This is the archive of the original tigtogblog

tigtog now posts at the new and improved Hoyden About Town. She also blogs at Larvatus Prodeo and Finally A Feminism 101 Blog. If the new Hoydenspace is down you should find updates below.

Posts begin below the Feed Modules from the blogs named above.

Hoyden About Town

Latest Posts from Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog

2006-05-02

Too busy reading

to post much.

The Road to Surfdom has a brand new look and lots of good gen on the government's mishandling of the Pvt. Kovco fatality, the slow response of Aussie RWDB bloggers to the call of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists aka Chickenhawks, and the nation's reaction to the trapped miners in Tasmania.

More at Larvatus Prodeo on the miners.

And I'm reading the book that gave rise to possibly my favourite TV miniseries, I CLAVDIVS. It's a chilling read in the current political times, as Caesar after Caesar abrogates more of the traditional Roman freedoms to the Imperial family alone. I've been surprised to see quite how many liberties the BBC adaptation took with the source material: although most changes were to conflate several characters into one for the sake of simplicity, they do appear to have gone back to Suetonius and inserted a few of the more sensationalist incidents that Graves actually left out of his story. Still, considering that Graves was embroidering Suetonius and Tacitus, and that Suetonius in particular is probably as trustworthy a source as your average British "royal columnist", it matters little.

Just yet another warning sign about the novelisation of history, and that dramatised history of a sensationalist sensibility is no substitute for actually learning the real thing. Anyone planning to go and see The Da Vinci Code, (definitely not me) should keep that in mind.

4 comments:

Mentis Fugit said...

If you enjoy I, Claudius and Claudius The God to the bitter end, find Graves' Count Belisarius, set in sixth century Byzantium. A fascinating and hugely educational packaging of the politics, history, and religion of the period.

tigtog said...

ooh, ta. Will definitely keep an eye out for it.

tigtog said...

As I'm more a Shelby Spong gal meself, Pell's discontent could hardly recommend a book to me more. If only Dan Brown had written a better novel I'd go and see the Da Vinci Code film merely for the imagined background sound of Pell's gnashing teeth.

tigtog said...

And aren't we hitting the 'puter late on a Friday night? Are you too a slave to Aunty's crime night, Mark?