August might as well have been Outlander month, for all I paid attention to anything else. I read Outlander late last year and enjoyed it, but I also found it very strange and disturbing in parts (and not in a way that I found altogether explicable). Ultimately, despite my reservations about some of the content (not the things that happened, necessarily, more the way Gabaldon treated them in her prose*), I decided to continue the series, probably one a year to stay current with the show, […]
A historical romance with Chinese martial artists and past betrayals
Both books: 4 stars In Beijing in 1873, young Ying Ying discovers that her father is one of the white foreign devils, and while her mother is the pampered courtesan of an important court official, she’ll be lucky to ever make a suitable match. Her Amah starts training her in secret martial arts, so she’ll have a way to defend and support herself once she grows older. Over in England, young Leighton Atwood discovers that his parents have secrets, that it wouldn’t do for his […]
It’s like Rear Window but with more butts of malmsey
The Daughter of Time (1951) is the first novel by Josephine Tey that I’ve read, and it’s a rather unconventional mystery, so I have no idea how the style relates to any of her other detective fiction. Based around the aphorism that “Truth is the daughter of time, not authority” (Sir Francis Bacon), the novel, via Scotland Yard Detective Alan Grant, investigates whether Richard the Third really murdered his nephews in the tower. Grant is laid up in hospital and bored; a friend brings him […]
Sexism and Murder: Women Pioneers in Atlanta in 1974
Before reading Cop Town (2014), I was unfamiliar with Karin Slaughter and not looking to read any bestselling thrillers. But then I happened to see the author on television, talking about her latest book. Slaughter mentioned that she set Cop Town in Atlanta, Georgia in 1974 because she was interested in the restrictions and challenges facing women in that period. She talked about women not being able to find housing or even get a credit card without their husband’s approval. A restrictive society, indeed, and […]
A powerful indictment of the colonization of aboriginal Australia
An excellent novel about the seizure of aboriginal lands by pardoned convicts from the British penal colony in New South Wales in the early 1800s, The Secret River could just as easily be the story of the extermination of Native Americans in early 19th century United States, or of the Spanish conquests in South America, or of the European colonization of India and Africa. Grenville is an Australian, but her story is a universal one. She begins with a truly Dickensian tale of Londoner William Thornhill, […]
“Technology is not a form of robotics but something very human: the creation of tools and techniques that answer certain uses in our lives.”
This is exactly the kind of book that appeals to my historian self. Yes, I’d love to read 300 pages about how the various technologies we use in cooking have changed over the course of recorded history. It’s also a boon to me when these types of books qualify as research for work and I am able to spend a couple days reading happily at work. I have done just that and with 10 pages of typed notes I have lots to work with as […]
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