Warwick Stubbs > Recent Status Updates

Part 4: William Herchel's fame grows while Caroline comes closer to being fully independent; Part 5: a shorter chapter rushing through a successful exploration of Africa by Mungo Park to the disastrous second attempt resulting in Park's death; Part 6: details a youthful Humphrey Davy on the verge of discovering the use of Nitrous Oxide as an anesthetic, but mostly just "experimenting" on himself with "laughing gas".

Part 3 "Balloonists in Heaven" is a shorter chapter and doesn't focus on one individual specifically, but instead surveys with great humour (and some tragedy) the first attempts at flight using air-balloons and the subsequent race to cross the English Channel / La Manche between the English and the French. This chapter made me want to look up the references and go read some more about these crazy pioneers!

"The wicked wit of man always studies to apply the results of talents to enslaving, destroying, or cheating his fellow creatures. Could we reach the moon, we should think of reducing it to a province of some European kingdom."

- Horace Walpole, 1783

There are times when Cairns can't rein in his adjectives and verbs for a Mozart opera: "...the long quiet trumpet notes... the baleful entry of the horns sealing the oath of vengeance... the heaving phrase in the violins... the insolent horn arpeggio... the magical erotic effect of the strings... the sinister, gliding movement of [violas]... the pale enchanted tones..." etc. All this taking up 80% of one page.

Part 2 is an equalling absorbing account of William and Caroline Herschel’s early lives leading up to William discovering Uranus in 1781 using his own meticulously crafted seven-foot reflector telescope. Mostly sourced directly from Caroline's own journal entries, we see the brother/sister relationship up close. William was sympathetic to her needs, but he did also treat her as an assistant, rather than as an equal.

"So, besides the two main projects, to record all new double stars and all new nebulae, Herschel also embarked on a third and partly secret programme in 1779: to discover life on the moon."
- p.94

[On Don Giovanni] Is there any other opera that has this spellbinding effect, the almost palpable emanation that rises before you like a physical presence and takes you over body and soul when you hear a passage from it? E.T.A. Hoffmann called it 'the opera of all operas'. Rossini, when asked which of his own works he preferred, replied, 'Don Giovanni'
- p.145

Part 1 is an absorbing account of Joseph Banks' travels and time at Tahiti on the Endeavour that covers his education and inheritance of great wealth, to his later settled years. The 3 months in Tahiti is the main focus, though, and describes an 18th Century man more sympathetic to the Tahitians, and more willing to experience a new way of life, as well as mitigating several potentially dangerous interactions.

In Tibet one is not hunted from morning till night by the calls of civilisation. Here one has time to occupy oneself with religion and to call one's soul one's own. Here it is religion which takes up most room in the life of the individual, as it did in olden days in the West.

The first fiction book in a long time that I have been completely engrossed in!

There's this issue of my mind trying to constantly implant the film onto the text, and I end up wondering When did Buttercup say that? I don't remember 'the Sicilian' being like this..., as a consequence, the section with Inigo's backstory has turned out to be the most enjoyable as I was able to read it freely using fully my own imagination.

I swear I'm going to finish reading more books this year...

The author keeps a steady flow between Maria's personal life and her struggling vocal talents as one intersects with the other, and reminds us that this level of fame didn't just exist in the pop world - Sinatra to Elvis to the Beatles - but was a full blown weight on a diva's personality in the Classical world of Opera as well.

Very readable, but now that Callas is leaving her music career (as far as being a world-dominating soprano goes) behind and enters a new life of love and relationships, the interest factor drops somewhat and I find myself not caring as much. I'm worried the next hundred or so pages is going to be an over-saturation of relationship problems and opinions from from everyone on every side...