Quentin's Weeknotes 1/23/22-1/29/22

weeknotes teaching books movies family

This Week:

I finished updating my syllabus for MUST204: Collections management. All ready for the Spring semester.
I finished designing the title panel for an upcoming exhibit.
I finished reading “Fledgling”, Octavia Butler’s take on vampire fiction, and her final novel before her untimely death in 2006. It was very good, typically richly written and engaging with many of the same questions of race and the emotional dynamics of power that Butler often wrestled with. It wasn’t my favorite of her novels (if pressed, I’d probably say “Lilith’s Brood”), but it’s still a masterful piece of fantastic fiction.
I watched “Black Death” a gory and violent nightmare of a film set during the 14th century Bubonic Plague, and following a group of religious Knights who are hunting a community mysteriously untouched by the illness. The film was gorgeously and eerily shot, and captures the mud and mire of Medieval Europe–it reminded a bit of Valhalla Rising, with its almost operatic depictions of violence and blood in a lonely landscape. The film tries to make some profound points about ideology and faith, but it’s VERY ham-handed, and would’ve been better served without the moralizing speeches.
As a bewildering cap on what was otherwise a fairly straightforward week, my daughter is home quarantining after a positive test at her daycare. So that’s the end of that!