Elizabeth

I wasn't feeling this until about half-way through, but that's par for the course with me and Sanderson. Definitely in the middle ground for YA - teen goes to school and in the process overcomes past demons and grows up, but without the requisite romance which was SO REFRESHING. I will definitely be comfortable with my almost-teen reader reading this one.

An excellent work on animal prosecution in from Medieval to Modern Europe (and elsewhere), but it's currently 112 years old (first published in 1906 and expanding on work published in 1884), and although it is a great compilation of the source material, the theory is clearly obsolete in many respects. Interesting that no one has attempted to update it.

Despite being predicated on a lot of ‘not much evidence for X but let's assume X anyway', there's some good stuff here on familiars/fairies, especially the non-binary nature of good vs. bad and the human/fairy relationship (and the reasons for such a relationship).

It took me until about half way through to realise that my problem with this book is not me being a medievalist who can't overlook anachronisms (although that is TOTALLY true), but that this book is really just quite average. (The ‘it not me, it you' defence).

The book follows the lives of a few people as they are touched by the creation of an illuminated Book of Hours, each of them coming with baggage (as people do) and, through their experience with the book, coming to a resolution. And I did not care, not one bit, about these people and their insights into their psyches.

I mean, I could have just put it down and not ever thought about it ever again, but since I paid for my copy and I didn't hate it, I pushed through. I hope my local library would like a donated copy.

I have Feels about this book.It's historical fiction, which generally means a lot of “Look, Ma, I did the research!” and that is definitely going on here, but I never felt it was dumped on me. Hild (the character) is written in such a way that the information a reader needs to know (or, more often, the writer wants to impart) feels like a natural part of her- with a HUGE caveat: Four-year-olds, and seven-year-olds, do not have the maturity Hild displays at these stages of the story. Maybe when she approaches teenage years, given her position in the royal family and the role created for her, the insight and maturity she is given is a bit more believable. Until the story got there, however, I was firmly rolling my eyes but willing to press on a bit more until that rocky start resolved itself.It's a character-driven story, to the point where nothing happens for extremely long stretches, in an already long book. Which is fine for real life, tedious for a pleasurable read. By half-way I was extremely ready for the book to be over. But the reasons the book is slow are also it's greatest strengths for this medieval historian reader. If you're interested in fifth-century daily life, noble life, political struggles and scheming and the machinations of the court, the loud and noisy manoeuvring of men and the quiet and subtle manoeuvring of women, marriage alliances and childbirth and weaving and healing and the conflict of Ionian and Roman Christianity with each other and with the ‘pagan' gods already established, this novel is full. It's historical fiction in the purest sense - Griffith has taken the highlights of a historical figure whose life we know nothing about, and reverse engineered them into a story of her childhood and how she developed those talents. The only ‘solid' information extant about Hild the Saint is the hagiography helpfully provided by Bede ([b:Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum 18935708 Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum Bede https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1385328180s/18935708.jpg 26943388]) in his documentation of the Christian conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. Griffith is explicit that she made up this story, but I worry that readers will miss that part. An improbable-but-not-impossible role is carved for Hild that makes her a woman of agency in the world of men, but it is her mother's role that is far more usual for a noble woman politicking in the court, and the role of her sister more usual still.

Charlotte-Rose Millar has done an outstanding job here of reminding us that diabolism and emotions are integral to early modern English witchcraft beliefs, the lack of which in previous scholarship is highlighted by this excellent work. By using so-far understudied witchcraft pamphlet literature as her core sources for discussion, Millar ably demonstrates the importance of emotion in popular conceptions and perceptions of witchcraft, highlighting not only the evolution of witch beliefs over the early modern period, but also the continuity of beliefs over that same period, indicating that pamphleteers and the reading public had a fairly stable and specific idea of what a witch was and what witchcraft entailed.

A very cogent and sensible argument in a very readable monograph. I very much enjoyed this one.

This is a beautiful coffee table book. The essays are short (10-minute) reads, delving into how to investigate an unreadable medieval manuscript. The background on Voynich was new, and therefore particularly interesting, to me. All in all, I do recommend having a flick through this if you come across it.

If you're interested in medieval manuscripts (as a student or layperson), I definitely recommend picking this up and having a proper look. The reproduction of the MS is amazingly detailed, and is an excellent example of what a MS looks like, for those not fortunate enough to get near one in the flesh (pun completely unintended but I am still proud of it), especially if you've done some research into codicology and would like to see it in action.

So.. I didn't hate this one. But I didn't love it. Everything that made [b:The Bear and the Nightingale 25489134 The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy, #1) Katherine Arden https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1470731420s/25489134.jpg 45268929] amazing for me was stripped out of the second in the trilogy. Which doesn't meant to say Vasya's story doesn't follow the natural progression, in the way that fairy tales do, but there was not enough of my particular boat-floating, and I probably won't be picking up the final (although, if it goes where I think it will/should, it will be a great finish to Vasya's character arc).Katherine Arden does provide a reading list for Medieval Russia at the end, though, which has definitely been added to my wishlist.

If you're interested in how books came to be book-shaped, this is for you. A readable and humorous, but academically referenced, tale of how we got the ink, printing, paper, covers, sizes, and shapes in the way books currently are produced.

This one was of particular interest to me as both a book nerd and a medievalist, and I was pleased to see the topics I was already familiar with covered in an accurate way - this bodes well for the rest of the story, always a concern when you've picked up a book in the popular and cheaply-priced end of the spectrum.

