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The Slender-fingered Cats of Bubastis, by Xanna Eve Chown

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

There was a gentle hiss as the train doors parted. As Bernice stepped out onto the plush carpet, an android server moved along the platform towards them, displaying a tray of sparkling drinks. Its long, thin body was sprayed the pale pink and green colours of Spring. Its face was smooth, silvery and featureless until it saw Bernice, then two eyes, a nose and a mouth shimmered into place in the traditional human positions. Bernice knew from the on-train audio tour that each server had the capacity to approximate any facial features it came upon, in an attempt to make each guest feel comfortable no matter what their planet of origin.

I thought this was a rather good novel in the Planetary-Archaeological-Adventure mould, in which Bernice (and her two companions, Ruth and Jack) must deal with mysterious giant alien cat statues, randy researchers, having access to all future history, and an obligation to write poetry before the week is out. I thought the characterisation fairly crackled and the plot seemed to hang together. I’ve rather got unmoored from the overall Bernice continuity (I don’t think I knew who Jack actually was, and there is no introduction) but apart from that I rather enjoyed it. You can get it here.

Next up: Filthy Lucre, by James Parsons and Andrew Stirling-Brown.

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Albert Rohan, 1936-2019

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So, this is my story about the late great Albert Rohan, whose passing was announced today. He was 83.

I got to know him in the 1999-2009 period, from when I first arrived in Brussels as a thinktanker on Balkan issues up to his time as Marti Ahtisaari’s deputy in the Kosovo final status process. We saw each other often at conferences and I enjoyed learning from his vast experience. (Which included serving as Kurt Waldheim’s chief of staff at the United Nations.)

We both attended our friend Mabel Wisse Smit’s wedding to (the tragically short-lived) Prince Friso of the Netherlands, and I asked him then if this was the first royal wedding he had attended. He gave me a slightly odd look, and replied, “You could say that.” I was a bit puzzled, because most people would be able to give an unambiguous yes-or-no answer to that question.

So I did a little research, and discovered that Albert had presumably attended both of his own weddings. The next time I saw him, at a conference in Ljubljana, I said to him, “So, you’re a prince, then!” He replied, “Well, technically, yes, but the Republic of Austria does not recognise the title or permit me to use it.” Which explains the ambiguity of his previous answer.

That was quite a memorable trip to Ljubljana. Albert and I came in on the same flight from Vienna and he was met by the Austrian ambassador who kindly let me take the spare seat in the car. As we drove into Ljubljana, the subject of the Monument to the Unknown French Soldier came up, and the ambassador excitedly asked the driver to detour so that we could admire it. It’s quite a remarkable historical statement.

We all got out of the car to contemplate it silently. Who, you may ask was the Unknown French Soldier defending Slovenian liberty *from*? The Austrian diplomats knew perfectly well, and so did I.

Born under Schuschnigg’s struggling government to an Austrian father and Hungarian mother in 1936, Albert devoted his career to overcoming the divisions of the past, and I think he succeeded more than most.

We will miss him.

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Tuesday reading

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Current
Robert Holmes: a Life in Words, by Richard Molesworth
Five Women Who Loved Love, by Ihara Saikaku

Last books finished
Bland Ambition, by Steve Tally
The Bridge on the River Kwai, by Pierre Boulle
Gather, Darkness!, by Fritz Leiber
Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach, by Kelly Robson
Sovereign by R.M. Meluch
The Belles, by Dhonielle Clayton
Will Supervillains Be On The Final?, by Naomi Novik, art by Yishan Li
Binti: The Night Masquerade, by Nnedi Okorafor

Next books
The Paying Guests, by Sarah Waters
In Another Light, by Andrew Greig

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The Big Finish Companion, vol. 2, by Kenny Smith

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Second paragraph of third chapter (re the Companion Chronicles):

The opening story of the fourth season was a sequel to Simon Guerrier’s hugely popular Home Truths, which marked the return of Sara Kingdom. The Drowned World carried on the story of Sara’s ‘ghost’ in the house, talking with Robert. Simon said, “David didn’t really ask for anything except a second story for Sara. I sent him a number of ideas – both for the stories she recounted and the framing device around them. And we was really keen to find out more about Robert. So I worked up an outline for The Drowned World and said I’d an idea for a third one.”

I was rather underwhelmed by the first Big Finish Companion volume when I read it some years ago. This is considerably better, though it’s barely worth the hefty cover price. It covers Big Finish’s output from 2005 to 2008, with cast lists and production details, but also interviews with the production team including some self-criticism of stuff that didn’t work. This time I knew pretty much all of the audio plays produced, with the exception of the The Tomorrow’s People and Stargate ranges, and I realise that I did indeed miss some crucial chunks of the Bernice Summerfield audios when I was listening to them. It’s a good starting point for further analysis of the amazingly diverse and complex Big Finish ranges, but it misses by not including any external criticism – not that I am making great claims for my own sporadic commentary, but quite a lot has been written about it, and it would be interesting to feel that there was some sense of responsiveness to external feedback. You can get it here.

My own consumption of BF has decreased since I discovered Ingress, Duolingo and Pokemon Go. But I will come back to it once I have achieved Level 40.

