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Oops.
Also, is October 31 really tomorrow? I am...not prepared to operate on this timeframe. (At least my evening plans are now squared away. But there's still a lot of prep to do.) Anyway, here's:
What I Finished Reading This Week
Cunning Folk – Tabitha Stanmore
Cunning Folk is a historical overview of "practical magic" in medieval England: who provided it, who requested it, for what reasons, and how government, the church, and society thought about it. It also proves that it's possible to write an informative book in a conversational tone. Stanmore approaches the topic with curiosity and respect for the people who made use of it; after all, what her subjects were doing was as rational at the time as turning to ChatGPT for answers is in 2025. She brings real insights to the topic--an aha! one for me being that authorities drew a distinction between magic and witchcraft, with the caster and/or customer's intent the determining factor in identifying the latter. Her explorations of the roles that class and gender played in attitudes toward practitioners (unsurprisingly, women lost that one), and society's multitudinous attitudes toward magic, full stop, were also illuminating. And I appreciate Stanmore's honesty: she regularly prefaces sentences or entire passages with "My preferred interpretation is..." or "I like to think that..." and that is all I want from a nonfiction author, that they make clear what is fact and what is only one of many possible explanations. At 230 pages Cunning Folk is quite a short book--certainly an overview where I would have loved an exhaustive 800 page tome on the topic--but it is a very good overview indeed, and the footnotes will allow anyone who's interested in going further to do so.
What I Am Currently Reading
Before Scotland – Alastair Moffat
With under 30 pages to go I'll finish reading this one tonight or tomorrow.
What I'm Reading Next
This week I acquired Of Dice and Men by David Ewalt and The Wild Hunt by Emma Seckel.
これで以上です。
Also, is October 31 really tomorrow? I am...not prepared to operate on this timeframe. (At least my evening plans are now squared away. But there's still a lot of prep to do.) Anyway, here's:
What I Finished Reading This Week
Cunning Folk – Tabitha Stanmore
Cunning Folk is a historical overview of "practical magic" in medieval England: who provided it, who requested it, for what reasons, and how government, the church, and society thought about it. It also proves that it's possible to write an informative book in a conversational tone. Stanmore approaches the topic with curiosity and respect for the people who made use of it; after all, what her subjects were doing was as rational at the time as turning to ChatGPT for answers is in 2025. She brings real insights to the topic--an aha! one for me being that authorities drew a distinction between magic and witchcraft, with the caster and/or customer's intent the determining factor in identifying the latter. Her explorations of the roles that class and gender played in attitudes toward practitioners (unsurprisingly, women lost that one), and society's multitudinous attitudes toward magic, full stop, were also illuminating. And I appreciate Stanmore's honesty: she regularly prefaces sentences or entire passages with "My preferred interpretation is..." or "I like to think that..." and that is all I want from a nonfiction author, that they make clear what is fact and what is only one of many possible explanations. At 230 pages Cunning Folk is quite a short book--certainly an overview where I would have loved an exhaustive 800 page tome on the topic--but it is a very good overview indeed, and the footnotes will allow anyone who's interested in going further to do so.
What I Am Currently Reading
Before Scotland – Alastair Moffat
With under 30 pages to go I'll finish reading this one tonight or tomorrow.
What I'm Reading Next
This week I acquired Of Dice and Men by David Ewalt and The Wild Hunt by Emma Seckel.
これで以上です。
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