What I'm Reading
Latest Aubrey/Maturin: The Thirteen-Gun Salute. Liked this one though it had very little action. Has more of a psychological focus as they have to carry an oddball envoy to and from a mission to the Malays. Does have quite a lot of natural history for the Doctor.

Also this one has a long-term villain finally confronted. As is the Patrick O'Brian trademark, some of it happens off-page, but what is depicted is disquieting enough to emphasize it.

What I'm Listening To
Classical Mythology by Elizabeth Vandiver. Another good solid course. Her course on the Aeneid was great. This one covers a much bigger area so it has to race through.

Covers the main theories of what myth is all about, then goes on to analysing certain myths in more detail. It's literary as well as sociological: deals with specific works like Aeschylus' Orestia and Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Spends a bit of time dismissing Joseph Campbell. He doesn't have a lot of mainstream credibility despite his Hollywood popularity: he doesn't support his arguments very well and his patterns don't really hold across cultures. Vandiver does talk about a common pattern of "Test and Quest" myth which does seem to crop up all over the place. It's not quite Campbellian though: for one example she points out the Greek mythical characters are generally self-interested rather than trying to do good.

Other factoids. She talks about the Curse of the House of Atreus, most of them coming to sticky ends as a result of incest, cannibalism and fratricide. Not sure if Frank Herbert had that in mind for House Atreides. A lot of our knowledge comes from a couple of sources. Hesiod's Theogony tells the story of the origin of the gods, and seems pretty authentically early. However most of our knowledge of Roman mythology comes from Ovid, who wrote with at a sophisticated level with layers of irony: some of the actual myths may have been very different. Some of them he may have just made up: Pyramus and Thisbe he claims to be Babylonian, but there are no other records and the names aren't Babylonian.

Overall, worth a look if you're interested in the subject.

Coming Soon
Next TTC course is Passions: Philosophy and the Intelligence of Emotions. Lecturer has a varied background: undergraduate degree in Molecular Biology. master's and doctoral degrees in Philosophy and Psychology, last post was Professor of Business and Philosophy.

Have also ordered Ted Hughes' Tales from Ovid but not sure how far I'll get. I've got a volume of his Crow poetry, but while I've dipped into it, I've found it just too bleak to go cover to cover. Ovid sounds like more a fun-loving character though.

Museums
Went to see the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy this year. Got the members card for the From Russia, may as well use it: haven't been any previous ones.

Basically a huge and eclectic collection of all kinds of art from their members: mostly paintings, photos and sculptures; not much installation. Some of it was a lot more traditional than I was expecting: fairly realistic painting, some quite pretty stuff. Some of the things wouldn't look out of place in an Athena. Liked the shiny gold paintings with the nude women: they're good because they're shiny and have naked ladies in. Also liked the architecture room with some cool model buildings.

The attempt at controversy seems to come from the barbed wire hula video (NSFW). It's on a very small screen, so it's pretty much what you can see from that link. Mildly disturbing, but not as gruesome as some medieval martyrdom paintings.

Maybe worth a look for sheer size. It's cheaper than most at £7, but not sure I'd go if I had to pay.

Web
Lyrical Terrorist has conviction quashed. Touch wood and whatever, but with David Davis and all that I'm beginning to entertain a faint hope of a possibility of a return to sanity.

The woes of a stock photo reviewer: "you have no idea how many photos of lone trees in fields there are in the world".

YouTube: Butterfield diet plan