Just Finished Reading: Traffic by John Ruskin (FP: 1862/1866) [56pp] 

This is going to be somewhat difficult to review because it made so little impact on me. Firstly, although I had heard of the author, I didn’t have very much idea of what this short booklet was going to be about. The VERY short blurb on the back gave little away merely saying that it was a defence of dignity and creativity in a world obsessed by money. 

The booklet itself was in two parts. Firstly, we had ‘Traffic’ itself which was a lecture given during the opening of an Exchange Hall in Bradford and later published in 1866. I’m guessing that his audience were either surprised or disappointed by his talk. They (rightly?) suspected that a highly respected art critic such as the author would talk mainly about the Exchange itself. Not so. He actually talked mostly about how money and the pursuit of money was ruining architecture, art and just about everything else it touched. I think the thing that jumped out at me most was the fact that these views were being put forward almost 160 years ago. Truely nothing is new under the sun! He also had nothing good to say about ‘Political Science’ - what we call today, Economics! Rightly he said that it fails to understand the real world because it fails to account for the human factor. 

The second piece was ‘The Roots of Honour’ (1862) extracted from the larger work Until This Last and Other Writings. Here the author critiques ‘political economy’ more closely looking into the ideas that supposedly explain how the economy ‘works’ that only hold together IF significant elements of humanity are removed from the supposed ‘self-seeking’ agents that make up the population. 

Although moderately interesting overall, I can’t say that I either enjoyed this or learnt much from it. As I noted earlier, the primary thing that really struck me was how very modern the economic critique felt although I suppose Economics at that time was both far more blatant and brutal than today. The other thing that really struck (and rather annoyed) me, was the overabundance of comma use in Victorian text. I think that's one thing that makes reading it rather more difficult that modern text. All those commas REALLY break up the flow of things! Reasonable in its historical context. 

Whatever happened to the 'War on Christmas'? Or did it go the same way as 'eating cats & dogs' or 'school litter boxes'? Up in a puff of rhetoric when it no longer served its purpose.........? 

Happy Birthday: Nicholas Wulstan Park CBE RDI (born 6 December 1958) is an English filmmaker and animator who created Wallace & Gromit, Creature Comforts, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep, and Early Man. Park has been nominated for an Academy Award seven times and won four with Creature Comforts (1989), The Wrong Trousers (1993), A Close Shave (1995) and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005).

He has also received seven BAFTA Awards, including the BAFTA for Best Short Animation for A Matter of Loaf and Death, which was believed to be the most-watched television programme in the United Kingdom in 2008. His 2000 film Chicken Run is the highest-grossing stop motion animated film.

In 1985 Park joined Aardman Animations, based in Bristol, and for his work in animation he was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Peter Blake to appear in a 2012 version of Blake's most famous artwork - the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover - to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life.

Park was appointed a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II in the 1997 Birthday Honours for "services to the animated film industry".

Or.... You could live in or move to a country (AKA any other country than the USA) that has a Healthcare system NOT designed to bankrupt you if you have a medical issue.... Just saying.... Plus... WHY would you *want* to work 12 hours a day?

Just Finished Reading: The Veiled Woman by Anais Nin [56pp] 

Erotica, modern classic or not, isn’t really my ‘thing’ but I had promised myself that I would read everything – in order – (including POETRY!) from both of my recent Penguin Classics boxsets regardless. Afterall, I did buy them specifically to expand my reading horizons! 

So, this booklet contained four short stories extracted from the authors collections Delta of Venus (1977) and Little Birds (1979). Although I remember them being quite controversial at the time I suspect that they’d seem quite tame these days. In my general reading I tend to skim-read any sex scenes as I regard them as, largely, pointless and often lazy. Likewise, if I’m watching a movie at home, I’ll FW through any sex scene which rarely progresses the story and is, all too often, the product of lazy writing and (to be honest) a BAD film. 

Anyway – to the reading itself! The first story, the titled ‘Veiled Woman’ revolved around a husband essentially ‘pimping’ for his supposedly ‘frigid’ wife whilst also charging for other men to watch the result through a false mirror. Then we had ‘Linda’ a tale of a free spirit who discovered the price of that freedom. Then ‘Mandra’ a tale of a woman looking for love in New York. Finally, we had ‘Marianne’ about a female artists relationship with her male model. 

Overall, the stories were certainly readable if not exactly works of art. They were definitely erotic at times and are not recommended for those of more sensitive tastes. Needless to say, that I have no intention of reading this author further. I have FAR too much else to read that’s (no doubt) a lot more fun!