En passant
Jun. 11th, 2007 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbThe day started with swimming. Jumped in the sea, scream, stayed for a brief but numbling while, and then got out again into the hottest part of the day.
Then there was picnic, and walking on the beach. And after that there was gym. An hour and a half of gym.
Damn but I'm wrecked now. And unfit. But my brain appears to be recovering from the deadness it was suffering from at the end of the exams - during them, too, if I'm to be honest. So that's good, at least.
Books 91-92, Fiction 87, Non-fiction 5.
Actually not technically 91-92, since I read about six books before and during the exams, but cannot now speak coherently about them. Seeker's Mask by PC Hodgell is excellent, though.
Fiction:
87. Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky.
Reading this occasionally felt like an exercise in endurance. It is an epic, and I mean epic, SF novel, but unlike many SFian novels that spend pages describing their technology or what-have-you, this book is very strongly character centred. Interesting, and compelling, but long. The first Vinge book I've read, and I'd read more on the foot of it, but in smaller doses.
Non-fiction:
5. Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750
This is one of those history books that should be marked 'not for beginners'. As it happens, it's the first book on maritime history I've ever read, and while it is a very solid description and analysis of maritime economic, social and labour relations of the period, it's not the most forgiving introduction to the topic.
The chapters on the 'Seaman as Collective Labourer', the 'Seaman as the Spirit of Rebellion' and the 'Seaman as Pirate' are especially interesting and illuminative of cultural formation processes and labour relations of the period. Fascinating stuff.
Recommended for the well-read layperson, not as an introduction.
Then there was picnic, and walking on the beach. And after that there was gym. An hour and a half of gym.
Damn but I'm wrecked now. And unfit. But my brain appears to be recovering from the deadness it was suffering from at the end of the exams - during them, too, if I'm to be honest. So that's good, at least.
Books 91-92, Fiction 87, Non-fiction 5.
Actually not technically 91-92, since I read about six books before and during the exams, but cannot now speak coherently about them. Seeker's Mask by PC Hodgell is excellent, though.
Fiction:
87. Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky.
Reading this occasionally felt like an exercise in endurance. It is an epic, and I mean epic, SF novel, but unlike many SFian novels that spend pages describing their technology or what-have-you, this book is very strongly character centred. Interesting, and compelling, but long. The first Vinge book I've read, and I'd read more on the foot of it, but in smaller doses.
Non-fiction:
5. Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750
This is one of those history books that should be marked 'not for beginners'. As it happens, it's the first book on maritime history I've ever read, and while it is a very solid description and analysis of maritime economic, social and labour relations of the period, it's not the most forgiving introduction to the topic.
The chapters on the 'Seaman as Collective Labourer', the 'Seaman as the Spirit of Rebellion' and the 'Seaman as Pirate' are especially interesting and illuminative of cultural formation processes and labour relations of the period. Fascinating stuff.
Recommended for the well-read layperson, not as an introduction.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-11 10:11 pm (UTC)Poke me sometime when we're both in chat, and we can talk about this stuff, if you like. I'm curious which angle you're approaching it from.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-12 12:27 pm (UTC)I was curious, I suppose, about the 'Golden Age of Sail' and the whole mythology attached to seafaring and especially piracy in the 18th century. Not to mention Rediker was approaching it from, basically, the angle of labour relations. I find social history especially fascinating, when it's well done. Alas, all too shortly I'll have to start concentrating on background reading for my courses next year, so I'm enjoying the freedom to be an intellectual dilettante while it lasts.
You're writing a seafaring novel? Cool. What's it about?
no subject
Date: 2007-06-12 03:58 pm (UTC)My current project is a novel set in 1720, in the Caribbean, on a series of ships that includes a privateer, a merchantman, and a pirate. I always seem to end up with class issues, so Rediker's books were a godsend to me - I got most of my research materials from the library, and Interlibrary Loan, but the Redikers I bought outright.
I haven't yet developed a glib answer as to what this book's about. *g* Probably ought to work on that.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-12 06:47 pm (UTC)Sounds like you've an interesting book going there. Good luck on finding a glib answer. ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 12:38 pm (UTC)The Buccaneers of America - Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin
Pirates of the West Indies - Clinton Van de Brosse Black
Pirate's Who's Who - Phillip Gosse
Piracy in the West Indies and its Suppression - Francis B.C. Bradlee (1923)
Subject to the Power of the Infernall Spiritt: Puritans, Privateers and the Genesis of Buccaneers--M. Todd Robinson, 1998.
Pirates on the Chesapeake: Being a true history of pirates, picaroons, and raiders on Chesapeake Bay 1610-1807--Shomette, Donald G.
Villains of All Nations: Atlantic pirates in the Golden Age--Marcus Rediker 2004 (www.marcusrediker.com)
Predators and Prizes: American Privateering and Imperial Warfare 1739-1748--Carl E. Swanson, 1991
The Exuma Guide--Stephen Pavlidis
The History of Pirates - Angus Konstam
The Pirate Trial of Anne Bonny and Mary Read--Tamara J. Eastman and Constance Bond
I didn't read the Johnson, especially after so many other scholars dunned the work. The Exquemelin has a wealth of good detail, as I recall, and the Black, too. The Exuma Guide is mostly a navigational aid for the Bahamas and that part of the Caribbean.
Happy reading!
no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 04:56 pm (UTC)The Johnson reads more like the ancient biographies - Sallust on Catiline, or Tacitus on Agricola - than anything I'd be comfortable calling historical in the modern sense. But fortunately I'm reading it for flavour, not facts, and Johnson does rather help demonstrate why the pirate mythos grew to be so popular and so widely accepted. :)