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Three things: a coconut reliquary, cathedral doors and the Kangxi-Verbiest celestial sphere

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I’ve been doing a bit of culture over the last few days. Anne and I went up to Utrecht on Thursday, which was a holiday, and took the Friday as well to look around the Catharijneconvent (which I will hope to write up separately some time). And yesterday I went on another historic walk around Leuven organised by Leuven Leisure. (Of about a dozen participants, I was the only one who wasn’t Dutch.)

Here are three things that I found intriguing.

1) The Coconut Reliquary of Münster.

The Catharijneconvent‘s current temporary exhibition is of treasures from St Paul’s Cathedral in Münster, Germany (which is only a little further from Utrecht than we are). Most of the displayed items were made as reliquaries, but this really caught my eye. It is a goblet, possibly a chalice, made of a single intact polished coconut shell, crowned by a crystal lion which has been adapted to become a Christian lamb.

Coconuts were not unknown in Northern Europe from Roman times – they are probably native to the Maldives, the Indian Ocean is a corridor not a barrier, and the Romans ruled from Scotland to Sudan. But they were still pretty rare, and the practice of turning them into goblets is a purely Northern European one in the middle ages. This one dates to around 1230 and is the oldest one known.

The hinged lid of the cup is decorated with a rock crystal lion from Persia or Arabia, which has been adapted to become an Agnus Dei lamb complete with cross. The original crystal lion must have been rather special as well, to have made it to Germany from its pace of manufacture, and I guess it may have already been rather old before the Christian sculptor got at it.

The goblet was used as a reliquary at one point as well (sadly there doesn’t appear to be a record of which relics), but was surely first constructed as a luxury drinking vessel. The word used for it in German, Pokal, is a less commonly used term, also used for the World Cup.

2) The Cathedral Doors of Utrecht

The most extraordinary thing about St Martin’s Cathedral in Utrecht is that it is only half there. In 1674 the unfinished nave collapsed during a violent storm, and was never rebuilt, as shown in these before-and-after prints from the seventeenth century.

So the huge bell tower sits detached from the remains of the cathedral, and what would originally have been the soaring opening from the transept to the nave has been bricked up, a barrier between the sacred space and the outside world rather than a religious passageway.

The main opening through this barrier is through the bronze doors created in 1996 by Theo van de Vathorst, surmounted by a huge picture of St Martin dividing his cloak to clothe a naked beggar. Here are the doors in their full glory. Click to embiggen.

The theme is the six works of mercy listed by Jesus in Matthew 25: 1) To feed the hungry. 2) To give water to the thirsty. 3) To clothe the naked. 4) To shelter the homeless. 5) To visit the sick. 6) To visit the imprisoned. Traditionally a seventh is added to the list, To bury the dead. The upper half of the doors carries the passage from Matthew in several non-Dutch languages – Frisian, Japanese, Syriac and English. The lower half is almost entirely in Dutch, apart from the Greek original text; it includes two Dutch translations, notes about St Martin and St Willibrord, and an explanation of the whole thing. In the bottom left you can see the sheep being divided from the goats. Here’s a Youtube documentary about the making of the doors – in Dutch, alas.

The choice of languages is very interesting. Frisian is not a foreign language in the Netherlands, and it’s important for the historical tradition to which the church belongs. Japan has a long-running trade and cultural relationship with the Netherlands. Syriac would have been Jesus’ own language. And English of course is today’s world language of communication.

And the overall message, of course, is that it’s good to be nice to people.

3) The Kang’Xi-Verbiest celestial sphere

After almost two decades living near Leuven, I can still be utterly astonished by the city. Here in the courtyard of the Atrechtcollege on the Naamsestraat, 300 metres from where my daughter was born, is this full-scale replica of a celestial sphere built in the 1670s by the Jesuit Ferdinand Verbiest for the old Beijing Observatory at the command of the Kangxi emperor. It is more than two and a half metres across, and weighs 3.85 tonnes, but apparently it turns easily with a simple crank mechanism.

Almost 1900 stars are marked on the surface. As you may be able to see, the starmap is reversed – here the Pleiades are at the top, with the V of the Hyades below pointing left instead of right, and the stars of Aries left along the zodiac instead of right as we would see them in the northern hemisphere.

Verbiest’s story is quite extraordinary; he persuaded the young Kangxi emperor to adopt European science as part of his modernising policies, and also designed a steam-powered car and was the first person to use the word “motor” in its modern sense. He died aged 64 in 1688 of injuries sustained from falling off a horse. Two Belgian beers are named after him (Pater Verbiest, which comes in 6.5% blond and 9% brown versions, and Ferre, which is an eye-watering 10% quadruple).

The globe here was constructed by the Chinese authorities in the 1980s as a gift to Leuven University, commemorating Chinese-Western friendship. The university had maintained its links with China over the centuries (with one unexpected benefit being the enlightenment of Hergé). Unfortunately I cannot find details of how this particular present came about, nor the names of the people who designed and built the replica.

Quite by coincidence, I discovered that the celestial sphere was formally unveiled in its present location exactly thirty years ago today, 2 June 1989. Needless to say, it immediately became a focal point for demonstrations of solidarity with the Tiananmen Square protesters.

