The King Must Die

I was recently lent a copy of The King Must Die by Mary Renault, which is brilliant. It's a Euhemerist retelling of the Theseus myth (the guy with the Minotaur and the Labyrinth) which incorporates real archaeological evidence from Crete and some educated guesses about ancient customs. Also a couple of glancing references to Adonis and the Boar, and Orpheus, if you know where to look for them. I'm guessing that both ReptonInfinity and Adrexia would like it quite a lot. Are either of you interested in borrowing it before I give it back? Or anyone else?

I got some assignments back today, including an essay with the note at the front saying that helpful comments were given with the essay. What my tutor had actually done was make some ticks, write one 'good point', have one minor quibble about something I'd said, and then lovingly circle every single colloquialism in the essay with a suggestion for improvement. 'significant' is better than 'big' because??? (I'm assuming it's because it has more syllables and so looks more impressive or something, certainly it didn't supply any finer shade to the meaning.) There was actually a reason why my language was a bit less formal than usual, and this isn't a complaint, because she gave me a better grade than I'd expected, but sheesh. I'd far rather she'd spent her time thinking up helpful advice rather than nitpicks when a simple "Your language should be more formal" would have done.

In other news, I had a surprise in my first lecture of the day when Anna from Auckland said Hi. She's been visiting another friend who is in the same class as me, and tagged along to the lecture. So then we smuggled her into the tutorial later that morning. (She seemed to be enjoying herself.)