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hawkwing_lbBooks 2010: 68-69
68. Charles Stross, The Fuller Memorandum.
Freaking brilliant.
I love the Laundry books. Squamous horrors, government bureaucracy, and Bob Howard. This one wears a debt to Anthony Price proudly on its sleeve, and we have a slightly historical mystery, a collection of somewhat dubious Russians, and occasional interesting deviations from Howard's first-person narration.
Also, evil cultists. Fantastic.
69. T. Maccius Plautus, The Pot of Gold and Other Plays, Penguin Classics, London, 1965. Trans. E.F. Watling.
Plautus came from Umbria in Italy, and in the late third and early second centuries BC, adapted Greek comedies for a Roman audience. What we learn about Roman comedy from this: do not expect women to be anything other than shrewish, conniving, and grasping; expect rich old men to get richer and good young men to become wealthy and lucky in marriage, twins will always be mistaken for each other, and doctors ask lots of useless questions.
I'm not feeling very kindly towards Plautus, really, after five plays crammed full of more misogyny than appears in Aristophanes' entire opus. But the bit with the doctor, all ten lines of it, will be useful for thesisising.
68. Charles Stross, The Fuller Memorandum.
Freaking brilliant.
I love the Laundry books. Squamous horrors, government bureaucracy, and Bob Howard. This one wears a debt to Anthony Price proudly on its sleeve, and we have a slightly historical mystery, a collection of somewhat dubious Russians, and occasional interesting deviations from Howard's first-person narration.
Also, evil cultists. Fantastic.
69. T. Maccius Plautus, The Pot of Gold and Other Plays, Penguin Classics, London, 1965. Trans. E.F. Watling.
Plautus came from Umbria in Italy, and in the late third and early second centuries BC, adapted Greek comedies for a Roman audience. What we learn about Roman comedy from this: do not expect women to be anything other than shrewish, conniving, and grasping; expect rich old men to get richer and good young men to become wealthy and lucky in marriage, twins will always be mistaken for each other, and doctors ask lots of useless questions.
I'm not feeling very kindly towards Plautus, really, after five plays crammed full of more misogyny than appears in Aristophanes' entire opus. But the bit with the doctor, all ten lines of it, will be useful for thesisising.
