Books, the much-needed downtime edition
Jun. 5th, 2008 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbBooks 2008: 74-77
These are the books which I read cover-to-cover in the last week or so:
(exam reading)
74. A.A. Andrews, The Greek Tyrants, London, 1956. (re-read)
Straightforward introduction to Greek tyranny. Rather brief, too, which stands in its favour. Clear, concise, but occasionally annoying when he starts talking about the 'Dorian race,' which is a theory that has largely been discredited as out of sync with the available evidence.
75. Donald Preziosi and Louise A. Hitchcock, Aegean Art and Architecture, Oxford, 1999.
As an introduction to the art and architecture of the Aegean in the Bronze Age, this is a book which does not succeed on all the fronts on which I would have liked it to succeed. Several important, interesting sites, such as Lerna (EM period) and Mallia (EM, MM, LM) are scarcely mentioned, and there is a distinct lack of focus on non-palatial architecture in terms of both Crete and the mainland. I found the material on the architecture of burial to be rather scanty, and the Mycenaeans deserve somewhat more space than they received here. The analysis occasionally wanders into art-historical territory, also, which makes sense, I suppose, since the book was published in the Oxford History of Art series.
That said, despite its failings, it's a solid, useful introduction, with in general clear explanation and illustration, both in terms of site plans and colour pictures.
#
(fun!)
76. Jennifer Fallon, The Immortal Prince
This is not a bad book, but it's not a book for me. It strikes me, fundamentally, as a safe book, and the potential for intrigue and nastiness that was on the cover flap?
Not really there. It lost major points for that, since I was expecting something more than what was actually there.
77. Lois McMaster Bujold, The Sharing Knife: Passage
It's Bujold. There are riverboats. Do I need to say more?
I love it with the kind of crazy love I don't have for any other author's work, because Bujold, since The Curse of Chalion, has been writing measured books with both breadth and depth, and the kind of prose that doesn't draw attention to itself, but when you stop to look at it, has a verve and energy that underlies every paragraph.
"The team of eight huge dun horses thundered past at a lumbering trot, hopeful for home, the bells on their harness shaking out bright sounds like salt along their path." [p53]
These are quiet books, weirdly gentle even in the midst of horror or brutality, and oddly reassuring. You don't mind spending a few hours - or longer - travelling along with Dag and Fawn: they're people you might almost like to meet.
And oddly reassuring - I come back to this, because in Passage, there's something really quite reassuring in Bujold's Dag and Fawn, these extraordinary ordinary people, quietly exploring the edges of a seemingly insoluble problem; a social problem, the misunderstandings that exist between lakewalkers and farmers, and going forward with the conviction that with time, and patience, and people of good will, they can make a difference.
I did myself a disservice, trying to go straight from exam footing into get stuff done! today!. Since I failed at running, I gave myself licence to get food out, and then go for a pretty decent walk, down the length of the north beach, up to the so-called 'Sailors' Grave'.
Rotting seaweed smells like nothing else on earth. It's not a rotting vegetation smell: it's umami-rich and salty-sweet, sort of warmly damp, with an undertone of oily fish. It's not unpleasant, precisely, but when you take a breath you can taste it, too. It reminds me a little of blood: it has the same not-quite-copper tang.
Yeah, I spent the walk back trying to find words to describe it properly.
It was raining, so I was pretty damp by the time I got back. So I put on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. (Video rental place is doing reduced-rate deals lately.)
If it weren't for Harrison Ford, this film would be made of fail. It has thoughtless racism, sexism, and not really all that much adventure!archaeology. The dialogue is not exactly made of win, and I kept wanting to strangle the kid. And, ah. Convincing, the plot is not. It is made of contrivance.
On the plus (or maybe the minus) side, I now want to write a book about an early twentieth-century archaeologist that makes a passing stab at realism (go to the back of the queue, you) and has politics instead of (as well as) mysticism. And vampires. It seems to be an idea that comes complete with vampires. (And Pitt Rivers' new methods. And snark about Sir Arthur Evans and Heinrich Schliemann.)
It also occured to me, on my walkabout, that I know what subject I'd like to focus on for my final-year thesis, year after next. Well, one of two, depending on who's available to act as supervisor. Either Alexandria, and its changing relationship with Rome during the decline of the Ptolemaic empire/rise of Rome in the east, or lions and leonine imagery in Mycenaean and/or Minoan iconography. (Bulls and bull-leaping has been studied half to death. I don't think the lions have been treated quite so comprehensively.)
Should I be so fortunate as to be able to afford to do a PhD, I'm fairly certain I'd prefer to concentrate on Alexandria. Maybe throw in a comparison with Athens in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, if I ever ran out of purely Alexandrian material. Might get to twist Palmyra in there, somewhere, too.
Yeah, start reading now. I know.
And start saving now, too. (And learn Latin. And improve on Greek.)
