Yet another "still alive" post

[inulro]

I do occasionally have thoughts. Some of them are even insightful. However, they inevitably occur when I'm nowhere near a computer. These are a few from recent days; apologies for bad sentence structure & lack of coherence.

Anyway, I've been having a bit of a Byzantine-themed month, reading-wise. Not only have I been reading Guy Gavriel Kay's Sarantine Mosaic, set in a world very like the early Byzantine empire (or late Roman, as you prefer), I have also been reading the factual volume in the form of John Julius Norwich's Byzantium: The Early Centuries. Nobody who knows how scatterbrained I can be will be surprised to hear that I occasionally got them confused.

I'm fully aware that Norwich is definitely the beginner's guide, but I really am a complete amateur when it comes to all things Byzantine. However, I recently acquired a copy of Dimitry Obolensky's The Byzantine Commonwealth and I suspect it would make little sense without some basic background. However, the Norwich is successful in that it keeps my interest, his prose is good, and not much goes over my head, which has to be good enough for now. That little bit of academic left alive in me is probably having a fit as I type.

In other news (I found something neither Pope- nor election- nor royal-wedding-related), there was another sob-story about rich people who have over-extended their debts in the Guardian today. Neither news, nor something I'm going to feel any sympathy for, but there's a sentence near the end that pisses me off:

Leaflets offering loans for Caribbean holidays or home improvements on a Palladian scale are taking advantage of a now-ingrained consumer psychology to "have it now, pay tomorrow", Mr Baxter said. "The sheer intensity of the marketing campaigns from banks and retail companies causes even financially savvy consumers to start questioning any preconceived notions of borrowing and saving."

Are otherwise well-educated and sensible people really that stupid? Or that greedy? Does that even count as an excuse? Are people that unable to do the basic maths of repayments? The list goes on.

Before anyone gets started: This has nothing to do with the kind of debt & misery that stems from actual poverty. That does indeed suck. I've been there.

In still other news, I'm still post viral and barely coping. I can feel myself getting fatter as I sit here but am completely unable to do any exercise. I was all excited that I might turn the corner as the weather got better, but the weather is now continuing to suck.

Comments

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Have you read Harry Turtledove's A Soldier Of Byzantium? It's obviously short stories stitched together into a novel, but it's still pretty good, and you're welcome to borrow mine if you'd like.

[scathe.livejournal.com]

I've read JJN's "Byzantium TEC", and , yes, it's good and highly readable.

Never tried Obolensky though.

I'm currently going through a 15th/early 16th C phase - just read a biography of Louis XI by Paul kendall, which was excellent (if perhaps a tad biased), lots of stuff about late medieval/early renaissance diplomacy etc, and got me fired up about Burgundy - trying to track down Vaughan's books on the subject.

[the_axel]

Sounds like Britain's full of amateurs who can't manage credit.

Figures published last week revealed that there are more credit cards than people in the UK - a total of 67m - and Britain's debt mountain totals £1 trillion, including about £55bn on credit cards.

Canadians carry 50.4 million, or more than two cards per Canadian adults with only $50 billion outstanding


Although I know my employers are working on ways to increase that...

[jhaelan.livejournal.com]

Over-extending one's credit is a bad thing, being comfortable with a high level of gearing is not necessarily... Hmm. Shall post on this I suspect

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

Like you, I have no sympathy with the people in the Guardian. If you can't afford it, don't buy it. Or possibly sell one of your *four* London properties. (Why four? There's a shortage of housing in the south-east and she's got two flats and two houses, ffs!)

[inulro.livejournal.com]

If at any point the to-read pile ceases to take over the spare room, I'll take you up on that!