This week I consumed very little news and subsequently read a ton. Much of this reading was done on my bed, next to the
giant peace lily I adopted a few weeks back. It's been growing great guns ever since, regularly putting out new leaves and spathes. Unfortunately, it also began putting out regular, worrying rustles starting few days ago. This was concerning because they were coming from the peace lily: with the windows shut and the AC off, there was nothing else that could be generating those noises. Did I somehow bring in a mouse or chipmunk? I thought. But that's impossible; there's no way anything could have survived in there for over a month.
Then I realized: I was
hearing the lily's leaves unfurl. How cool is that?
What I Finished Reading This WeekThe Book of Mystic Wisdom – Dave AlbertBeing one of the two lorebooks for Ultima IV, which I am currently replaying. This one covers the game's 26 spells.
The History of Britannia – Roe R. Adams IIIBeing the other Ultima IV lorebook, which covers the world, character classes, combat, magic, monsters, and leveling. It's all presented as history vice a manual; Ultima IV just drops you into the world, and one of the joys of playing this game is figuring out what
how to play it, which you do by sussing out the clues very cleverly worked into the flavor text in these manuals.
Bog Bodies Uncovered – Miranda Aldhouse-GreenThis book is a strong contender to be the worst nonfiction book I've read this year. Aldhouse-Green is a widely referenced and apparently well-regarded historian of the Romano-Celtic period, but based on this garbage I have absolutely no idea why.
Bog Bodies Uncovered reads like the output of an early ChatGPT model: meandering, disjointed, frequently contradictory, and highly repetitive. (Take out that repetition and the book would easily be 2/3 shorter.) She is clearly titillated by the violence inflicted on these individuals--a jarring tone in a book that purports to be academic nonfiction vice true crime. Worst of all, Aldhouse-Green presents conjecture and supposition as objective fact, and her scholarship is often lacking in intellectual rigor.
( Read more... ) Like, holy crap this book is bad. It really has to be read to be believed; however, if you're at all hoping for a serious, academically sound exploration of its topic, this is emphatically
not something anyone should read.
The Story of Irish Dance – Helen BrennanThis book is a very well-written history of the development of Irish dance from the 17
th century to the present. I expected it to be interesting, but did not expect it to be so much fun. And it is, largely because dance was one of the things--alongside folklore, sport, music, and the Irish language--republicans set out to preserve and disseminate as a means of forging national identity in the decades leading up to and following Irish independence. In practice, this meant attempting to define and codify a "pure" form of Irish dance purged of English and continental influences--an impossible task given the plethora of local styles and centuries of cultural cross-pollination with Europe. But they tried, and boy, did they have Opinions. We are talking grown men conducting yearslong newspaper flamewars that would put today's TikTok antis to shame. It is
delightful. That aside,
Irish Dance is a very informative book. I learned a great deal about everything from regional styles, the history of house dances, and enforcement of the Dance Hall Act, to which dances have fallen in and out of fashion and how the overriding focus on competition over the last 70 years has changed how its danced (tiny skirts and hideous Jon Bennet-Ramsey wigs make sense if you're being judged on how high you appear to be jumping). This was a really good book and one I will read again.
Sistersong – Lucy HollandSistersong is a retelling of the
Twa Sisters Childe Ballad set in a fantasy Cornwall in the late 6
th century. Like Holland's
Song of the Huntress, it's not a perfect read, but it is a good one so long as you know ahead of time what you're in for.
( Read more... ) This is my kind of book.
Pagan Britain – Ronald HuttonA strong contender for the best nonfiction book I will read this year. Hutton is such a pleasure to read, so much so that I devoured this 400-page, size-6-font book in a matter of days.
Pagan Britain sets out to examine what can and can't be known about the religious beliefs of the isle's inhabitants from the paleolithic to the present. Hutton is a master synthesizer: it's amazing how he can make something that's essentially one giant lit review so interesting. He objectively sets out what can be definitively known from the archeological or historical record, what can be conjectured, where differences of scholarly opinion or interpretation exist, and what is modern (mis)invention. And he's refreshingly pleasant about it all--this is not a man with an axe to grind. It's not a perfect book; the latter chapters feel slightly less meaty than the earlier ones, and Hutton is strangely silent on some topics (e.g., the
Carmina Gadelica) that I'd have expected him to examine. But his enthusiasm for the subject matter--and the people who examine it, what they think about it, and why--is apparent on every page, and his commitment to academic precision on the one hand and diversity of opinion, belief, and cultural practice on the other, is wonderful. I absolutely recommend this book and will absolutely read it again.
What I Am Currently ReadingPractical Manx – Jennifer Kewley DraskauThis week I covered the initial sections on noun lenition.
Cunning Folk – Tabitha StanmoreI'm about a third of the way through and this is a breath of fresh air in comparison to the odious
Bog Bodies Uncovered.
What I'm Reading NextI acquired no new books this week.
これで以上です。
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