Book Review

The Lord of the Last Days: Visions of the Year 1000
by Homero Aridjis

This brief historical novel is narrated by Alfonso of Leon, a fictional(?) monk living in the northwestern Spanish city of Leon during the turn of the 11th century. Alfonso is a mystic who believes himself to be a messianic figure. He is also the twin brother of Abd Allah, the vicious lieutenant of al-Mansur, the Moorish ruler of southern Spain who is heading towards Leon with his army.
As a historical novel The Lord of the Last Days is not very impressive - it doesn't do much to convey a strong feeling of time and place, nor is it particularly concerned with historical events or people. However, the book is a wonderfully poetic meditation on mystical religious fervor, millenarian belief, and the meeting of the holy and the profane.

Brief bits of update

I didn't really intend to turn this into the book and concert review LJ, but I've just been really, really busy.
I've been going to a lot of concerts, which has taken up a lot of my time. I'm now behind on a bunch of things, so I've had to cut down on the concert attending, even though December is jam-packed with fabulous things.
I now have a rather long list of composition and other music projects to work on. This is a good thing, but it also means that I need to be a little more protective of my time in order to work on them. I'll post details about what they all are separately.
Work has been especially busy and demanding of my energy lately, because we are finishing up the semester and heading into exam week. I've been preparing the materials for the juries, which luckily includes ordering lunch for the jury days.
The November 22nd Quest game was fun. I was on staff and things ran pretty smoothly. Unfortunately, we had a rather low PC turnout. Hopefully, this translated into more fun for the players. Plus, we had a couple of new people, which is always good.
I'm putting up our Christmas tree this weekend. It's an artificial one, because it's just too hard to find a real one under 5 feet tall (we don't really have room for anything bigger).