Weeknotes: week 8, 2023
✱ Due to Carnival celebration in Brazil, this last week was a much shorter work week: though the holiday itself was on Tuesday, several companies in my country, including the one I work for, usually concede an extra day off on Ash Wednesday. So, all in all, counting from last Sarturday on, I had a long holiday consisting of 5 whole days. I’d say it’s the longest period off we have in our country’s calendar. Thus, I only worked on Thursday and Friday. I don’t celebrate Carnival the same way many of my fellow countrymen do — actually, I don’t like celebrating it at all, like I said in this blog post I wrote last Tuesday, in Portuguese. So I usually enjoy my time off catching up with my read-it-later backlog, binge-watching series and reading books. And that’s what I did.
✱ In January I started reading Solomon Kane: a saga completa. This is a book with the complete Solomon Kane adventures, as written by Robert E. Howard. Howard also created Conan, the Barbarian, a much more famous character, but my interest in Solomon was instantaneous when I learned he was a puritan who fought against the evil and the supernatural. Howard’s character is the first representative of the sword and sorcery literary genre, one that I love so much. It was only natural that I read the book — and it read very fluently, so it was delightful. Besides, as soon as February started, another edition of Solomon Kane’s complete works was published here in Brazil. An illustrated edition that I soon acquired and started reading in parallel. Most of the two books’ contents was the same — after all, the tales and stories were most the same —, but before you call me nuts for reading two equal books at the same time, I must say there are differences. The newer book, published this month and called Solomon Kane: edição completa e definitiva is an illustrated edition — with very well made artwork, I should say. It also contains a series of fragments of stories I didn’t know about which were certainly useful for my personal purpose of diving as much as I could into the character’s universe. The older book had a lot of letters Robert E. Howard exchanged with other authors and mentions to an officially released movie — which doesn’t seem to live up to Solomon Kane’s character — and a fan made, 3 minute short. I mean to read at least 20 books this year. These two were finished during this holiday and, along with Galaga, a collection of curiosities written by Michael Kimball about the classic 80’s arcade, now I completed 15% of my goal.
✱ The Last of Us remains strong and interesting. My son found the latest episode a little lacking in action, but I guess it’s all part of the story. And man, what a cliffhanger… we’re looking forwards tomorrow night to see where things will be going. More episodes of Spy X Family watched as well. Many of them.