Books and cats

[vilakins]

I haven't been posting much lately. I haven't even reviewed the last two Pretender eps I watched a while back, which I'll try to get round to today. I've been feeling rather blah, with nothing much interesting to say about my life. I have a few hours of underpaid work a week which is so crap and boring I don't want to talk about it, and this is very discouraging when I once thought I'd never be out of proper work with my degree and other qualifications. :-(

So I've been taking refuge in the world of books, one of the best escapes I know. I've read the first in the Gentleman Bastard series, The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch and thoroughly enjoyed it, though it was a little slow to start. Great characters and world building, and Lynch does seasons and months on another planet right.

I've just finished Enigma by Robert Harris, another one I really enjoyed: code breaking and skulduggery at Bletchley Park, a fascinating place I visited in 2004. azdak, Turing was only in the book briefly, at King's College with his teddy bear Porgy, then he was off in the US and only mentioned in passing; he certainly wasn't misrepresented. I can hardly remember the film, but the book is definitely worth reading for the atmosphere and conditions at Bletchley. I've decided I wouldn't have wanted to be there with the sexism that relegated brilliant women to clerks while men got to be cryptanalysts.

I've just started The Truth by Terry Pratchett as I felt like something light. After that, it's back to Robert Harris andPompeii, then his other Roman books eventually.

What else? Oh yes, Jasmin went to the eye specialist yesterday for a final check-up (which is why it rained (it always rains when I go there) and she's healed up amazingly well. She and Ashley are getting quite big,and Ashey's a year old in a couple of weeks. They're both very cute and playful and extra cuddly now the weather's getting cooler. Right now all three girls are curled up in their fleecy snugglers in the TV room, and Vic's upstairs on the spare bed. :-)

Comments

[azdak.livejournal.com]

I can understand why the murder theory gets advanced, because it just seems so *plausible*, although there is nothing in the way of evidence to back it up. Then again, short of Turing dying at a time when his life was utterly fucked up, there's no evidence for suicide either. He didn't leave a suicide note, and he hadn't put his affairs in order, and he'd bought tickets for the threatre the following week. So I can quite see why murder is an appealing idea. But as an ending to a play, and as a logical outcome of his situation, and his work, and his ideas, and experiences, suicide makes so much *dramatic* sense, that I share your annoyance with the TV version (without having seen it!). Murder is contingent; but suicide arises from the interaction of character and circumstance.