What I'm Reading
Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie. Epic fantasy novel, set in the same world as the "First Law" trilogy but with mostly different characters and locations. Tells a blood-soaked story of revenge against a backdrop of warring city-states.

Another excellent read: fast-paced despite its length, with memorable characters, in a carefully realised world with intricate politics. However, with aggressive cynicism and mild sadism, might be a bit too much for more sensitive souls.

Well worth reading. No need to read the First Law books first: would work well on its own.

What I'm Reading 2
Read the short Jerome K. Jerome 1890 theatre spoof Stage-Land online. Very witty series of descriptions of the stock characters of Victorian drama. In a few cases it's a bit dated in that the clichés have disappeared but it's interesting how many of them remain the same. 119 years later the comedy Irishman still seems to be going strong:

He says "Shure" and "Bedad" and in moments of exultation "Beghorra." That is all the Irish he knows.

He is very poor, but scrupulously honest. His great ambition is to pay his rent, and he is devoted to his landlord.

He is always cheerful and always good. We never knew a bad Irishman on the stage. Sometimes a stage Irishman seems to be a bad man-such as the "agent" or the "informer"-but in these cases it invariably turns out in the end that this man was all along a Scotchman, and thus what had been a mystery becomes clear and explicable.

Modern heroines are marginally less drippy than their Victorian forbears, but are still somewhat prone to the same habits.

Sometimes the stage heroine has a brother, and if so he is sure to be mistaken for her lover. We never came across a brother and sister in real life who ever gave the most suspicious person any grounds for mistaking them for lovers; but the stage brother and sister are so affectionate that the error is excusable.

And when the mistake does occur and the husband comes in suddenly and finds them kissing and raves she doesn't turn round and say:

"Why, you silly cuckoo, it's only my brother."

That would be simple and sensible, and would not suit the stage heroine at all. No; she does all in her power to make everybody believe it is true, so that she can suffer in silence.

She does so love to suffer.

Well worth a look. PROTIP: stick the HTML or .txt version from Project Gutenberg onto your smartphone, read chapter by chapter or in small doses.

Theatre
Saw the Bridge Project's production at The Cherry Orchard at the Old Vic. Big-name transatlantic production: directed by Sam Mendes, stars Ethan Hawke, Sinead Cusack and the omnipresent Simon Russell Beale amongst others, uses a new English script by Tom Stoppard.

The mixture of English and American accents took a little getting used to, but once you do it's an excellent show. Beale is as excellent as ever: thoughtful and only becoming bellicose at the end. The others too put on a good performance as a family living in denial. Even the subtle lighting and sound effects work well.

Was quite surprised to see it's the only Chekhov play not to obey Chekhov's law though.

Downsides: pretty pricey, and the slightly-less-extortionate balcony seats we had were pretty bum-numbing. But definitely worth seeing if you can.

Museums
Saw the Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur exhibition at the British Museum. Wasn't expecting much after a run of overhyped and underimpressive exhibitions at the BM, with Babel a distinct lowlight. But this was literally fabulous stuff.

Mostly watercolours, some pretty large, especially compared to the Mughal miniatures we see a lot of. But they're in great condition, with luminous colours and intricate detail, covering a lot of ground. There are semi-realistic scenes of court life, including a couple of depictions of Holi celebrations. There are scenes from Hindu legends, especially a marvellous series of depictions of maidens intertwined in a forest grove belonging to Krisna.

There are also a lot of mystical paintings from the Nash sect, which were new to me. Some Indian art can feel cluttered, but some of these have great restful fields of space providing a background to the detail.

A couple of the later paintings experiment with blending European persective with traditional layouts.

Overall, fascinating and beatiful, should be seen.

Museums 2
Dropped in at the Pastel Society's exhibition in the Mall. Not devastatingly original, but some very pretty stuff there. Has a good mix of content: portraits, landscapes and abstracts of all degrees.

Prices weren't too bad. If you're interested in furnishing a house and don't mind spending 3 figures for a small painting or 4 for a large, could be worth a look.

Also wandered next door to see the Poor Old Tired Horse concrete poetry exhibition, but was getting arted out and didn't find it that interesting, so didn't see everything. Mostly poetry with typographical gimmicks, but the odd bit of typewriter art too.

What I'm Watching
Saw Terminator Salvation at the cinema. Pretty watchable movie with some decent action scenes.

Think Christian Bale's ego is definitely out-of-control: apparently he insisted that his role was enlarged. It gets a bit absurd the way all the other characters have to adore him so much, and having two similar characters wandering around the base at the end seems pretty pointless.

What I'm Watching 2
Saw The Wrestler on DVD. Well done but depressing story of a once-famous wrestler now eking out a living on the lowest circuits. Quite touching.

Web
Random. Iphone vibrator (NSFW?) Cat-catching game.

Video. BMW kinetic sculpture. Top Gear road tests Ford Fiesta. Galaxy collision simulation. 1903 London street scenes.

Pics. Iphone app. Optical telegraph. Temporary ski jumps. Pillows. Tilt-shift London pics. Unusual caterpillars.

Socioeconomics. Higher alcohol prices could increase binge drinking. Justice League and comparative advantage. Japan contemplates abolishing cash to permit negative interest rates. Boeing's Dreamliner woes.

Articles of the unexpected from SF writers. Charles Stross claims to have co-invented robots.txt. China Mieville on Tolkien. Frederick Pohl on drug-assisted writing.

Articles. Douglas Hurd on nation states and international institutions.

Transformers:

Cuddly robots like the Star Wars droids ask to be patronised: they're pets, not peers. Terminators -- Transformers' principal rivals for our attention this summer -- are tediously psychotic...

Transformers, on the other hand, experience hopes, fears and ambitions as we do, but are also wilful and indomitable, thus evoking both our empathy and respect. Not only do their sensibilities resemble ours, but their capacity for metamorphosis plays to one of our unacknowledged longings. We humans have always hankered to breach the physical limits imposed on us by our puny bodies. Through our friends, the Transformers, we can vicariously indulge this desire.