So, three things that I’ve seen in the last three days that will all stick in my mind, all pointing to the links between Asia and this part of Europe (the coconut and crystal must have reached Münster via Asia; Japanese, Syriac and to a large extent New Testament Greek are Asian languages; and the Chinese globe speaks for itself). There’s always something interesting out there.

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The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957); and book by Pierre Boulle

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This review contains SPOILERS for both the film and the novel. The film has been out for 62 years, but if you haven’t seen it, do go and see it first before reading this.

The Bridge on the River Kwai won the Oscar for Best Motion Picture of 1957, and picked up another five, Best Director (David Lean), Best Actor (Alec Guinness), Best Adapted Screenplay (Pierre Boulle, with Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman, who actually wrote the screenplay, being awarded posthumous Oscars for it in 1984), Best Music, Scoring (Malcolm Arnold), Best Film Editing (Peter Taylor) and Best Cinematography (Jack Hildyard), with Sessue Hayakawa losing out to Red Buttons in Sayonara for Best Supporting Actor. The other contenders for Best Motion Picture that year were 12 Angry Men, Peyton Place, Sayonara and Witness for the Prosecution, none of which I have seen, though I have read the theatre script for 12 Angry Men and also the Agatha Christie short story on which Witness for the Prosecution is based.

IMDB users rank The Bridge on the River Kwai 5th or 2nd of the films of 1957, with 12 Angry Men top on both rankings and The Seventh Seal, Funny Face and Paths of Glory between the two on the popularity metric. There were a lot of famous films, these and many others, produced in 1957, but I have seen none of them at all apart from The Bridge on the River Kwai, which I had previously seen when it was on TV at Christmas time in 1981. Here’s a contemporary (post-Oscars) trailer:

I’ve never been to South East Asia, though I have a number of links there – my godfather and one of my uncles actually fought in the Burma campaign; my father was born in Malaysia; my niece was born in Vietnam; my aunt appears as an extra in The 7th Dawn, which is set in Malaysia a few years later and also stars William Holden along with my aunt’s schoolfriend Susannah York. (You can see my aunt dancing in the embassy scene about 38 minutes into The 7th Dawn, if you want to check.) I’d love to go.

Back to The Bridge on the River Kwai. It is a problematic film in terms of race and gender, but it is spectacular in its execution on every level, and I’m bumping it right to the top of my table, in fifth place just behind the greatest of all war films, All Quiet on the Western Front, and just ahead of the soldiers returning in The Best Years of Our Lives. Like last year’s Around The World In Eighty Days, it’s an adaptation of a French novel about an Englishman’s encounter with Asia, with the spectacular collapse of railway bridge near the end. There are also some important differences, of course.

Gender: There are five credited women in the cast and none of their characters are named – Ann Sears plays an anonymous “Nurse” whos is William Holden’s character’s love interest, and four Thai actresses, credited as Vilaiwan Seeboonreaung, Ngamta Suphaphongs, Javanart Punynchoti and Kannikar Dowklee are credited as “Siamese girls” – the partisans who accompany William Holden’s character through the jungle to the final confrontation. There is also an uncredited nurse (as opposed to the credited but unnamed nurse played by Sears).

  • Ann Sears had a better known younger sister, Heather Sears, and was married to Michael Holden, a British producer (not related to William Holden as far as I can tell).
  • Vilaiwan Seeboonreaung – วิไลวรรณ สีบุญเรือง – is better known in Thailand by her maiden name, Vilaiwan Wattapanich – วิไลวรรณ วัฒนพานิช, and has a Thai Wikipedia article listing dozens of films and TV appearances since 1950. Due to variant transliterations she has three different IMDB pages (Seeboonreaung, Vatanapanich and Vatapanich). She is clearly one of the most prominent Thai actresses.
  • Ngamta Suphaphongs – งามตา ศุภพงษ์ – had previously starred in a Thai blockbuster, Forever Yours, as a young woman married to a much older man, with the hit song Forever. If I understand this correctly, she went on to found the Music Faculty at Silpakorn University.
  • Javanart Punynchoti – whose name I have found in Thai as both ชวนารถ ปัญญโชติ and ยาวนารถ ปัญญะโชติ, differing by the first syllable of her first name and whether or not there is a middle vowel in her second name – was much the most difficult to track down; her name I think has been particularly mangled. Her son Arthur Panyachote is much better known in Thailand, both as a singer and gay rights activist.
  • Kannikar Dowklee – กรรณิกา ดาวคลี่ – had another starring role in The Stars Unfold / ดาวคลี่ (1959), in which she gets top billing. Otherwise I can’t find much about her.

Having said that, this extraordinarily minimal acknowledgement of half of humanity on screen is, believe it or not, a considerable advance on the original book, in which no women at all appear or are even referred to in passing. (There is a figurative reference to maternal love.) The fact that the Thai partisans are young women rather than men gives the march through the jungle and the destruction of the bridge a much more gritty feel.

