Grand unified books thread

[Agelastus]

Goldsworthy's Caesar: Life of a Colossus. Just started it a few days ago, but great so far. I should have been born two thousand years ago. :patton:

Good book. Good historian.

I'm expecting his latest work, on the fall of the Roman Empire, any day now.

[Savonarola]

Next up: Nennius's "History of the Britons" and "The Welsh Annales."

History of the Britons doesn't really seem like a complete work; just a random collection of stories, personal anecdotes and family trees; like an unfocused Herodotus.  I learned that nearly all of the rulers of the individual Anglo-Saxon kingdoms claimed Woden as an ancestor.  Both Nennius and the Annales mention King Arthur as a historical person.

Next up:  The Book of the Thousand and One Nights

[Malthus]

Next up: Nennius's "History of the Britons" and "The Welsh Annales."

History of the Britons doesn't really seem like a complete work; just a random collection of stories, personal anecdotes and family trees; like an unfocused Herodotus.  I learned that nearly all of the rulers of the individual Anglo-Saxon kingdoms claimed Woden as an ancestor.  Both Nennius and the Annales mention King Arthur as a historical person.

Next up:  The Book of the Thousand and One Nights

According to the geneological chart I saw at the Tower of London, the current royal family of Britian still to this day claims Woden as its first ancestor.

Not sure how claiming descent from a pagan diety can be squared with being the head of a Christian denomination ... maybe they are covering all the bases just to make sure? 

[garbon]

Re-reading 1984 and The Bell Jar.

[Savonarola]

According to the geneological chart I saw at the Tower of London, the current royal family of Britian still to this day claims Woden as its first ancestor.

Not sure how claiming descent from a pagan diety can be squared with being the head of a Christian denomination ... maybe they are covering all the bases just to make sure? 

I've seen that too.  I believe the current royal family traces its ancestry back through the kings of Wessex so they probably use the same early geneology that Nennius uses.

It's surprising to see Nennius (who was a Christian monk) use that geneology since the common opinion of the time was that the pagan deities were actually devils.  Bede (who wrote at about the same time as Nennius) doesn't even bother calling them "Pagan gods" or anything similar; he simply calls them "Devils."

[Malthus]

According to the geneological chart I saw at the Tower of London, the current royal family of Britian still to this day claims Woden as its first ancestor.

Not sure how claiming descent from a pagan diety can be squared with being the head of a Christian denomination ... maybe they are covering all the bases just to make sure? 

I've seen that too.  I believe the current royal family traces its ancestry back through the kings of Wessex so they probably use the same early geneology that Nennius uses.

It's surprising to see Nennius (who was a Christian monk) use that geneology since the common opinion of the time was that the pagan deities were actually devils.  Bede (who wrote at about the same time as Nennius) doesn't even bother calling them "Pagan gods" or anything similar; he simply calls them "Devils."

I believe what is at work is this: in modern-day anthropology, the transition from a 'chieftianship' to an 'early state' is charactaristically marked by the creation of an elevated chiefly caste which claims descent from the gods, and thus is made of finer stuff than ordinary humans. In Saxon culture, this would be the "Woden-born". In many societies, this sentiment is so useful to the ruling class that it lingers long, long after the transition is made and  even after the religion has evolved to reject the very gods that gave rise to it.

Echoes of this cas be seen in the Bible, where the "children of god" mate with mortal women to produce "heroes, mighty men of old".

Genesis 6:4:

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

The notion of God having children mating with mortals to make heroes is odd and alien to Judaism as it evolved, and has given rise to all sorts of tortured theological explainations, but from an anthropological POV it is really no different from the oddity of the head of the Anglican Church claiming ultimate descent from  Woden.

[grumbler]

Just finished Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, about the Battle off Samar during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.  I was disappointed; the first book to focus on the surface actions off Samar had to be written by a guy who didn't know what he was talking about (and had annoying "favorite words" that he used whenever he could crowbar them into the text).  The book wasn't badly written, mind; it was just disappointingly written.  Not academic at all, the author accepts the claims of the survivors as to the hits and damage they inflicted without ever attempting to reconcile those claims with the Japanese after-action reports.  The author also has a love affair with the Samuel B Roberts (a DE that actually inflicted little damage) and downplays the efforts of the Johnston (which, to be fair, has probably been over-emphasized in previous works, because its skipper got The Medal, was A Character, and was full-blooded Cherokee to boot).

