Recent reading
Feb. 12th, 2022 10:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaClementina, by A E W Mason (1901)
This novel is based on the true story of Charles Wogan (an officer from the Irish Brigade) rescuing Clementina, who was the bride-to-be of James III. She had been seized by the Holy Roman Empire (pressured by George I) on her way to Italy from Poland in 1719. The book is about equal parts swashbuckling and equal parts tragically falling in love with the wrong person (in fact, four people doing so!). I almost stopped reading it in the beginning because it described a woman as a childlike and fragile flower, but luckily this was unreliable narration, and she turned out to be a devious enemy agent. Recommended if you are in the mood for old-fashioned swashbuckling and unresolved pining.
The Dawn of Everything: a new history of humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow (2021)
This, on the other hand, I recommend to everyone! I read this essay in 2018, recommended it in my journal, and said I wished it was a book. Lo, it is now a book. I can't really sum up those 500 pages (plus notes) in my review, but it was fascinating. A lot of it is about how hunter-gatherer societies were very different, some of them egalitarian and some of them hierarchical, and how early cities were likewise very different from each other. There's a consistent focus on human beings as always having been political and having political debates, in the sense of consciously creating their own societies (but not on ground of their own choosing), as opposed to this not just being a thing in modern society. There's also an interesting bit about the Enlightenment in the 18th century, and the influence on European debate of indigenous critiques coming from America. And there's interesting stuff about the development of agriculture, and how this was in some places a very gradual process where people for thousands of years could take it or leave it, and mixed gardening and animal husbandry with hunting and gathering.
This novel is based on the true story of Charles Wogan (an officer from the Irish Brigade) rescuing Clementina, who was the bride-to-be of James III. She had been seized by the Holy Roman Empire (pressured by George I) on her way to Italy from Poland in 1719. The book is about equal parts swashbuckling and equal parts tragically falling in love with the wrong person (in fact, four people doing so!). I almost stopped reading it in the beginning because it described a woman as a childlike and fragile flower, but luckily this was unreliable narration, and she turned out to be a devious enemy agent. Recommended if you are in the mood for old-fashioned swashbuckling and unresolved pining.
The Dawn of Everything: a new history of humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow (2021)
This, on the other hand, I recommend to everyone! I read this essay in 2018, recommended it in my journal, and said I wished it was a book. Lo, it is now a book. I can't really sum up those 500 pages (plus notes) in my review, but it was fascinating. A lot of it is about how hunter-gatherer societies were very different, some of them egalitarian and some of them hierarchical, and how early cities were likewise very different from each other. There's a consistent focus on human beings as always having been political and having political debates, in the sense of consciously creating their own societies (but not on ground of their own choosing), as opposed to this not just being a thing in modern society. There's also an interesting bit about the Enlightenment in the 18th century, and the influence on European debate of indigenous critiques coming from America. And there's interesting stuff about the development of agriculture, and how this was in some places a very gradual process where people for thousands of years could take it or leave it, and mixed gardening and animal husbandry with hunting and gathering.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-02-13 01:54 am (UTC)scientists have now found that a repeated cycle of deliberately setting fires in order to encourage seed-bearing grasses that could be ground up into flour for food massively changed the landscape on a widespread scale
(no subject)
Date: 2022-02-13 06:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-02-13 08:26 am (UTC)And The Dawn of Everything sounds absolutely fascinating, both in the history it covers and in its interpretations. I see my library has five copies and they're all on loan, goodness, it is popular :D—I'll see if I can get one of them at some point!
(no subject)
Date: 2022-02-13 06:19 pm (UTC)Also, I do appreciate that Wogan gets to literally have his bosom heave. *g* Somehow I think that would not happen in a modern romance novel.
And I hope you enjoy The Dawn of Everything, if you manage to get hold of it!
(no subject)
Date: 2022-02-13 07:18 pm (UTC)he escaped from Newgate after the 15, along with the father of William Macintosh from The Bull Calves. It all hangs together...
Huh—Jacobitism is a small world :D And I'm sure the bosom-heaving is very important.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-02-14 05:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-02-14 05:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-02-16 12:47 am (UTC)Ooooh, thanks for reminding me about The dawn of everything -- deep history helps me cope with the daily scream.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-02-16 05:26 pm (UTC)