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Week Notes No. 47: Mixed Diversions

By Justin G. on

This week: movie trailers.

  1. Books
    • The Notebook by Roland Allen.
    • Finished reading On the calculation of volume I by Solvej Balle. Very interesting read, perhaps a deep meditation on the repetitive sameness of midlife. There are myriad interpretations, but one that resonated with me is when you’ve set up your routines and get into a groove, you notice that a dynamic equilibrium has set in, a cyclical stability. Then you have to ask yourself: do you want to maintain the pattern? And if you’ve grown attached to it, can you master your fears and escape this hand-built little prison you’ve made? The book intensifies this situation to an inescapable extreme scenario: the same day repeats itself over and over in a time loop. Balle’s focus is on the protagonist’s response to the situation, which I found compelling. Tara, the narrator-prisoner, is meticulous in her examination of the ever-repeating day and her own reactions. I look forward to reading Volume II.
  2. Articles & Newsletters (the fun kind)
    • A classicist reivews The Return, a film about the second half of The Odyssey. I will put this film on my to watch list. Here is the trailer.
  3. YouTube
    • I saw the trailer for Mickey 17 right after The Return trailer. The contrast in their approach to violence was impossible to miss, and there is really quite a lot of violence in both. In one it is Odysseus, the hero-protagonist, dealing all the damage in a male power fantasy set in a mythic Greek past. And in the other Mickey, the victim-protagonist, receives all the violence as a result of filling in forms in a dystopian and bureaucratic science fiction future. Either way, it’s violence all the way.
  4. Television
    • Finished The X-Files S1. Recommended.
  5. Music

To Reply: Email me your favorite time books.

Posted: in Notes.

Other categories: week notes; mixed diversions.

Back references: none.

Tags that connect: [[Marsh]] Week Notes No. 36; [[Roland Allen]] Week Notes No. 48: Learning Currents, Week Notes No. 46: Mixed Diversions; [[Solvej Balle]] Week Notes No. 46: Mixed Diversions; [[The Notebook]] Week Notes No. 48: Learning Currents, Week Notes No. 46: Mixed Diversions; [[The X-Files]] Week Notes No. 45: Mixed Diversions, Week Notes No. 41: Media et al, Week Notes No. 40: Media et al.

Tags only on this post: Ludovico Einaudi, Nintendo, On the calculation of volume I, The Return.