I have finished reading:
Slow Horses by Mick Herron- This was OK...seemed a bit too long. I’ll read the sequel, I guess.
If Moscow rules meant watch your back, London rules meant cover your arse. Moscow rules had been written on the streets, but London rules were devised in the corridors of Westminster, and the short version read: someone always pays. Make sure it isn’t you.
The book included a short story, “The Last Dead Letter,” that I really liked.
A long time ago when we all lived in the shadow, most of human life could be found in Berlin, for Berlin was the Spooks’ Zoo, and every agency in the world had, if not an official presence, at least a weasel or two lurking there.But it was a place where citizens and professionals alike could reinvent themselves, and not all who checked heir real names at the door were in the business...Travel’s a way of finding yourself, it’s said, but it’s also a way of getting lost.
I am reading:
Journey of the Mind: A Life in History by Peter Brown- This is simply a wonderful intellectual biography. Read through Brown’s undergraduate years at Oxford. I could kinda get with having a tutor and immersion in preparing for exams, though Brown is critical of some aspects of his undergraduate education. I always thought that Brown was a scholar of late antiquity (which he is) but his undergraduate education was in medieval history.
The distinctive structures of Oxford exercised a silent but decisive influence on what was taught and what was not taught. For instance, the tutorial system, based on weekly encounters with a don, might seem a very relaxed and open-ended affair. But when harnessed to the need to satisfy examiners in a single final examination, the system tended toward a narrowing of the topics taught.
The overwhelming majority of studies of the later empire had treated this period as if it were no more than an anxious prelude to the imminent fall of Rome, But what I had found...suggested otherwise; there was a lot more life in the later empire than we had thought. Far from being an awkward hiatus between the ancient world and the Middle Ages, it seemed to be a period with a vitality of its own.
Black Ceasars and Foxy Cleopatras: A History of Blaxploitation Cinema by Odie Henderson- I will be reviewing this book in Black Kos. It is funny, I will say that.
When Melvin Van Peebles made Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, he did not consider any potential restrictions from the powers that be prohibiting his art.He saw it as a response to years of studio system depictions of his people as toms, coons, mulattos, mammies, and bucks. When asked what movies upset him in this regard, he said, “Every damn last one of them.”