I think our little black brid may be confused. I noticed it (I presume it to be the same one) back in its nest before Christmas; I thought maybe it needed somewhere cosy to roost for a while. No… there are more babies in there!! I really, really hope more than one survives this time. We saw Mama Brid feeding them yesterday; it was very exciting. I really wish, though, that I was about half a foot taller, and I would have a much better view inside the nest.

We also had more angel fry when we got home a few days ago – surprise, surprise. I thought that I would give J’s trick a go, and scoop some up in the net. Unlike J, I managed to actually get some in there, so I was pretty proud of myself. Of course, those I didn’t manage to catch proceeded into a diaspora, which didn’t last long…. And the problem is that those caught in the net didn’t last long either, because it turns out they can swim through the holes in it…

I think I may cry. On a little expedition to the shops, buy some lunchy type things…

… there were bags of Easter eggs for sale.

It is JANUARY!!

I just finished In Defence of History, by Richard Evans. I read it with a pencil in hand, underlining things like I haven’t since I was an undergrad (ha, makes me sound so educated and old…). It was a fantastic book. I won’t attempt a dissertation of it here, except to say that it was largely a refutation of post-modernism in history. That is, Evans said that many of the good challenges post-modernism throws up for the historian are things that many have been aware of for years anyway – like the fact (contentious word!) that objectivity is an issue, and that reading the sources is fraught – and that other things post-modernism says about history, like that it is dying, are just daft. I loved the way he ripped into some of post-modernism’s ideas and arguments, revealing their inherent contradictions.

Essentially, this book defends the practice of history in its many and varied forms – social, political, micro – and warns all of us that we must be ever vigilant about how to use sources appropriately. Everyone who claims to be a historian these days must deal with the theory side, and I think that everyone should read this, if only to figure out where they stand on the issues he presents.

And I have the most recent edition, which includes a long Afterword with a vigorous rebuttal of lots of the criticism he received of the book. That was probably the most entertaining part of the whole book.

I am ashamed to admit that I just watched the last 10 minutes of the last episode of Tommy Lee Goes to College. It was actually quite interesting, just to see how he reacted to the whole pressure of exams – and to see how people around him acted, too. It would have been quite an interesting series to watch simply from learning about US collegiate practice, in some ways, I think. The Horticulture exam was great – 10 examples of plants, write down the family/genus/ etc! Love that hands-on thing. Anyway, in the end I think it was probably mostly the effort of an old rocker to recapture some of his former fame – and some knowledge along the way.

I did end up finishing this yesterday, thanks to a long trip to Melbourne. It was excellent. A bit odd, in that there were lots of interesting things – ideas – that weren’t fully explained, ideas that were integral to the world. I think this is a hard thing for lots of authors to find the balance of: you don’t want it to sound like a children’s story, where everything is laid out for you, but still you need to make it transparent for the reader. I want to know more about the Morah! I’m hoping that the sequel, Slaves to the Master, explains this more fully.

This was a good book. I liked it. I may have to revise my opinion about it being less sophisticated than Nix, but I am not entirely sure yet. I think the fact that there are still some things that I don’t fully understand lowers it a bit.

The ma gave me a book on how to solve cryptic crosswords, something we every now and then have a go at. It’s got about 20 or so pages on the different sorts of clues you come across, and the rest is actual crosswords. I have read through the stuff about the the clues, and had a go at a couple… it’s still pretty hard. I don’t think I’ve really got the brain for it yet.

This is the third book I started yesterday, by William Nicholson. I’m not too far into it, and almost certainly won’t finish it today given Family Stuff, but it too is really good. Probably between Owl Light and Garth Nix in terms of age, I guess – certainly not as sophisticated as Nix, at least so far. It promises to be an interesting story about the disintegration of a civilisation, basically, presumably with some sort of redemption for the population given it’s aimed at a younger audience.

The Dog has been eating grasshoppers. Last year she ate them, too, but only the brown ones; she tried a green one and spat it out. This year, though, she is less picky: she is eating both brown and green. It’s hilarious to watch her jumping around the verandah, like a grasshopper herself, trying to catch them. Mad.

I read this book, by Maggie Pearson, yesterday – after Lirael. I don’t quite know what owl light has to do with the story, except that lots of it has to do with being out at night.

This is definitely aimed at a younger audience than Garth Nix was – I’d say 12 year olds or so. I did enjoy it, nonetheless: there are fascinating characters – the Stittle clan is hilarious, the local reprobates who turn out to be not so bad – and Miss Letty is just the sort of person I always wanted to be, a spinster who has the whole town under her sway. The main family is appealing in its normality. It barely rates as fantasy, I think, given it is set in the real world… the only fantastic element is a werewolf. He is not a huge part, although significant; I really liked the way he was incorporated, actually, because in some ways it made it seem quite normal, although fantastic at the same time.

Definitely recommended; in fact, I think I will probably read the next in the series.