If you are going to pick this up, I definitely recommend getting a Dead Tree version, simply because the author so often refers to the object you're holding as a demonstration of the ideas he talks about.

And also it's very sexy.

A behind-the-scenes look at personal and official documents of the Cooper family and the related Shadow Service. Obviously, full of spoilers from the rest of the Tortall series, and clearly for diehard fans.

I really enjoyed this until the plot train began bearing down heavily and driving everyone into the unpleasant-and-predictable corner, but then surprise! Penultimate twistage saved the day. I am very pleased with this turn of events (pun intended), and will be pressing on.

I wanted to highlight so much of this book I would have ruined it with pages full of yellow ink.

Part of me wishes I'd first read this alongside the other classic dystopias as a teenager, but I think it has more horrific impact for me now.

And now finally I can social media without spoilers for/from the tv adaptation.

I didn't read the blurb before diving in, and for that I am most grateful; it is a gross misrepresentation of what is an enjoyable Eastern European fairytale stretched out and given life. This novel is what Naomi Novik's Uprooted should have been, what I wanted it to be: a fairy tale made real, one that feels real and nuanced and adult and has layers.

And a good dose of religion, because you all know I love a religion-based fantasy. Highly recommend.

I laughed my arse off in the beginning, I was a little concerned at the turn of events in the middle, but by the end I was satisfied, if not thrilled. A solid ‘it was ok' out of five.

Don't misinterpret my two stars. It really is an ok book: uneven in parts with skipped scenes that should have been written and plenty of scenes that could have been trimmed. But, in the end, a fast and readable amateur detective story. As with the first, ([b:The Lifers' Club 18245888 The Lifers' Club Francis Pryor https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1407163458s/18245888.jpg 25696339]), give it a miss if you are not at all interested in archaeology (as horses are to [a:Dick Francis 5561 Dick Francis https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1208830270p2/5561.jpg], so digging is to Francis Pryor).

A very readable style, and consequently a very quick read. Excellent introduction to medieval literature, how it developed, and the main different genres.

I should not have attempted a book on philosophy whilst suffering a head cold. This is not the fault of the book or its author.

I was enjoying this, right up until the Big Showdown Moment where Stuff Happens and People Die. And then I was bored to tears. But the denouement was palate cleansing, and saved the book from a one star review. A shame, because I remember really enjoying the first book.

I love the idea of this novel. The execution was patchy in terms of character development and pacing, although shows signs of the typical Sanderson style that clearly has matured throughout his writing career. For a first novel, it's completely acceptable, but I wouldn't recommend you start out here if you want to give Sanderson or the Cosmere universe a go.

Underwhelming. Or, I entirely missed the point? It certainly has a reputation for being a life-changer, and maybe it is, in its simplicity. Maybe it reflects my own worldview so neatly the message is lost on me, and I can only see the over-simplified story rather than having a revelatory experience about journeys versus destinations?

Maybe this is a good one for an early secondary school English class on fables or parables, in an easily-consumed package.

Walton calls her series “Still Life with Fascists”, and, yeah.Not a whodunit, as in [b:Farthing 183740 Farthing (Small Change, #1) Jo Walton https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1442714837s/183740.jpg 1884104], but a ‘will the British Detective Inspector and his competent-but-no-genius sidekick prevent the murder?'. I prefer the former for my British detectives.And yet, in our current political clime, probably quite triggering (oh ho what a pun, she says of the bomb-plot novel).

This one was my favourite of the trilogy, and I think it's because Something actually Happened. But to get to this point, to understand the jeopardy and the conflict, you do need to read the first two.

On the other hand, the Something that Happened is so far removed from the plot of the first two stories that I can completely understand why fans of the first don't like the last overmuch.

This is an excellent overview of the entire crusading movement, and Tyreman has done a very good job with a very difficult task. Even at almost 1000 pages, he is barely scratching the surface of such a long and involved period of history. For those who want an introduction to the Crusades, this might be a little heavy-going, but for a deeper understanding or for working at an undergraduate level, God's War is a fantastic resource, if perhaps too long to prescribe as an undergraduate textbook.

For the major (numbered) crusades through to Louis IX's misadventures in Egypt, Tyreman takes a two-chapter approach, the first giving context, and the second examining the events and outcomes of the conflict. This ensures the reader is grounded in the wider events of the period - the Crusades did not happen in isolation, and events throughout Europe and, later, throughout Asia, combine to influence crusade momentums and outcomes. Smaller crusade movements get a more cursory treatment, I suspect due to length constraints than any comment on their importance within the wider movement; the insightful evaluation of motives and outcomes is no less for these ‘lesser' crusades.

Thoroughly researched and riddled with citations, with the delightful addition of academic snark, I highly recommend.

Well I'm still not sure if I liked this story, but after gadfly-Sokrates comes to play (no spoilers, that's in the blurb) it was delightfully classic Walton (again, with the depictions of childbirth and parenting that broke my heart, although not as badly as [b:My Real Children 18490637 My Real Children Jo Walton https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1380218782s/18490637.jpg 26174356]). I feel like a passing acquaintance with [b:The Republic 30289 The Republic Plato https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386925655s/30289.jpg 1625515] would help here. Having had it come up multiple times in my uni life lately is what inspired me to finally give the series a go, so I can't speak to what the story would look like without knowing the basic premise of Plato's thought experiment. I'll keep going with the series.

Hee!