School and Cemeteries

Secound week finished! I think I'm coming to terms with the ammount of work. I'm loving all my classes. I accidently did my Chinese homework a week early, but having done the homework made the class a lot easier! I also realised this week that my professor wrote the first book on Chinese I ever used. Teach Yourself Begining Chinese Script actually Bill bought it for me for Valentine's day along with "the four treasures" to encourage me to start learning Chinese. I say it worked rather well.

I've been tossing around possible essay topics in my head all week. It's hard to narrow down. I only get one for my religion class, (though I am doing a dissertation in it as well) and 2 for my research methods class. The religion one I want to look at religion in the Tang, either how Empress Wu used in to legitimise her reign, or how it affected the lives of women. Both very interesting. For my reasearch methods class we have to do something on source material so I'm thinking of either doing Dun Huang manuscripts, or looking at supernatural literature. Also all very cool.

To celebrate the end of the week Bill and I headed out to Leyton and visted their gorgeous catholic cemetary. More catholics in Leyton than I realised, and some in a beautiful state of disrepair. beluosus has more pics!







( More decay behind the cut )

Jorkens Volume 3

The Collected Jorkens Volume 3 By Lord Dunsany might be the nicest bound new book I've ever owned. Normally I prefer to read his work in nice old hardbacks (actually that's true about everyone) but the Night Shade Books feel old even though they're not.

The books in Volume 3 are Jorkens Borrows Another Whisky and The Last Book of Jorkens the latter not being published before Dunsany's death but actually my favorite of the two. The stories are the usual mix of insanity, tall tales, horror and humor done with varying levels of success but totally enjoyable. The most noteable thing about this collection is that the tales are all post world war two. Therefore there is a longing to return to a more natural primitive age, there are a lot of scientific discoveries looking into the future, and there are aliens from other worlds who show up in seances to tell how their worlds were destroyed. There are a couple of deals with the devil involving cricket, champagne swilling women, witches curses, spy tales, and even a few about the evils of cutting off the tales of dogs "docking", something that was legal till just a few years ago. But as always Dunsany is a delight to read.