Welcome to my side of a book chat…
The Friday Fragments feature lists of what I’ve read over the past week. They are not meant to be a recommendation list. If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive list, you can look on my website.
This is not a book review column. It’s just a list with, maybe, a few opinions tossed in.
Father Reads to Son
What are you reading?
Recently Completed:
My Real Children by Jo Walton. Beautifully written, but I had the plot figured out by a third in. Not a book with surprises.
Icefall by Matthew Kirby. Audiobook. I really liked this. The material from Norse mythology is given a new freshness by being incorporated into this tale of a small group of Vikings, isolated and suspecting a traitor in their midst.
In Progress:
The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking by Olivia Lang. Non-fiction. A remarkably well-written and fluid look at several American writers (Tennessee Williams, John Cheever, Ernest Hemmingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Raymond Carver) and the role of alcohol in their lives. Neither preachy nor apologetic in tone, just fascinating.
Fifth Grave Beneath My Feet by Darynda Jones. Audiobook. I’m giving this series one more try, because there are plot elements that fascinate me, even as I grow increasingly annoyed with Charli’s messed up attitude toward any form of intimacy – emotional or physical.
Also:
Page proofs for Artemis Invaded. Still. I keep getting interrupted.
Jane Lindskold: Wednesday Wanderings 
November 21, 2014 at 11:43 am |
A ‘fluid look’ at drinking? Ummm… Errr… Oh, never mind!
I have Western Europe in the Middle Ages open beside me now. [I don’t recall, but I may have mentioned this one already?] Fascinating, and informative. But with interesting holes. The authors – it’s a ’70s revision of a book first published in 1950 – are at pains to avoid the anachronistic arguments often found in writing of the century, but it doesn’t seem to have occurred to them to question received wisdom on things like Islam or the importance of towns and trade before the high Middle Ages. Admittedly, some of the key archaeology on the latter issue was still being published in 1974, but still…
November 21, 2014 at 4:15 pm |
Interesting… Neat that you’re aware of how much has been learned in the forty years since this book was written…
One of the challenges when I wrote THE BURIED PYRAMID was keeping my characters’ knowledge in line with what was then current — while doing my best to be up to date with what was current now in other parts.
November 26, 2014 at 7:09 pm
That is a good part of the fun with older history texts, isn’t it.