As You Like it

The Rolling Stones suggested "You don't always get what you want" but in this play Shakespeare goes the other way in that everyone present got what they deserved or what they wanted 'as they liked it'.   This is one of those crazy comedies where disguised women, as men, are getting involved in love triangles where four couples were married at the end, after the madness was ironed out.  There are a lot of songs in the text so I think Shakespeare is really having a go at a musical here but there are only lyrics in the text so maybe the music score does not get published.  It is said that Shakespeare played Adam the longtime servant in Orlando's household so maybe he saw himself as the faithful servant to the audience.  It will be interesting to see how the POP UP company treat this play.

Proof Reading

I spent two days proof reading some new internet training courses. Not the same as proof reading a book. There is still the punctuation, spelling and understanding to work through but also following the links. Do they work and do they take you to the intended place?  Next time someone tells me there is too much jargon in IT, I will be referring them to their friendly bookkeeper. Here are a few -

• MJ  Manual Journal
• NTI  No Tax Invoice
• GST  Goods and Services Tax
• BAS  Business Activity Statement
• PAYGI  Pay as you go instalment

 

Believe it or Not ...

I always take some reading material along on a trip mainly for the waiting periods between planes, trains and automobiles. I brought a copy of "Narrow Road to the Deep North" by Richard Flanagan. It's not the cheeriest holiday reading. Nevertheless this is an award winning book about the horrible treatment of Australian POWs in building the Burma railway.
How's this for coincidence. Early on, the main character Dorrigo Evans is perusing a bookshop when the love interest walks in. He picks a book off the shelf to hide behind because she is looking at him.
She sidles over and asks "What's the book?" He says "Catullus - A Roman poet".

 I can't believe I was about to visit Gaius Valerius Catullus' Villa in Sirmione and the book I am reading is quoting some of his stuff.

Let us live and love

And not care tuppence for old men

Who sermonise and disapprove

Suns when they sink can rise again

But we, when our brief light has shone,

Must sleep the long night on and on.

 

 

Catullus Mega Villa

 

Makes you wonder how much a Roman poet can earn when he can build a house 400 m long by 200m wide. But if his book is still around after 2000 yar then .. Believe it or Not.



 



Girl Gone

I finished reading this book just now. The Gone Girl is certainly a crazy girl as well.  I can't help myself picking holes in story lines. I shouldn't do it. I do the same thing watching films. It seems to me that the cops could easily see through her lies in numerous places like when she got herself pregnant. You have to have two people show up for that trick. He says he didn't do it and there are doctors at fertility clinics who could prove her lie. Simples.

Jane Austen

Seems Jane had a thing for tea but I bet she never rode a bike in order to get her scones. We stopped at the Austen Tea Rooms for a spot of culture and some eggs benedict. I passed on the cucumber sandwiches but the mushrooms were nice. Will have to return for the High Tea. Originally High Tea was a working man's meal. It was served up on a high table with heavy duty meat, vegetables and fish.
The Hoi Polloi  in the form of Anna Russell the lucky 7th Duchess of Bedford turned things around when she got hungry in the afternoon. Then it became all manners, silver service and dainty little pinkies in the air. When she invited Queen Victoria that was the royal stamp of approval.

A Novel idea

Gun Alley

If you go back far enough we are probably all related to a convict somewhere in the tree. I just finished checking out this book about a hanged man who should not have been executed. The murdered girl was Alma Tirtschke whose mother was Nell Alger. We have to go back three generations to encounter the same Alger's in our tree.  The science of police work wasn't very good in 1922. Most likely the real killer was a relo who went free. Perhaps it is a good thing that Nauru House has now wiped out the whole grisly site.  My other connection, is with the author, who I went to school with in the secondary years at St Joes. I also notice another classmate named in the credits.  Kevin has done a good job on clearing the Ross family name. I won't be reading some of his other titles like "The Particulars of Executions:1894-1967"  even though I do recall the last one in 1967. not sure why Joe Ragnanese is removed from the Acknowledgements list in the 2nd edition.

A Reading Milestone

About 8 months back I mentioned the Wheel of Time fantasy series by Robert Jordan. I was about half way through at that stage but today I finished the final book, Vol 14 A Memory of Light. Perhaps it would have been better titled a Memory of Start because I cannot remember exactly when I started reading this yarn. It is certainly the longest tale I have read and took me at least a year to get through it. This may be the longest ever written at over 10,000 pages. What is the longest story ever written?

Guinness Book Of records says Marcel Proust with his 13 Volumes of  "Remembrance of Things Past" is the longest.  However this does not even crack 10 million characters. The approximate total for Wheel of Time is 20 million characters or 4,056,130 words. For comparison Harry Potter comes to 1,081,170 words for 7 volumes.  Well at least there are other books I can read.

Game of Thrones v Game of Houses

George RR Martin spends a lot of time getting it right before keyboard goes to screen or should that be book goes to print.  In the meantime I have been wading through that other story, even bigger than Game of Thrones if that is possible. Wheel of Time is perhaps not more detailed but more wordy.  I am about 6000 pages in with approx 5000 to go. Daes Dae'mar seems to be the maneuvering element that is common to both stories. I used to know it as office politics or power broking.   

I noted the reference in Season 4 Episode 1 of GOT to Duncan the Tall. Joffrey in one of his rare lucid moments is reading the Book of Brothers and comes to the page describing Ser Dunk but is impressed by the need of four pages to cover his lifetime deeds. All in the room including Jaime Lannister acknowledge the mighty Dunk. 

Every successful TV show always has a follow up series 2. There is a penchant for going back and filling in the storyline explaining how we arrived at the current plot. It happened in Star Wars it happened in Star Trek.  I predict GOT Story 2 will be set 100 years or so earlier showing the Targaryen's at their height and Ser Dunk doing deeds.  The main issue could be George taking 100 years to write it.  I wouldn't be surprised if a lot more of that earlier history has been put to paper in order to write this epoch.