Let’s see if I can toss this blog post up in fifteen minutes. Go.
Reading: 1808: The Flight of the Emperor: How A Weak Prince, A Mad Queen, And The British Navy Tricked Napoleon And Changed The New World – checked out of the library. As I mentioned last week, it’s an account of how the entire Portuguese royal court moved to Brazil when Napoleon’s forces invaded the country. It’s a pop history treatment (it was a best-seller in Brazil), so that means it’s an easy read. I’ll finish it tonight and report back. It certainly is an interesting event, that’s for sure.
Also, re-reading my son’s first novel, just released on Amazon (I read it as he was writing it a couple of years ago) – The Battle of Lake Erie: One Young American’s Adventure in the War of 1812. It’s an historical novel, based on a real person – the younger brother of Commander Perry:
1813.
The second war with Britain rages on from the Canadian frontier to the Caribbean. America fights against British arrogance at sea in service to its war with Napoleon.
One of the centers of the overall contest is the Great Lakes that separate America from Britain’s holdings in Canada. On Lake Erie, an America squadron, desperate for reinforcements to supplement its sparse crew, led by a young man from Rhode Island, Oliver Hazard Perry, is about ready to take action against the largest collection of British naval power in that theater of war.
Oliver’s younger brother, James Alexander, serves on board the American flagship as a midshipman. The two brother team will take up arms against the British in one of America’s finest naval battles.
Join them for an adventure that details the grit and daring of the American spirit.
By the way…if you have Kindle Unlimited, you can read his short story collections at no cost. Start here, if you like.
Listening: What comes to mind is last week’s episode of the BBC 4 Monday program Start the Week – I listen to it semi-regularly. It tends to be more reflexively, unthinkingly leftist than other, more history-based programs I listen to, so it’s not an automatic weekly listen for me. But I did mostly enjoy this one, particularly what novelist William Boyd has to say about his latest book, Love is Blind – the reviews are a bit mixed, but it still intrigues me enough that I might check it out when it makes its way to a library on this side of the sea.
Pianist son will be playing the “Harmonious Blacksmith” section of Handel’s Keyboard Suite #5, so we’ve been listening to that.
Watching: Up through Season 3 episode 8 of Breaking Bad with my sons. Better Call Saul is too much – can’t write about it until next week, after the last episode – because really, it’s like a novel. No reason to make judgments until the work is complete.
Speaking of Breaking Bad, I’ll end with a combined Watching/Reading point: Be thankful that you can enjoy pop culture without your mother constantly digging out teachable moments. So in the episode “Sunset” – Walter White meets his quirky, charming new lab assistant (poor!) Gale, who recites the Whitman poem “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” to him. So, of course, the next day, I made them each read it aloud (don’t worry, I did, too!) – reading aloud gets it more in your bones and spirit than just scanning the page, after all.
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
And of course…discuss!