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Richard III
The Yates, A and I went to see this in Downing College Gardens last week. I'll have photo's of the grounds to upload when I pay my Flikr subscription.. A superb performance as always, with the usually irremediably evil Richard played with sardonic humour and evil leers to the audience beautifully by (goodness, I don't remember his name, and none of the actors appear on the website - how odd!). Still irremediably evil, of course, but... Having seen this many, many years ago at the Arts Theatre, I was expecting a worthy play, not an enjoyable one but I was forgetting that;
A) Shakespeare's quite good actually..
B) The Shakespeare festival always manage to delight

So I really enjoyed it. Not sure I'd go and see it twice in one year, as we did (slightly by mistake) with Macbeth (the scottish play? ;-) last year..
oh, and for Madhatter and anyone else interested, I looked up the play when we got home, and the famous line (no, the other one, about the nail), is just a line, and the entire verse about the kingdom being lost wasn't in the play. Damned where I heard it though...
Anyway, if you haven't been to any, please go and support them. We're turning up without booking tickets these days, with no problem - this performance had more audience than actors, but not by even 100%, which given the performance standard, is a crying shame.

Posted at: 09:41:51 26 Jul 2008 [/live] permanent link

The Name of The Wind
by Patrick Rotherfus
Hmm. This is the third time I've tried to write this before the Mac has wiped it in creative ways - seems like it doesn't want this review written. Well, the truth must be told!
The Truth is that this is one of the best fantasy books I've read in a long while. Patrick has a plot, characters, and a believable world. The magic system is constructed along sympathetic magic and scientific lines, and the only niggle I'd have is that the hero, Kvothe, is just TOO damn good at everything, and that for a kid, he's pretty bloody precocious and worldly wise. The author works this into the plot, and does a good job, but it does stretch credibility at times. The way he most does this is by reminding the reader that he, Kvothe, knows nothing about women, but let me tell you, I was never that smooth at 15. Hormonal, yes, smooth, not so much.
Another slight niggle is that with the scientific understanding they seem to have, along with the interworking of magic, would imply to me that they'd have a greater technological basis than they do. There may be reasons for this revealed later, and its not enough of a niggle to interrupt the verisimilitude.
Patrick has some genuine laugh out loud conversations in the book, and generally writes dialogue well. Its a big book, and at times I felt it could have been trimmed, but never enough that I felt it suffered overmuch from it.
I'll definitely be buying the next volume when it comes out - had it been possible, I'd have bought it right now, but it looks like I have to wait a few months.
If memory serves, I found this in Waterstones, on one of those pleasurable browsing sessions that turn up a load of books you'd like to read - increasingly rare in the mainstream bookshops, I'm finding.

Posted at: 09:39:02 26 Jul 2008 [/books] permanent link

Digital Music from Play.com
I bought Bellowhead's first album from Play.com following the their toe tapping performance on the folk Proms last Sunday (I'm not jealous that several of them can play the Violin while jumping up and down in time, no not at all..), and it was a thoroughly pleasant experience. Cheaper than iTunes, and in 320kps mp3, my only complaint would be that album art wasn't included, not was a digital booklet of the album slip cover, and that the track number wasn't encoded into each file, so I had to add it manually. iTunes added the cover art fine, as will Banshee on my Linux box, I expect, so no worries there. I'll be using them more!

Posted at: 09:10:16 26 Jul 2008 [/music] permanent link