Race: Let’s face it, this is a film about an Englishman encountering the Orient. The audience is expected to share the English and American characters’ views and perspective, and the Japanese and Thais are the Other. And yet… the fact is that the story is rooted in Pierre Boulle’s real life experience of working for the Japanese as a prisoner of war in Indochina. And Sessue Hayakawa’s Saito, who begins the film as the evil head of the PoW camp, evolves into a complex character whose relationship with Alec Guiness’s Nicholson defines the film. It should also be said that unlike in last year’s Around The World In Eighty Days, at least we have Japanese actors playing Japanese characters and Thai actors playing Thai characters. Again, it’s a better effort than the original book, where Boulle allows himself to slip into stereotypes of Japanese, English and Americans rather readily, and the Thais are even more anonymous. (As well as there being no women in the book, there are no French people either, nor any reference to France.)

There is one very dark-skinned extra whose only function is to operate the Japanese officers’ fan.

NB that the upper part of the Mae Klong river, which was crossed by the Burma Railway, was renamed the Khwae Yai in the 1960s by the Thai government to bring real and fictional geography into closer alignment.

Music: Here we have the great composer Malcolm Arnold at his best. This is the entire soundtrack album:

But of course what everyone remembers is the extraordinary scene in which the PoWs arrive, defiantly whistling “Colonel Bogey“, and at the end of the scene the orchestra swells into Arnold’s “River Kwai March”, conveying the sense of lost military glory so very vividly.

Script: A surprising number of memorable lines in the film are lifted directly from Boulle’s novel, including “an unfortunate disagreement for which I was not to blame”, “healthy competitive spirit”, “the elm piles of London Bridge have lasted six hundred years”, and “Our experience of missions dropping into this sort of country can be summed up as follows: if they do only one jump, you know, there’s a fifty per cent chance of an injury. Two jumps, it’s eighty per cent. The third time, it’s dead certain they won’t get off scot free.” But a great film has been made from a good book here, and the changes to the story made by Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman are crucial from the beginning – Shears is not a fellow-prisoner or impersonating an officer in the book – to the end – Boulle’s Nicholson does not have an epiphany and successfully prevents most of the sabotage before his death. In particular, a lot more is made of the commando raid in the film than in the book. These are all good dramatic choices. It is a matter of disgrace that Wilson and Foreman’s Oscar-winning writing was not recognised for almost thirty years.

Cinematography: I should have said last year that the new wide screen format enables a vast amount of spectacle to go on the screen. A less gifted team would allow some of this extra space to go to waste, but that’s not happening here. I am sure that someone more familiar with the respective landscapes of Thailand and Sri Lanka than I am would be able to point and laugh at the differences, but basically it all looks gorgeous, and although it was presumably all filmed on the same short stretch of the Kelani River in Sri Lanka, we get a great sense of a long journey.

And the most extraordinary scene of course is the final collapse of the bridge with the train tumbling off it (as previously mentioned, added from the book).

Alec Guinness: All of this is a huge achievement. But what keeps you watching to the very end of two hours and forty-one minutes, even if you already know perfectly well what is going to happen, is the performance of the leading man. (It is striking that Guinness is billed third, and Hayakawa fourth and below the line, in the publicity posters; were Hawkins and Holden really such box-office draws?) He takes us inside the mind of Nicholson, whose concept of duty drives him to build the best possible bridge, even though this could lead to the end of the British Empire, who is grasping the best he can at dignity for himself and for his men, and even for the Japanese to an extent, in appalling circumstances; and who at the end realises what he has done, and destroys it.

It’s a great film. You can get it here.

I will now watch The Incredible Shrinking Man, which won the Hugo that year, and then progress to Gigi, of which I know nothing except that it stars the glorious Leslie Caron.

I’m 30 films into this project now, so here are my rankings so far, with the most recent ten picked out in red. It’s been a good decade, with six of them in my top ten and only two in my bottom ten. That said, it’s going to take a pretty awful Oscar-winning film to break into my bottom five, all produced before 1936. See also my previous rankings of the first 10 and first 20.

30) The Great Ziegfeld (Oscar for 1936)
29) Cimarron (1930/31)
28) Cavalcade (1932/33)
27) Wings (1927/28)
26) Broadway Melody (1928/29)
25) All The King’s Men (1949)
24) Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
23) The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
22) Gone With the Wind (1939)
21) Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)
20) Going My Way (1944)
19) How Green Was My Valley (1941)
18) Mrs Miniver (1942)
17) On The Waterfront (1954)
16) Grand Hotel (1931/32)
15) The Life of Emile Zola (1937)
14) Marty (1955)
13) It Happened One Night (1934)
12) You Can’t Take It With You (1938)
11) The Lost Weekend (1945)
10) Hamlet (1948)
9) From Here To Eternity (1953)
8) Around The World In Eighty Days (1956)
7) All About Eve (1950)
6) The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
5) The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
4) All Quiet on the Western Front (1929/30)
3) Rebecca (1940)
2) An American in Paris (1951)
1) Casablanca (1943)

As for the book by Pierre Boulle, here’s the second paragraph of the third chapter:

Ce fut la proclamation du colonel Saïto, stipulant que les officiers devraient travailler avec leurs hommes, et dans les mêmes conditions, qui suscita les premiers troubles. Elle provoqua une démarche, polie mais énergique, du colonel Nicholson, qui exposa son point de vue avec une sincère objectivité, concluant que les officiers britanniques avaient pour tâche de commander leurs soldats, et non de manœuvrer la pelle ou la pioche.The cause of the initial disturbances was Colonel Saito’s proclamation stipulating that all officers were to work side by side with the other ranks and on the same footing. This provoked a polite but firm protest from Colonel Nicholson, who outlined his ideas on the subject candidly and methodically, adding in conclusion that the task of British officers was to command their men and not to wield a pick and shovel.