Wow, this turned into a long post.
These are the books which I read cover-to-cover in the last week or so:
(exam reading)
74. A.A. Andrews, The Greek Tyrants, London, 1956. (re-read)
Straightforward introduction to Greek tyranny. Rather brief, too, which stands in its favour. Clear, concise, but occasionally annoying when he starts talking about the 'Dorian race,' which is a theory that has largely been discredited as out of sync with the available evidence.
75. Donald Preziosi and Louise A. Hitchcock, Aegean Art and Architecture, Oxford, 1999.
As an introduction to the art and architecture of the Aegean in the Bronze Age, this is a book which does not succeed on all the fronts on which I would have liked it to succeed. Several important, interesting sites, such as Lerna (EM period) and Mallia (EM, MM, LM) are scarcely mentioned, and there is a distinct lack of focus on non-palatial architecture in terms of both Crete and the mainland. I found the material on the architecture of burial to be rather scanty, and the Mycenaeans deserve somewhat more space than they received here. The analysis occasionally wanders into art-historical territory, also, which makes sense, I suppose, since the book was published in the Oxford History of Art series.
That said, despite its failings, it's a solid, useful introduction, with in general clear explanation and illustration, both in terms of site plans and colour pictures.
#
(fun!)
76. Jennifer Fallon, The Immortal Prince
This is not a bad book, but it's not a book for me. It strikes me, fundamentally, as a safe book, and the potential for intrigue and nastiness that was on the cover flap?
Not really there. It lost major points for that, since I was expecting something more than what was actually there.
77. Lois McMaster Bujold, The Sharing Knife: Passage
It's Bujold. There are riverboats. Do I need to say more?
I love it with the kind of crazy love I don't have for any other author's work, because Bujold, since The Curse of Chalion, has been writing measured books with both breadth and depth, and the kind of prose that doesn't draw attention to itself, but when you stop to look at it, has a verve and energy that underlies every paragraph.
"The team of eight huge dun horses thundered past at a lumbering trot, hopeful for home, the bells on their harness shaking out bright sounds like salt along their path." [p53]
These are quiet books, weirdly gentle even in the midst of horror or brutality, and oddly reassuring. You don't mind spending a few hours - or longer - travelling along with Dag and Fawn: they're people you might almost like to meet.
And oddly reassuring - I come back to this, because in Passage, there's something really quite reassuring in Bujold's Dag and Fawn, these extraordinary ordinary people, quietly exploring the edges of a seemingly insoluble problem; a social problem, the misunderstandings that exist between lakewalkers and farmers, and going forward with the conviction that with time, and patience, and people of good will, they can make a difference.
I did myself a disservice, trying to go straight from exam footing into get stuff done! today!. Since I failed at running, I gave myself licence to get food out, and then go for a pretty decent walk, down the length of the north beach, up to the so-called 'Sailors' Grave'.
Rotting seaweed smells like nothing else on earth. It's not a rotting vegetation smell: it's umami-rich and salty-sweet, sort of warmly damp, with an undertone of oily fish. It's not unpleasant, precisely, but when you take a breath you can taste it, too. It reminds me a little of blood: it has the same not-quite-copper tang.
Yeah, I spent the walk back trying to find words to describe it properly.
It was raining, so I was pretty damp by the time I got back. So I put on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. (Video rental place is doing reduced-rate deals lately.)
If it weren't for Harrison Ford, this film would be made of fail. It has thoughtless racism, sexism, and not really all that much adventure!archaeology. The dialogue is not exactly made of win, and I kept wanting to strangle the kid. And, ah. Convincing, the plot is not. It is made of contrivance.
On the plus (or maybe the minus) side, I now want to write a book about an early twentieth-century archaeologist that makes a passing stab at realism (go to the back of the queue, you) and has politics instead of (as well as) mysticism. And vampires. It seems to be an idea that comes complete with vampires. (And Pitt Rivers' new methods. And snark about Sir Arthur Evans and Heinrich Schliemann.)
It also occured to me, on my walkabout, that I know what subject I'd like to focus on for my final-year thesis, year after next. Well, one of two, depending on who's available to act as supervisor. Either Alexandria, and its changing relationship with Rome during the decline of the Ptolemaic empire/rise of Rome in the east, or lions and leonine imagery in Mycenaean and/or Minoan iconography. (Bulls and bull-leaping has been studied half to death. I don't think the lions have been treated quite so comprehensively.)
Should I be so fortunate as to be able to afford to do a PhD, I'm fairly certain I'd prefer to concentrate on Alexandria. Maybe throw in a comparison with Athens in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, if I ever ran out of purely Alexandrian material. Might get to twist Palmyra in there, somewhere, too.
Yeah, start reading now. I know.
And start saving now, too. (And learn Latin. And improve on Greek.)
Wow, this turned into a long post.
