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recent reading
2020-02-07 19:32I re-read The Blue Sword and The Knot in the Grain by McKinley. Sword was once the most forgettable book I'd ever read; not that I hated it, but I literally forgot having read it, twice. It's very odd when your sense of deja vu itself triggers a sense of deja vu. I remember it more now. It's an engaging book, though I just now had the thought that the most powerful people in the Not!India Damar are white foreigners. The master mages Luthe, Agsded, Aerin's mother, Aerin herself... (well, she's half-Damarian but the paleskin redhead genes were strong.)
Knot was still fun, though I wouldn't say most of the stories are about anything, they're just like modern fairy tales. Though the titular story does have a nice portrayal of an uprooted teen finding a new community.
Invisible Agents by Nadine Akkerman, on female spies in 1640s England. Less about tradecraft, more about trying to even find evidence of them in the literature, and on attitudes toward such spies. Royalists were friendlier to their lady spies than Parliamentarians were to their paid commoners, but the Royalists also destroyed themselves in factional infighting. No strong recommendation.
An Empire of Air and Water, Siobhan Carroll, a friend from grad school. On portrayals of 'atopias', uncolonizable places, like poles, ocean, atmosphere, and underground, in British literature, followed by how those were used as metaphors for the complexity of London. Somewhat interesting. If you're not a fellow academic I recommend skipping or at least skimming the preface, which is largely "This is how my work is situated in the context of other people's work".
Currently reading Mary Beard's SPQR, already a strong recommendation. 2015 book on Roman history, so based on more data than anything in my childhood. I'll give one just bit: an interesting theme of foreigness or low origins in Rome's myths. Versions of the Romulus myth have him killing his brother, and recruiting people by offering asylum to slaves, criminals, and refugees; the Aeneas myth obviously has the proto-Romans as very foreign, and one later Roman contorted himself to somehow read 'aborigine' as "wanderers" rather than the obvious "ab origine", original inhabitants. Contrast to Greek polis myths that often had the people springing from the soil, and compare to Rome's unusual generosity in incorporating people (Beard says the freed slaves of Roman citizens themselves became citizens, which is new to me) vs. Greek tightfistedness.
Knot was still fun, though I wouldn't say most of the stories are about anything, they're just like modern fairy tales. Though the titular story does have a nice portrayal of an uprooted teen finding a new community.
Invisible Agents by Nadine Akkerman, on female spies in 1640s England. Less about tradecraft, more about trying to even find evidence of them in the literature, and on attitudes toward such spies. Royalists were friendlier to their lady spies than Parliamentarians were to their paid commoners, but the Royalists also destroyed themselves in factional infighting. No strong recommendation.
An Empire of Air and Water, Siobhan Carroll, a friend from grad school. On portrayals of 'atopias', uncolonizable places, like poles, ocean, atmosphere, and underground, in British literature, followed by how those were used as metaphors for the complexity of London. Somewhat interesting. If you're not a fellow academic I recommend skipping or at least skimming the preface, which is largely "This is how my work is situated in the context of other people's work".
Currently reading Mary Beard's SPQR, already a strong recommendation. 2015 book on Roman history, so based on more data than anything in my childhood. I'll give one just bit: an interesting theme of foreigness or low origins in Rome's myths. Versions of the Romulus myth have him killing his brother, and recruiting people by offering asylum to slaves, criminals, and refugees; the Aeneas myth obviously has the proto-Romans as very foreign, and one later Roman contorted himself to somehow read 'aborigine' as "wanderers" rather than the obvious "ab origine", original inhabitants. Contrast to Greek polis myths that often had the people springing from the soil, and compare to Rome's unusual generosity in incorporating people (Beard says the freed slaves of Roman citizens themselves became citizens, which is new to me) vs. Greek tightfistedness.