Another weekend, and more stuff I love:
1) Upbeat, folksy tunes with cornets, lots of guitar strumming, an accordian, replete with cheerful "hey" cries throughout the songs. I especially adore Little Talks by the Icelandic indie rock outfit Of Monsters and Men (somehow a lot of music I fancy seem to be coming from Iceland). Another song, Ho Hey, by the Lumineers, is really similar with its intermittent "Ho!", "Hey" throughout the song. Nice pick-me-ups they are, especially when one is trudging through excel spreadsheets.
2) Lately I have been looking forward to the end of the day - when I am done with work and housework and everything else. I am in my pyjamas under the covers, the airconditioning on, a drink (green tea or hot chocolate) by the bedside and a really really good read. Such bliss. Medieval fiction, which I happen to be really crazy about (Pillars of the Earth, anyone?) I just finished C. J Sansom's Dark Fire and am now trying to pace myself reading Revelation. I read Dissolution some years back and I have to say, some parts of that story really gave me the chills. Sansom makes all the issues of medieval London under Henry VIII come to sordid life. It is the post-Dissolution era. King Henry VIII has severed England's ties with the Pope in the Vatican, and reformation is underway. Benedectine, Franciscan monks who have only known lives of prayer, charity and relative comfort in monasteries (thanks to alms from the devout), not are turned out into the streets helpless to fend for themselves. Orphans, the forsaken, the sick wandering the streets full of filth. Catholic papists and hardline reformers burning each other at stake, depending on the religious leanings king's spouse at that time (he had six after all) and everyone else caught in between. Sansom captures all of this in magnificient, sometimes painful to read, detail. Couple that with some truly intriguing (at times seriously disturbing) murder mysteries that left me guessing all the way, and the trechearous politics of Tudor London (Henry VIII, the Duke of York, and Thomas Cromwell all feature) - and oh, what a thrill these stories are to read.
1) Upbeat, folksy tunes with cornets, lots of guitar strumming, an accordian, replete with cheerful "hey" cries throughout the songs. I especially adore Little Talks by the Icelandic indie rock outfit Of Monsters and Men (somehow a lot of music I fancy seem to be coming from Iceland). Another song, Ho Hey, by the Lumineers, is really similar with its intermittent "Ho!", "Hey" throughout the song. Nice pick-me-ups they are, especially when one is trudging through excel spreadsheets.
2) Lately I have been looking forward to the end of the day - when I am done with work and housework and everything else. I am in my pyjamas under the covers, the airconditioning on, a drink (green tea or hot chocolate) by the bedside and a really really good read. Such bliss. Medieval fiction, which I happen to be really crazy about (Pillars of the Earth, anyone?) I just finished C. J Sansom's Dark Fire and am now trying to pace myself reading Revelation. I read Dissolution some years back and I have to say, some parts of that story really gave me the chills. Sansom makes all the issues of medieval London under Henry VIII come to sordid life. It is the post-Dissolution era. King Henry VIII has severed England's ties with the Pope in the Vatican, and reformation is underway. Benedectine, Franciscan monks who have only known lives of prayer, charity and relative comfort in monasteries (thanks to alms from the devout), not are turned out into the streets helpless to fend for themselves. Orphans, the forsaken, the sick wandering the streets full of filth. Catholic papists and hardline reformers burning each other at stake, depending on the religious leanings king's spouse at that time (he had six after all) and everyone else caught in between. Sansom captures all of this in magnificient, sometimes painful to read, detail. Couple that with some truly intriguing (at times seriously disturbing) murder mysteries that left me guessing all the way, and the trechearous politics of Tudor London (Henry VIII, the Duke of York, and Thomas Cromwell all feature) - and oh, what a thrill these stories are to read.
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