Grand unified books thread

[Sophie Scholl]

When you get a chance I try recommend her book

The Sunne in Splendor

I read it and loved it! I'm a huge fan of the Wars of the Roses era. I actually wrote my senior research paper in college on Sir Anthony Woodville! 

[crazy canuck]

When you get a chance I try recommend her book

The Sunne in Splendor

I read it and loved it! I'm a huge fan of the Wars of the Roses era. I actually wrote my senior research paper in college on Sir Anthony Woodville! 

 

[mongers]

Short biographies anyone ?

Because I'm such a lightweight and have limited time left to read full/lengthy biographies, instead I been reading a lot of these small books from OUP:

Oliver Cromwell - Amazon Books

Those are taken from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography available here:
Oxford Dictionary Of National Biography

And I'm enjoying a lot of the content, makes a nice change from reading wiki pages about historical figures.

Most of the content should be free to view, if you enter your library or university card, including it seems plenty of US education institutes.
 
But for some reason my county library, has a cheaper subscription so only the free content is fully accessible, still plenty to consumer like these articles:

Wells, Herbert George [H. G. Wells]

Swift, Jonathan

Newton, Sir Isaac

Owen, Wilfred Edward Salter

Dickens, Charles John Huffam

Lawrence, Thomas Edward [known as Lawrence of Arabia]

Charles I

Darwin, Charles Robert

Charles II

Clive, Robert, first Baron Clive of Plassey





 

[Savonarola]

I read a biography of Jim Henson.  I didn't realize he was such a player; to the point that his girlfriends took a pew at his funeral (and his funeral was at St. John the Divine's in New York.  I've seen it, those pews aren't small.)  I also learned that he hadn't actually refused treatment because he was a Christian Scientist (as had been reported at the time of his death); but instead he was so rarely sick that he preferred just to power through colds rather than see a doctor.  Jim had been raised a Christian Scientist (which is probably why he was so relentlessly optimistic) but hadn't practiced the faith as an adult.

It was a fun read; Henson was overflowing with ideas which only a tiny fraction ever made it to production (and even then he was constantly working.)  It's amazing how much he did, and how much more he wanted to do.  He did seem to have the same flaw as George Lucas, where he would sometimes let the technology drive the story rather than the other way around (The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth probably being the best examples.)

I know we discussed the movie "The Witches" when Dahl's books were being altered.  The happy ending was the idea of the director and Dahl was absolutely apoplectic about it, to the point where he was threatening to hold news conferences to tell children (and their parents) not to see the movie.  (Jim apologized profusely enough to calm him down.)

My favorite anecdote was the time Jim Henson dropped acid and... it did absolutely nothing.

[Savonarola]

I'm re-reading The Fellowship of the Rings; a lot of things make a great deal more sense after having read the Silmarillion.  I'm impressed that he took his world building so far that he's even written little rhyming proverbs for it like:

"The wolf that one hears is worse than the orc that one fears"

and

"Where the warg howls, there also the orc prowls."

[Syt]

I'm currently reading two fantasy books. One on kindle, one is my audiobook for my way to/from work..

Scott Bakker - The Darkness That Comes Before (Book I of The Prince of Nothing trilogy), ebook

I came across this when looking for fantasy books that have a Dark Souls-y vibe. I don't think this one particularly does, and I'm not even quite sure why I got hooked on it. It's set in a world set ca. 2000 years after the First Apocalypse. The general background draws from the first crusades, jihads, Late Byzantium, and features on the surface the preparations of a Holy War by the Men of the Tusk (the "church", led by a new charismatic leader), against the "heathens" who occupy a holy city. The Emperor of a formerly glorious empire is trying to use this as a means to restore the former glory, by trying to elicit guarantees that any conquered lands go to the empire in exchange for much needed provisions and providing the leadership of his brother, a brilliant general who recently won a resounding victory against the barbarians. Below that there's a shady shadow war between different magic schools, the possible return of an old evil, and the enigmatic Dunyain of the Anasurimbor line where father has summoned son to join him in the holy city of Shimeh (the target of the holy war).

