Today I’m working on binding classified serials. Shelves and Shelves of Acta Horticulturae (SB 13 .A183, yes I can rattle that off from memory!), shelves and shelves of orange! Oh well, at least they’re not SPIEs like they had when I worked in Engineering as a student! Thank heavens for small mercies that those things went online. After I left, but students in the future won’t have to deal with those godawful floppy yellow books that wouldn’t stand up straight if you PAID them!
Fond memories. Fond memories! Or something.
I’ve been reading a ton lately. I just finished Fire From Heaven by Mary Renault, it was a novel of Alexander the Great, historical fiction but based on the actual historical documents from the time. I think it was fantastic. It wasn’t overly sensational, I found myself comparing it to that recent movie Alexander (the book is better, but isn’t it almost always the case?). But seriously, Collin Farrell is SO wrong as Alexander in my book (after reading this book). He’s just not pretty or charismatic enough. I like the movie anyway, and Hephaistion was perfection in the movie. I definitely have him cast as the image of Hephastion when I’m reading.
Right now I’m working on reading the sequel to Fire from Heaven. It’s called The Persian Boy and it chronicles the last seven years of Alexander’s life from the point of view of Bagoas, his Persian lover. You get to see Bagoas all the way from being the son of a Persian warload, to being sold as a pleasure slave and eventually coming into the harem of Darius (King of Persia for those keeping score at home). He is given as a gift to Alexander and falls completely in love with him. I’m dreading the ending more than just a little because we know that it cannot end well. Hephaistion has to die and so does Alexander. And everybody else is gonna be sad sad sad.
But I just can’t put it down. I think I started reading it… three days ago? And I’m on page 232. That’s over halfway done! And these books are dense, they’re superbly crafted but they are SO full that you can’t read as fast as I might normally.
Still working on the work newsletter weblog, coming into some interesting challenges. I wish WordPress had cut tags like Livejournal does! I’m soldiering on and loving every minute of it!