While most of the author's blunders (not caught be the unskilled editor) probably wouldn't bother the typical readers (things like Hornfischer's constant confusion between "round" and "shell" or his claim that the Gambier Bay was the first carrier ever sunk by surface gunfire), probably even the neophytes know that one doesn't weigh anchor when one arrives in port, and that the constant references to "Ziggy Sprague" (rather than just "Sprague" or maybe "Admiral Sprague") looks awful.  Probably some could guess that there is something wrong with the constant reference to the rating of "boilermaker!"

The book is good for the stories of the sailors involved (which is, to be sure, the focus and largest part of the book).  Only the painfully bad poetry of one of the officers mars that element of the book, and the author does a pretty good job of jumping from ship to ship and person to person while keeping it all straight in the reader's mind.  If yu take it as a compilation of personal recollections without an attempt to be historically accurate, it is a decent book.  Just don't finish the book and think you have reliably learned anything about the battle or the Navy per se, because Hornfischer himself doesn't understand either particularly well.

[Sheilbh]

Age of Innocence.  Never read any Wharton before, I'd always thought she was dour.  This book was actually rather funny.  But didn't really whet my appetite for more of her.

Back to Trollope - Phineas Finn HO!

[BuddhaRhubarb]

Started "The Winter King" not far into it yet, but I like the setup and the very different less cliched versions of characters so far.

[garbon]

I just bought books by Hollinghurst and Edmund White. It shall be a gay weekend.

[Savonarola]

Age of Innocence.  Never read any Wharton before, I'd always thought she was dour.  This book was actually rather funny.  But didn't really whet my appetite for more of her.

The House of Mirth is also worthwhile.  It covers the largely the same theme (desire versus society) and is set in the same place and period.  The ending of the novel is a cheat and it features a Jewish caricature; but I think Wharton has a much better character in Lily Bart than she does in Newland Archer.

[Ed Anger]

I'm re-reading the Dread Empire books. 

I've got a stack of about 70 or so non-fiction history books I want to read, but have no energy to. 

[HisMajestyBOB]

I read through Hitler's Prisoners in a week. It's an autobiographical tale about a man who served in the Wehrmacht during WWII and was then imprisoned for speaking negatively about the conditions at the front and about Goering. In prison, he and his cell mates relate their stories, telling about themselves and how they ended up in prison, making this book 7 biographies, really. It gives a good look at the lives of people in Germany during the 1920s-30s, and at how the Nazi government's policies and persectution affected the lives of ordinary Germans.

One of the biggest drawbacks to the book is that, unlike in a fictional novel, not everything is resolved at the end. He never learned the fates of 3 of his cellmates (though one was almost certainly executed), nor do you really learn much about one of the cellmates, beyond just a few hints at a very interesting story.

It's an excellent book, highly recommended.

[Alatriste]

I'm reading "The Most Dangerous Enemy" Stephen Bungay's book on the Battle of Britain, translated into Spanish. I generally avoid translations, but I couldn't resist buying a book I was already interested in at just 9,95 euros.

Big Mistake.

The translator can't tell oil (lubricant) from fuel, thinks General Staff was a man, changes unit designations randomly (for example Fighter Command becomes 'Unidad de Cazas', i.e. Fighter Unit), doesn't know what a dispersal is... and that's just in the first 80 pages. The poor guy obviously hadn't got a clue about aircraft, engines and/or military matters.

[Razgovory]

I'm reading "The Most Dangerous Enemy" Stephen Bungay's book on the Battle of Britain, translated into Spanish. I generally avoid translations, but I couldn't resist buying a book I was already interested in at just 9,95 euros.

Big Mistake.

The translator can't tell oil (lubricant) from fuel, thinks General Staff was a man, changes unit designations randomly (for example Fighter Command becomes 'Unidad de Cazas', i.e. Fighter Unit), doesn't know what a dispersal is... and that's just in the first 80 pages. The poor guy obviously hadn't got a clue about aircraft, engines and/or military matters.