By Slanted Light

I've had a lovely morning doing nothing other than reading, all through the rain on the window, the rushing past of dramatic clouds, and into what is now the sunshine. Although actually I've also been working, because that's what made me pick up this book, and since this is an unpaid part of my job, at least it's an enjoyable part!
It feels odd including this here too, because this is not only non-fiction, but also a Time Life book, and so it consists largely of pictures - but I did read it from cover to cover, and there was plenty of blurb and history to go along with the pictures, and it's nicely done so that it feels like I've spent the morning transported back in time...

And of course the 1920s are one of those interesting ages (well, I think so anyway), particularly in the US where everything seemed for so many to be going so well, except that on any slightly deeper level it really wasn't... So I read about youth rebellion, the boom in radio sales and tabloid newspapers and booze - and the prohibition that fuelled the latter boom - and about Harlem and Scopes and the Piggly Wiggly (which I'd only ever heard of in the film Sweet Home Alabama, but which turns out to have been the first ever supermarket-style shop (or grocetaria, as they were first called) and pole sitting and bootleggers and the talkies, and many other things and people...

I think we're still in that age, really - has anything happened since, that's surpassed the power of flight, the cinema, sports and other celebrities, advertising, the newspapers, supermarkets, and our Anglo-American (American-Anglo?) quest for more entertainment, at almost any cost? Okay, we now have television and the internet and mobile phones and e-readers - but they're really just more of the same, allowing more of the same, more conveniently. Hmmn... maybe fast foreign travel's been added - that's changed our lifestyles. It started out as entertainment, but perhaps it's widened our eyes to humanity - whether or not we individually choose to do anything further with it. But even that really started in the 1920s... What else...?

It's ages since I've started reading a book and then been 100% annoyed at the world that it won't let me just sit there and finish it all in one go, but The White Rajah by Tom Williams has totally been that book! As it was, it was there waiting for me in it's Amazon-cardboarded glory when I got home last night, and because Sir James Brooke is my new boyfriend (thank you foxcat74 for that rather brilliant description), and I'd already started White Rajah by Nigel Barley which is a biography of Brooke, but this was the novel of the biography of the... (well, of course it's not cos it's a novel, but it kind of is...) I had to sit down with it straight away.

And there is just something about it!

Granted, I was predisposed to be interested cos it's about Brooke, who I met at the National Portrait Gallery:

and fell in love with a bit because he's just got something, and fought pirates, and adventured around the world at the same time as all the boys I'd been researching for my defunct phd, and has curly brown hair and look at the way he's leaning on that rock! Also it turns out that he was almost certainly gay, and the novel is told from the pov of the bloke who fell in love with him... *g*

And that's the other thing about this book - it's not just a story about Brooke's adventures in Borneo, or about Williamson for that matter, it is a romance because they're shown to be totally, devotedly in love, but at the same time it's not a pile of soppy tat with one of them actually "the woman" (*headdesk* that that's even supposedly "definable"). It's their story, and it's the story of how Brooke came to be the "White Rajah" of the country of Sarawak, and it's a bit fab. It's about two people and something extraordinary that they did, and how they felt about it and dealt with it.

From the back cover:
Based on a true story, Brooke's battle is a tale of adventure set against the background of a jungle world of extraordinary beauty and terrible savagery. Told through the eyes of the man who loves him and shares his dream, this is a tale of love and loss from a 19th century world that still speaks to us today.

And it can be found here on Amazon, or if you're in the States directly from JMS Books - and ooh, look there's an extract here too... and just... go out and buy it!

Also, foxcat74? Next time I'm down, there's a churchyard on Dartmoor that we need to find... *g*

...then even I'm pretty seriously old...

From ancient times people suspected that human activity could change the climate. For example, in the 19th century many Americans believed that cutting down forests brought more rainfall to a region.

Ah, the ancient times of the 1800s... I wouldn't mind, but he's a scientist, and was Director of a reasonably big institute until he retired, for all it looks like he's written more popular work than peer-reviewed. God knows how he'd describe Clovis culture, or... so how does he view "ancient Greece"?!

Ancient times... *headdesk*

ETA - this! This is what it reminds me of!

*hugs Eddie*

So I was totally going to write a silly post today, do some rambling, do some Pros-ing, but... I just watched Blackadder Goes Forth again - the whole series, because it was on sale for silly price and I felt like being cheered up earlier today, but...

Isn't it just one of the saddest shows about WWI ever? I mean, obviously not for 5/6 of the eps, but that last...thirty seconds - doesn't it just get you every time? Even when you've seen it a billion times, showed it to rooms full of teenagers, and know it backwards?

Oh, and I was looking for clips, and just read (which I think I did know...) that it was voted one of the greatest British television moments ever. Which is about right...

Here's a youtube of the start of the ep for anyone who's not seen it (they're quite old now - 1989!) - I expect it links to the rest... I mean, really you should watch all six eps to meet the characters, but...