Recent reading
Oct. 10th, 2021 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaCatching up on book reviews...
Because Internet: understanding how language is changing, by Gretchen McCulloch (2019)
I'm bad at audiobook-listening these days, but I like the Lingthusiasm podcast, and this is basically an extension of it. In other words, interesting and easy to listen to, and enlightening about different attitudes to online language.
Burt's Letters from the North of Scotland, Volume I and II (from the 1720's and 1730's, published in 1876)
What it says on the label, very readable, skipped the 19th century introduction. I think Broster must have read these as research? I can't point to actual incidents she copied, but it must have been valuable as inspiration for Keith's attitude to the Highlands as an English officer. Although if she did read them, she certainly skipped some things in the name of historical romance: the poverty, wow. I found an estimate in another book that around the time of the Union, England was 38 times as wealthy as Scotland (and with five times the population). So no wonder an Englishman would find it poor, and of course more so in the Highlands. Also the descriptions of people suffering from scabies (at least I assume that's what's meant by "the itch") and other vermin, along with lack of food and adequate dwellings, etc.
Lots of landscape descriptions, as well. I always imagined the Highlands as being sort of like the Swedish mountains, but the sheer impassableness of what he describes makes me wonder? Is it just his Englishness, or is it really that rugged? Of course, he was on horseback, which I wouldn't want to be on in some parts of the Swedish mountains either (even if I could ride a horse). Well, I guess I'll see when I eventually get there. There are also some great descriptions of the engineering required to build Wade's roads. People hanging from ropes to bore holes for gunpowder to blow up mountainsides, digging up bogs to fill up the space with rocks, etc. Wow.
Because Internet: understanding how language is changing, by Gretchen McCulloch (2019)
I'm bad at audiobook-listening these days, but I like the Lingthusiasm podcast, and this is basically an extension of it. In other words, interesting and easy to listen to, and enlightening about different attitudes to online language.
Burt's Letters from the North of Scotland, Volume I and II (from the 1720's and 1730's, published in 1876)
What it says on the label, very readable, skipped the 19th century introduction. I think Broster must have read these as research? I can't point to actual incidents she copied, but it must have been valuable as inspiration for Keith's attitude to the Highlands as an English officer. Although if she did read them, she certainly skipped some things in the name of historical romance: the poverty, wow. I found an estimate in another book that around the time of the Union, England was 38 times as wealthy as Scotland (and with five times the population). So no wonder an Englishman would find it poor, and of course more so in the Highlands. Also the descriptions of people suffering from scabies (at least I assume that's what's meant by "the itch") and other vermin, along with lack of food and adequate dwellings, etc.
Lots of landscape descriptions, as well. I always imagined the Highlands as being sort of like the Swedish mountains, but the sheer impassableness of what he describes makes me wonder? Is it just his Englishness, or is it really that rugged? Of course, he was on horseback, which I wouldn't want to be on in some parts of the Swedish mountains either (even if I could ride a horse). Well, I guess I'll see when I eventually get there. There are also some great descriptions of the engineering required to build Wade's roads. People hanging from ropes to bore holes for gunpowder to blow up mountainsides, digging up bogs to fill up the space with rocks, etc. Wow.