As already noted, the book is a good book but not as good as the film. I think it’s the first case of a straight adaptation where I have been able to say that quite so firmly. There are no women; the English, Americans, Japanese and Thais all play somewhat to national stereotype. On the other hand, the core narrative of Nicholson as English army officer, attached to his duty for entirely recognisable reasons, and Saito as his captor who ends up being effectively captured by his prisoner, is a firmly sound story and well told. As a French author, Boulle is able to keep an ironic detachment from the drama, and perhaps this ends up a bit less manipulative of the reader/viewer. Boulle’s ear for dialogue and character meant that many of his best lines were preserved for the screenplay (for which he won an Oscar, not entirely on his own merits, as noted above). It’s also a really short book. Strongly recommended. You can get it here.

Winners of the Oscar for Best Picture

1920s: Wings (1927-28) | The Broadway Melody (1928-29)
1930s: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929-30) | Cimarron (1930-31) | Grand Hotel (1931-32) | Cavalcade (1932-33) | It Happened One Night (1934) | Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, and books) | The Great Ziegfeld (1936) | The Life of Emile Zola (1937) | You Can’t Take It with You (1938) | Gone with the Wind (1939, and book)
1940s: Rebecca (1940) | How Green Was My Valley (1941) | Mrs. Miniver (1942) | Casablanca (1943) | Going My Way (1944) | The Lost Weekend (1945) | The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) | Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) | Hamlet (1948) | All the King’s Men (1949)
1950s: All About Eve (1950) | An American in Paris (1951) | The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) | From Here to Eternity (1953) | On The Waterfront (1954, and book) | Marty (1955) | Around the World in 80 Days (1956) | The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) | Gigi (1958) | Ben-Hur (1959)
1960s: The Apartment (1960) | West Side Story (1961) | Lawrence of Arabia (1962) | Tom Jones (1963) | My Fair Lady (1964) | The Sound of Music (1965) | A Man for All Seasons (1966) | In the Heat of the Night (1967) | Oliver! (1968) | Midnight Cowboy (1969)
1970s: Patton (1970) | The French Connection (1971) | The Godfather (1972) | The Sting (1973) | The Godfather, Part II (1974) | One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) | Rocky (1976) | Annie Hall (1977) | The Deer Hunter (1978) | Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
1980s: Ordinary People (1980) | Chariots of Fire (1981) | Gandhi (1982) | Terms of Endearment (1983) | Amadeus (1984) | Out of Africa (1985) | Platoon (1986) | The Last Emperor (1987) | Rain Man (1988) | Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
1990s: Dances With Wolves (1990) | The Silence of the Lambs (1991) | Unforgiven (1992) | Schindler’s List (1993) | Forrest Gump (1994) | Braveheart (1995) | The English Patient (1996) | Titanic (1997) | Shakespeare in Love (1998) | American Beauty (1999)
21st century: Gladiator (2000) | A Beautiful Mind (2001) | Chicago (2002) | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) | Million Dollar Baby (2004, and book) | Crash (2005) | The Departed (2006) | No Country for Old Men (2007) | Slumdog Millionaire (2008) | The Hurt Locker (2009)
2010s: The King’s Speech (2010) | The Artist (2011) | Argo (2012) | 12 Years a Slave (2013) | Birdman (2014) | Spotlight (2015) | Moonlight (2016) | The Shape of Water (2017) | Green Book (2018) | Parasite (2019)
2020s: Nomadland (2020) | CODA (2021) | Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) | Oppenheimer (2023)

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May Books

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Non-fiction: 4 (YTD 18)
Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing, by Ursula K. Le Guin with David Naimon
The TARDIS Handbook, by Steve Tribe
The Big Finish Companion, vol. 2, by Kenny Smith
Bland Ambition, by Steve Tally

Fiction (non-sf): 4 (YTD 13)
A Sunless Sea by Anne Perry
Around the World in Eighty Days, by Jules Verne
The Ginger Man, by J. P. Donleavy
The Bridge on the River Kwai, by Pierre Boulle

sf (non-Who): 13 (YTD 35)
The Cruel Prince, by Holly Black
Dark Lord of Derkholm, by Diana Wynne Jones
The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal
Infomocracy, by Malka Older
Feersum Endjinn, by Iain M Banks
The Invasion, by Peadar O Guilin
Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers
Rosemary and Rue, by Seanan McGuire
Space Opera, by Catherynne M. Valente
Trail of Lightning, by Rebecca Roanhorse
Nebula Awards Showcase 2011, ed. Kevin J. Anderson
Conjure Wife, by Fritz Leiber, Jr
Gather, Darkness!, by Fritz Leiber, Jr

Doctor Who, etc: 3 (YTD 10)
The Good Doctor, by Juno Dawson
The Slender-fingered Cats of Bubastis, by Xanna Eve Chown
Doctor Who: The Official Annual 2019, by Paul Lang

Comics 1 (YTD 6)
Animate Europe Plus, by David Shaw, Marta Okrasko, Juliana Penkova, Bruno Cordoba and Paul Rietzl

7,500 pages (YTD 25,200)
13/25 (YTD 36/83) by non-male writers (Le Guin, Perry, Black, Wynne Jones, Kowal, Older, Chambers, McGuire, Valente, Roanhorse, Dawson, Chown, Okrasko/Penkova)
1/25 (YTD 8/83) by PoC (Roanhorse)
4/25 (YTD 6/83) rereads (Around the World in Eighty Days, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Conjure Wife, Gather, Darkness!)

