The WP map shows my hits have come from 27 countries around the world with China taking 3rd spot! I guess all those photos of the terracotta warriors did the trick lol.
City of Valleys: 4 sections posted so far, about 10,300 words 10,300 with 123,000 remaining to be edited then posted. Editing has been tweaking language for clarity as opposed to rewriting. As with Picture Perfect, creating a new cover image each week is great fun. All images are my photos of Toronto – from skylines to construction sites to laneways. The CN Tower may show up in some of them lol.
Most interesting TV I watched was BollyWed set in Toronto’s Little India, which is a ten minute walk from my house. Not quite a comedy but not a drama either. It follows the daily routine of one of the many Indian fashion stores on that strip. I pass the ‘set’ whenever I’m in the area – you can’t miss the brightly painted building – which was like that decades before the series was filmed. Part of the charm is that the dialogue is real, as opposed to every character delivering a punch-line or a one-liner.
Movies? Nothing exceptional. Limite (1931) – a silent Brazilian film that is the cure for insomnia. More interesting to say one has seen it that to actually have seen it. Troy (2004) a spectacle in which the battle sound editing was the star, at points the sound even pulled focus from Brad Pitt’s hair.
Finished reading: Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain by Ronald Hutton. An amazing book that runs to nearly 1000 pages which includes 250 pages of index & source citations. Surprisingly amusing as it explores the rivalry between wiccan/pagan sects & also their rivalry with archaeology.
The only ‘written’ records of druids are found in Roman texts written well-after the Romans colonized Britain – those texts were filtered through the need to portray ancient Brits as savages & their beliefs as superstitions. (sound familiar? just look at the way North American colonists portrayed the native population to justify the way they treated them).
An easy read, that is well-researched. Lots about Stonehenge as well. It was published several years ago. Recent discoveries about the connection between Stonehenge & Anatolia might rewrite some of it. Well worth the time.
Burning Shakespeare by A. J. Hartley is a fascinating, complex time-travel, fantasy novel commentary on the importance of Shakespeare. A plot too convoluted to encapsulate but easy to follow as one reads the novel. Great fun & highly recommended.
“¡Hola Papi!”, by John Paul Brammer, is a sweet, perceptive collection of essays by this Mexican-American (Amerxican?) about his growing up gay, stumbling through relationships & discovering a sense of identity deeper than the label gay Latino. I identified with much of his struggles around these issues. A must read.
sweet, eh? paypal.me/TOpoet
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