o to be a blogger

1. First encounters with Tolkien.

2. Here's what I've been looking for: actual data comparing the efficacy of various face coverings against the virus.

3. Here's what I didn't know I'd been looking for: genuinely entertaining and informative podcasts about recent history topics. I've made it through the entire 5-part series about Princess Diana, and: wow. Most unscripted podcasts I try listening to are too full of random blither. These people are incisive and intelligent, mostly accurate, and don't spend too much time wandering off the subject.

4. I attended a local satellite version of the Women's March because I couldn't not do it, despite - as I wrote at the time - "my feeling that such events are fairly useless, serving little function other than to make the marchers feel good." Well, here's evidence that it did serve a function: it encouraged people to go out and do consequential things.

5. Article on Bambi, and the book by Felix Salten that it came from, sparked off by a new translation of that book (by Jack Zipes. Spoiler: the reviewer doesn't think much of Zipes's edition). What most struck me about the article was this:

The book rendered Salten famous; the movie, which altered and overshadowed its source material, rendered him virtually unknown. And it rendered the original "Bambi" obscure, too, even though it had previously been both widely acclaimed and passionately reviled.

Take a close look at that statement, and the assumptions it embodies. So now do you understand why "The book is still on the shelf" is a completely inadequate and naive response to complaints about the unfaithfulness of a movie adaptation? It doesn't matter where the book is, if the movie is what's in the head. It doesn't matter where the book is, if nobody takes it down from the shelf and reads it because they think they already know what's in it, because they've seen the movie.