Reading now
Sovereign by R.M. Meluch
Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach, by Kelly Robson
Will Supervillains Be On The Final?, by Naomi Novik, art by Yishan Li
Robert Holmes: a Life in Words, by Richard Molesworth

Coming soon (perhaps):
Five Women Who Loved Love, by Ihara Saikaku
The Paying Guests, by Sarah Waters
In Another Light, by Andrew Greig
Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney, by Dennis O'Driscoll
Becoming, by Michelle Obama
“Goat Song”, by Poul Anderson
The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Graham
1913: The World before the Great War, by Charles Emmerson
The Making and Remaking of the Good Friday Agreement, by Paul Bew
Gateways, ed. Elizabeth Anne Hull
Better Than Sex, by Hunter S. Thompson
Het Amusement, by Brecht Evens
Grimm Tales, by Philip Pullman
The Ghosts of Heaven, by Marcus Sedgwick
The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter
Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Kate Bush: Under the Ivy, by Graeme Thompson
Berlin Book Three: City of Light, by Jason Lutes
Smallworld, by Dominic Green
Filthy Lucre, by James Parsons

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Tuesday reading

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Current
Bland Ambition, by Steve Tally
The Bridge on the River Kwai, by Pierre Boulle
Gather, Darkness!, by Fritz Leiber

Last books finished
The Slender-fingered Cats of Bubastis, by Xanna Eve Chown
Space Opera, by Catherynne M. Valente
Doctor Who: The Official Annual 2019, by Paul Lang
Trail of Lightning, by Rebecca Roanhorse
Nebula Awards Showcase 2011, ed. Kevin J. Anderson
Conjure Wife, by Fritz Leiber, Jr

Next books
Sovereign by R.M. Meluch
Will Supervillains Be On The Final?, by Naomi Novik, art by Yishan Li

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  • Sun, 23:37: RT @APCOBXLInsider: North East England is first UK region to declare: Brexit Party 39% 2 seats (+1) Labour 19% (-17%) 1 seat (-1) Lib Dems…
  • Sun, 23:43: RT @EuropeElects: Cyprus: Electoral commissioner announces names of the Cypriot MEPs. DISY (EPP)- Loukas Fourlas (new), Lefteris Christofor…
  • Mon, 06:24: Good summary. https://t.co/ejjRvKvl1C
  • Mon, 08:23: RT @damonwake: Absolute peak French political TV. It’s the presenter helplessly bleating “monsieur, s’il vous plait” that really makes it.…
  • Mon, 09:28: RT @AndrewDuffEU: All we can be certain of this morning is that (1) the European Parliament is more popular than its enemies hoped, (2) @Ma…
  • Mon, 10:07: RT @JamesCrisp6: Word to the wise. Anyone who talks about a managed no deal Brexit is, as things stand, a bullshit artist who is either bei…
  • Mon, 10:45: RT @ParkerMolloy: So, one thing transphobes like to do is post photos of trans women who *gasp* want to compete in school sports and go “Bu…

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How I’m voting today

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It is election time again! Hooray! And I will be commenting on the @APCOBXLInsider Twitter feed this evening, and on the Northern Ireland counts tomorrow afternoon and tomorrow evening.

I made up my mind some time ago on how I would vote in the European Parliament elections. In terms of how Europe is going to work in the future, the two main European parties, the European People's Party (EPP) and Party of European Socialists (PES) have wedded themselves to the concept of the Spitzenkandidat, where a vote for either of them is a vote for the new European Parliament to force the chosen candidate of the EPP (or PES, if they win more seats, which they won't) onto the EU as the new President of the European Commission. Franklin Dehousse explains here why this is a bad idea in principle (see also Denis MacShane). I'll add that it's a bad idea in practice, as the EPP candidate is the rather unimpressive Manfred Weber, who has never run anything more than the EPP group in the European Parliament. I actually went to the EPP Congress in Helsinki in November to campaign for Weber's opponent:

The liberal ALDE party are running a team of potential EU leaders, a majority of them women, and starring the impressive Margrethe Vestager as well as the incredible Emma Bonino. I'm not especially a fan of former Belgian Prime Minister, now ALDE group leader, Guy Verhofstadt, but a vote for his party in the EU election is a vote against the Spitzenkandidat system and also a vote for Vestager – yes, I'm aware that's contradictory, but both statements are still true.

