Review of 'Danubia' by Simon Winder

I so loved this book, which felt like it had been written just for me. Lots of stuff about architecture, and music, and even regions and nationalities that I'd never heard of. It's by no means mainly about Jews, but there's lots of interesting stuff about them, including an important short passage that situates Zionism in the context of the competing nationalisms of the late C19th Habsburg empire...I knew Herzl was a Viennese Jew, but didn't realise that his family, like Freud's, were from Galicia. 

One thing he doesn't explain is why there are two regions called Galicia in Europe, which at one time were both Habsburg possessions. Turns out it's really just a coincidence. 

I wish I'd read this before I wrote The Girl in The Red Cape - if only because I would have stolen bits from the story of the  1882 Tiszaeszlár blood libel episode and put it in the book. But he's really good on the politics and the aesthetics of the Counter-Reformation too, and it would have been good to have known more about that.

I now want to read all his other books (already on order), and to listen to all the music he mentions, and to visit quite a few of the places in the book too. There were passages that I had to read out loud to Ruth because they were so beautifully written or so funny...how often do you say that about a work of popular history?

Review of Love Hard

A mainly trivial but quite enjoyable (and for once actually quirky) romcom about internet dating and catfishing...which in this film turns out to be OK really because it ends in true love between the catfisher and his victim.

Most memorable for me for the alternate 'less rape-y' version of 'Baby it's cold outside' that the two not-yet-lovers sing as a duet.

Watched on Netflix.

Review of Sunset Boulevard

Another one of those films you think you've seen, but you haven't. 

And really good...about Hollywood, and faded fame and glamour, and inequality, and gender relations, and lots more. Gloria Swanson is brilliant as the faded onet-time star of the silent screen who never made the transition to talkies and a different kind of cinematic acting. She's completely past it, old and over the hill, because she's...fifty.

Eric Von Stroheim is particularly great as her devoted butler and chauffeur, who once had a career as a director but abandoned it to look after her. This is particularly poignant because it's almost his own life story - he had a career as a director but was forced to abandon it because absolutely no-one would work with him.

Watched via informal distribution, and laptop, Chromecast and VLC - working happily again.