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It is Friday, and lo, I am not at the book sale. I am sure the house is happy, because I have no more room for books anyway, but I am a bit dispirited. It's not the end of the world(I say as I wistfully imagine working my way through the narrow labyrinth of tables and perusing the stacks and boxes in search of new friends and treasures), but I would have loved to have gone. Maybe in the autumn.
I watched an episode of True Detective S2 last night because Amazon was pestering me about not using my HBO subscription, and I'm not sure I'll watch the next. Everybody's acting their asses off, but the tone isn't just the relentless bleakness of S1; it's overlaid with a noisome scumminess. I sympathize with the tragedies that have so ruthlessly shaped them, but I don't like them in the slightest. Taylor Kitsch's character, Woodrudge, could grow on me if I persevered, but I'm not terribly inclined to do so. According to reviews, the third season, with Mahershala Ali, is much better, so maybe I'll jump to that.
I finished my latest book, Peter, Paul, and Mary: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend by Bart D. Ehrman. This reads like a written exegis or a bright, ambitious Masters thesis by someone with expansive ideas and deeply-strictured sources. Quotes and passages are used over and over to buttress his various arguments and, one suspects, to pad his page count. Reading this, I can't help but think that the good professor finally understood the grim desperation of his students as they struggled to cobble together their term and final papers. He's stretching with the best of them to hit his word or page count, and judging by the weak final paragraph with which he closes the book, he was ready to be done forty pages before.
It's a nice survey of the three, but of little interest outside scholarly circles where the academic discourse is as dry as the canapes they serve at university functions.
I watched an episode of True Detective S2 last night because Amazon was pestering me about not using my HBO subscription, and I'm not sure I'll watch the next. Everybody's acting their asses off, but the tone isn't just the relentless bleakness of S1; it's overlaid with a noisome scumminess. I sympathize with the tragedies that have so ruthlessly shaped them, but I don't like them in the slightest. Taylor Kitsch's character, Woodrudge, could grow on me if I persevered, but I'm not terribly inclined to do so. According to reviews, the third season, with Mahershala Ali, is much better, so maybe I'll jump to that.
I finished my latest book, Peter, Paul, and Mary: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend by Bart D. Ehrman. This reads like a written exegis or a bright, ambitious Masters thesis by someone with expansive ideas and deeply-strictured sources. Quotes and passages are used over and over to buttress his various arguments and, one suspects, to pad his page count. Reading this, I can't help but think that the good professor finally understood the grim desperation of his students as they struggled to cobble together their term and final papers. He's stretching with the best of them to hit his word or page count, and judging by the weak final paragraph with which he closes the book, he was ready to be done forty pages before.
It's a nice survey of the three, but of little interest outside scholarly circles where the academic discourse is as dry as the canapes they serve at university functions.
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