In Belgium we have open lists so you get to choose the candidate as well as the party. Scanning down the Open VLD list, I came across Stéphanie Anseeuw, from the far west of Belgium; the Open VLD profile doesn't mention it, but she uses a wheelchair, and during her term as senator successfully brought in legislation to enable swifter official recognition of disability. She gets my vote for Europe, though I'm under no illusions that she stands much chance, in 8th place on a list where her party is generally expected to drop at least one of their three seats.

That still leaves the Belgian federal and Flemish regional elections, in which I must vote today, since I have been a Belgian citizen since 2008 and voting is compulsory here. Rather to my surprise, I have to report that we have received election literature at this house from all parties except Open VLD, for whom I actually voted in the municipal election in October and who as noted above are getting my support at European level today. I'm certainly not voting for the anti-immigrant Vlaams Belang (formerly Vlaams Blok), and nor am I voting for the right-wing NVA, who collapsed the previous government over their refusal to sign the UN Marrakesh Global Compact on Migration. Otherwise I'm really rather at sea on this, and fortunately every media outlet has its own online survey – stemtest in Dutch – to help you decide which party fits your views best.

One issue that I care rather passionately about is migration, where I am a leftie libertarian – I want movement between countries to be as easy as possible and I hate it when my adopted country is nasty to people who have already gone through hell. (It's really telling that one of the questions you are invited to answer is "should the children of unsuccessful applicants for asylum be locked up?") Het Nieuwsblad has broken its stemtest into three different policy areas, and on migration I am basically a Trotskyist, aligned with the far-left PvdA.

On economic issues, however, I'm more centrist, with the Christian Democrats just ahead of the Left, and the Right further behind. I suspect that we are rather unusual among higher income earners in that our family gets a lot more value back from the Belgian state than we pay in taxes.

I must say I was deeply unmoved by most of the economic questions. "Should inheritance tax be lowered?" – I have no idea what the level of inheritance tax is at present. "Should the port of Antwerp be expanded?" – I have no idea. "Should unemployment benefits be cut off after a fixed period?" – ah, that one is much easier; I don't think you help people to escape poverty by making them poorer.

On climate, the Christian Democrats are level-pegging with the Greens at the top of the chart. I suspect the Greens would have scored better if it weren't for my instincts on keeping nuclear power plants open for a bit longer. Open VLD and SP.A score particularly poorly here.

De Morgen has had the idea of doing a stemtest that actually checks the past voting records of the parties against your policy preferences. I found this particularly interesting precisely because it's not actually all that helpful; it unwittingly emphasises how close the parties are – of the 22 questions I cared enough about to answer, two parties (the centre-left SP.A and centre-right liberal Open VLD) both agreed with me on 14, and the Christian Democrats and Greens agreed with me on 13; which the far-left PvdA are with me on 8/13 questions relevant to the federal level which is the only one they are contesting. Even the rabid right are only a couple of questions further away from me, on 11 each.

The EUandI survey, developed internationally, has (it claims) a standard set of questions which apply across the EU. It thinks I am a leftie, balanced between Groen and SP.A:

VRT's youth stemtest, hosted by the MNM ("Music And More") radio station, thinks I should vote Green:

So does VRT's stemtest for non-young people, at both federal and Flemish levels:

Finally, Het Laatste Nieuws has a nice gimmick where it tells you which candidate you are supposedly most aligned with – of course, this is really a proxy for the party whose list they lead, but it humanises the process a bit. HLN thinks that I am closest to the Green politician Stijn Bex, who I cannot vote for because he is a candidate for the Brussels regional parliament. Interestingly, they seem to have omitted Open VLD – perhaps they too didn't get any election literature?

Anyway, taking all of the above into aggregate and running a quick and dirty Condorcet count on the various options, it was pretty obvious which way I would vote. This time.

PS – and then it turns out that an old friend is on the Green list of substitutes for the Flemish parlimanet, so I happily gave her a preference.

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The Ginger Man, by J. P. Donleavy

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

A wet salty wind. And tomorrow Marion comes back. And the two of us sit here wagging our American legs. Marion, stay away a little longer, please. Don’t want the pincers on me just yet. Greasy dishes or baby’s dirty bottom, I just want to watch them sailing. We need a nurse for baby to wheel her around some public park where I can’t hear the squeals. Or maybe the two of you will get killed in a train wreck and your father foot the bill for burial. Well-bred people never fight over the price of death. And it’s not cheap these days. Just look a bit glassy eyed for a month and take off for Paris. Some nice quiet hotel in Rue de Seine and float fresh fruit in a basin of cool water. Your long winter body lying naked on the slate and what would I be thinking if I touched your dead breast. Must get a half crown out of O’Keefe before he goes. I wonder what makes him so tight with money.

I bought this after Donleavy died, as I’m always interested in books set in Dublin from the external perspective. The time is roughly 1948, the place more or less Trinity College and the Dublin of student accommodation; Sebastian Dangerfield, Donleavy’s protagonist, runs between women and beds, drinking ruinously, stealing to survive as he has already spent his inheritance. He’s a thoroughly unpleasant character and I didn’t much enjoy reading about him. I appreciated the literary salutes to other writers, particularly Joyce of course, but after a while they got rather laboured and the humour of the book is painful and dated. Not really recommended, but if you want, you can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2017. Next on that list is Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

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Feersum Endjinn, by Iain M Banks

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

The other ground vehicles were all-drive holster-buggies, armoured scree-cars, one- or two-gun landromonds and the huge multi-turreted tanks known as bassinals. The struggling convoy accounted for a good sixth of the King’s military transport, and represented either a brilliant flanking manoeuvre to supply the beleaguered garrison of troops guarding the workings in the fifth-floor south-western solar, or a desperate and probably forlorn gamble to win a war that was not only unwinnable but anyway pointless; Sessine had still to decide which.

