Biking bonnet finale

It's been a quiet little weekend, for the most part, during which I finished the newest Orhan Pamuk, A Strangeness In My Mind. I saw the Guardian described it as "a love letter to Istanbul" which it may very well have been. Given that the plot, to some extent, revolves around three years of love letters intended for one sister but, unknowingly, addressed to and received by another, one might wonder if Istanbul was the intended recipient. I'll have to read that Guardian review to see if that's the angle they take. One doubts, rather; I assume that Istanbul truly is Mr Pamuk's beloved. He does a fabulous job of making me wish to visit--or at least wish I had visited at some less fraught time. I remember meeting some very charming Turks at the Frankfurt Book Fair some time back in the 1990s; I should have acted on their encouragement to go then.

 The weekend started out a little less than quietly as we had tickets for Seattle Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus which is just not a quiet little play. It's bloody and nasty, close to start to finish, and this performance was no exception. If anything, they played up the blood and violence. I admit I averted my eyes for a lot of the first half, which is particularly grim and horrific. The second half they played very much for laughs--a decision I could well understand though it makes the slaughterhouse final scene all the more shocking possibly. I found myself thinking of The Player's line in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at times, "Do you call that an ending?—with practically everyone on his feet?" I might also think of Queen Elizabeth asking for a comedy next time at the end of the Romeo and Juliet in Shakespeare In Love (coincidentally another Tom Stoppard). I guess that will be Mrs Warren's Profession.

In my ongoing pursuit of being the most absurdly stylishly dressed cyclist in town, I've ordered a couple of helmet/helmet covers from Bandbox LLC; now I have another reason to long for warmer weather.