Books and Stuff

It's nearly midnight. I have tried to sleep but besides a few minutes here and there it's not working for me. Today I received the final acceptance to the MA program at the University of Leicester. So now that I have passed all my bridging courses I am officially an MA student in Archaeology and Heritage Management. The "Landscape Archaeology" course starts in a two weeks and goes on for 15 weeks. It looks challenging and it is definitely something about which I have no clue.

I have been reading Jared Diamond's "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed". I personally prefer it to his Pulitzer Prize winning "Guns, Germs, and Steel". I find his analysis of failing/failed cultures extremely interesting and I particularly like the way he works hard to dispel the whole "noble savage" myth. I agree that people have always sucked and will always ignore the warning signs of the imminent collapse of their way of life. His writing makes a pleasant change from those heavy, terse archaeology text books I have been reading of late.

I have been very careful to not be seduced by just any interesting looking book. I only went to visit the bookshop near the end of my stay in the US. I bought nothing and stuck to reading the textbooks I found on Amazon marketplace. Makes for a very boring Peter, I'm afraid. Even the audiobooks I have been listening to are history or culture related.

I think I'll go eat one of those delicious oranges waiting in the box by the door. There are some advantages to being home. The fruit and veggies are unbelievable, and delivered to our door. We dined on baked cauliflower, onion, carrots and peppers for supper. Below is the weekend's fruit and veggies, in the boxes on the floor by the front door where they can often be found (it's their natural habitat).