For such a celebrated writer, Banks won rather few awards – this and Excession both won the BSFA, two years apart, and that was it. I had read this ages ago soon after it came out, and to be honest didn't remember much about it. The notable character is Bascule, who narrates his chapters semi-phonetically:

     O yes, I sed, which woznt stricktly tru, in fact which woz pretti strikly untru, trufe btold, but I cude always do them while we woz travelin.
      Wots in that thare box yoor holdin? he asks.
      Itz a ant, I sez, waven thi box @ his face.

Bascule's is only one of four different plot strands following different key characters through the landscape of a post-singularity society where most people live in a vast structure called Serehfa, and also interact with a virtual space called the Crypt. What appear to be not just different stories but different worlds eventually fit together and add up to more than the sum of their parts. But I wasn't quite convinced by it all, and there's a reason that this is not generally listed in the top ten of Banks's works. You can get it here.

Feersum Endjinn won the BSFA Award for 1994. The other shortlisted novels were Engineman, by Eric Brown, which I have not read; and Necroville, by Ian McDonald, North Wind, by Gwyneth Jones and Permutation City, by Greg Egan, all of which I have read. I don't retain clear memories of any to be honest, but I think I enjoyed Permutation City more than the others. The Clarke Award was won by Pat Cadigan's Fools, and the Tiptree by Nancy Springer's Larque on the Wing, with Moving Mars winning the Nebula for Best Novel and Mirror Dance the Hugo.

The following year, the Tiptree Award was jointly won by Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand and The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Theodore Roszak, the Clarke Award by Paul J. McAuley's Fairyland, all of which I have written up here in recent years. That leaves the BSFA winner, Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships, which I haven't previously written up here, though I did read it soon after it came out.

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  • Fri, 11:12: RT @PeterKGeoghegan: Almost hilarious irony of Theresa May talking over and over about ‘compromise’ in her resignation speech having, in of…
  • Fri, 11:26: RT @TomMcTague: The great Matthew Parris: “We are in just as much of a mess as we were before Theresa May resigned as prime minister.” Indi…
  • Fri, 11:28: RT @JP_Biz: In last few minutes Irish ForMin Simon Coveney said Theresa May had made mistakes but did try to compromise & recognised the vu…
  • Fri, 11:28: RT @JP_Biz: He said the biggest mistake had been to lay down red lines very early on whuch could not be delivered on. He thinks she would…
  • Fri, 11:28: RT @JP_Biz: Mr Coveney says he does not see the EU offering a better or fundamentally different deal to a new Prime Minister.
  • Fri, 11:28: RT @JP_Biz: He adds that ‘in many ways’ within the EU patience has run out – though not in the Irish government. Nonetheless he thinks a fu…
  • Fri, 11:33: RT @davidallengreen: But. The UK is still set to leave the EU by automatic operation of law on 31 October. The “deal” cannot go through…
  • Fri, 11:46: We can only hope. https://t.co/T2bd7oZnyK
  • Fri, 11:50: RT @cwlcymro: @mikekwalker @bagpuss_mcd @CBR988 @BBCNews Lots of official turnout stats for individual councils – some verified their votes…

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The TARDIS Handbook, by Steve Tribe

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

I’m not always enthused by the various Who spinoff publications, BBC or otherwise, but this one is a real winner (and I should say that in general I’ve been more than satisfied with Steve Tribe’s work). Here we have the TARDIS examined from all angles, its non-fictional inspiration in the drafts of C.E. “Bunny” Webber, the designs of Peter Brachacki and his successors, and the various ways it has been used in the show, from both in-universe and external perspectives. It was published in 2010, just nicely in time for The Doctor’s Wife the following year. It’s fully but not obsessively detailed and gorgeously illustrated. I’m sorry I missed it on first publication (actually got it at a remaindered books fair in March). Here’s a nice video review by someone else. You can get it here.

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Animate Europe Plus, by David Shaw, Marta Okrasko, Juliana Penkova, Bruno Cordoba and Paul Rietzl

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Second frame of third entry ("Something is Missing", by Juliana Penkova):

Every two years since 2013, the Brussels office of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation has run a competition for EU-themed comics. This year's award ceremony was held at the end of last month, and as usual was a nice collection of stories by five artists, one German, one Argentine/German, one Bulgarian/German, one Polish and one from Northern Ireland, David Shaw (now resident in Dublin). I'm glad to say that David Shaw's story, a short narrative about a gay couple driving north across the Irish border and reflecting on the impact of the EU, won the award on the night.

I assume that the whole book will be made available soon (ISBN is 978-3-95937-012-7), or at least the Friedrich Naumann Foundation will probably give you a copy if you ask them nicely.

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