I am sure I shall forget all the facts.