Hannibal Rising and Pedalling

I got back on the bike for some extensive pedalling last week, starting at 15:45 and ending at 20:45 just before the gym closed. This was perhaps my tenth attempt at fat-burn / endurance work.

So how did I do after 5 hours of pedalling? I started off at 81.5kgs, and ended at 82.0. Great. Presumably I'd put on water, but it wasn't the outcome I was hoping for. I couldn't even finish the book. And what is the book?

Hannibal Rising, by Thomas Harris, the prequel to Red Dragon which explores Hannibal Lecter's roots as a war orphan, his family murdered by the Nazis and... well, some pretty horrific things happen. He goes to seek vengeance, all the while excelling in medical school. Through hunting down out-of-work SS soldiers, he develops a taste for killing, in more ways than one.

He also develops, in case you haven't guessed, a taste for human flesh, due to being stuck in occupied Europe and cut off from supplies thanks to advancing allied troops. The problem I'm having with the book is that I'm not sure who I care for- Hannibal is a psychopath, mind twisted by the horrors of war, we're to believe. (Isn't psychosis something that just happens in people, regardless of experience? I dunno.) We're rooting for him, like we are tempted to in Silence of the Lambs and practically forced to (unconvincingly) in Hannibal.

Like its predecessors, it's brilliantly researched and written. But, like when I read the third in the trilogy Hannibal, I wasn't sure who I was supposed to be rooting for the most. Hannibal is an anti-hero of the highest order, a cannibalistic psychopath hell-bent on revenge. I'm sure not rooting for his nazi victims, but I know that later in the storyline he won't just be killing evil people. Some will be innocent. So why should I care?

That said, it's engaging enough to keep the pages turning.

I'd watched the film adaptation a long time ago, but I remembered very little of it. I caught up with it after finishing the book.

As you can guess, Gaspard Ulleil is no Anthony Hopkins and hams it up no end. It's a reliable adaptation et al, but as a result has the same problems- why should I care for any of these characters?

Not really a worthwhile watch. More exercise-and-reading posts to come, probably.