The story doesn't have much action, but a lot of introspection by the viewpoint characters (the emperor, his brother, Anasurimbor Kellhus, Drusas Achamian (from a magic school that relives the events of the previous apocalypse every night in their dreams), a prositute lover of Drusas, the Emperor, his brother, a barbarian seeking revenge ... ), and heavy with "fantasy words" (names of places, often several words for the same country/peoples), but it's oddly compelling to me for its weaving of historic setting and context (and not nearly as dense as Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen). It's bleak (someone described it as Song of Ice and Fire without the lighthearted bits, though tbh I find it a bit lighter, e.g. it has no child abuse so far ), but so far not too much so. The amount of introspection is maybe to be expected, since the author, according to Wiki, "spends his time writing split between his fiction and his ongoing philosophic inquiry".

I'm closing in on the final 10% of the frst book, and the strands of events are starting to run together.



The other book is from my list of "fantasy bestsellers I never read" - Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara (audio book).

I'm only still at the beginning, but it touches so many tropes it's a bit hard not to cringe. But it's from 1977, so I'm giving it a pass, as it was one of the earlier ones to adopt them.

Still, the opening owes a lot to LotR. Mysterious wise man revealing history and events to the young main characters. Young "chosen one" and his loyal friend. The secluded peaceful home to start from (with humans replacing hobbits). Mysterious dark figures hunting for the main characters. Having to sneak out to escape detection. A magic artifact as central macguffin. A gruff warrior stranger following the wise man as (brief) guide ... 

(The only thing I know about the books is that it's set in a post-apocalyptic world, so exposition heavy the discussion at the start between Shea and Allanon about the merits/drawbacks of isolationism, or centralized government vs. small independent communes was amusing and seemed very thinly veiled author commentary )

Will keep listening, since the story is compelling enough, though it's now hard to stop looking for more LotR parallels.

[grumbler]

The Sword of Shannara was a direct rip off of Lord of the Rings, but that actually added to its popularity.  I haven't heard the name in ages, though, so it didn't have the legs LotR had.

[crazy canuck]

The Sword of Shannara was a direct rip off of Lord of the Rings, but that actually added to its popularity.  I haven't heard the name in ages, though, so it didn't have the legs LotR had.

And a poor imitation

[Threviel]

The Shannara stories went somewhere else eventually though and ended up as some kind of fantasy steam-punk with druids.

I read them as a kid, started with Heritage of Shannara series, which is different enough from LotR. Can't say I really recommend them, bet there's also a lot of worse crap out there. Or at least there's worse crap out there. Some at least.

[Sheilbh]

Just finsihed Audrey Magee's The Colony, which I absolutely loved. It's basically set in the summer of 1979, when the Troubles were arguably peaking, on a small island off the west coast of Ireland where an English painter arrives to paint the cliffs and is shortly (and unhappily) joined by a French linguist in the fifth year of his study of the growth of bilingualism on this Irish-speaking island.

But mainly mentioning here as I have never had such a strong actor playing x character response as a young Barry Keoghan playing James (or Seamus as the Frenchman insists) the 15 year old boy on the island who wants to leave.

Brilliant book though - strongly recommend it.

[Grey Fox]

I've picked up where I left off years ago : Star Trek DTI 2.

[mongers]

Saw an original edition of Robert Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy' in the chain library on Friday, shall I get a copy to read?

[The Brain]

Medieval Military Medicine: From the Vikings to the High Middle Ages, by Burfield. Pretty interesting about an area that is rarely treated in any depth. What's striking is how much they actually tried to do, and sometimes successfully. I had heard about a lot of the stuff, like wrapping a copper sheet around a broken bone. Putting intestines that have fallen out back in and sewing up the belly is one thing, but I didn't know that they at least occasionally managed to mend broken intestines. Also includes a section on PTSD and similar.

[Jacob]

Oh that's fascinating. Is this a recent book?

[The Brain]

Yeah, from 2022.