Recent Reading
May. 2nd, 2006 08:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inulroI read a few good reviews of the new Barbara Vine book, The Minotaur, and it was in the library last time I went, so I thought I'd give it a try. It was OK, but overall kind of disappointing. It's a good story but I didn't really gel with her writing style. There is, however, one outstanding feature - the library in the creepy old house is a labyrinth. How cool is that? I want one of those!
Ages ago I came across a copy of The Byzantine Commonwealth by Dimitri Obolensky. I thought it best to leave until I'd finished the John Julius Noriwch Byzantium trilogy, which I finally did recently. I'm not sure whether it was my brain being more feeble than usual, but I really had difficulty keeping up with the last volume. Perhaps I should have drawn myself a flow chart. I definitely enjoyed the first volume the most, which is odd because in western Europe, late antiquity is Not My Thing at all.
Anyhoo, I started The Byzantine Commonwealth last week. It's a very good thing I left this till I'd read the basic history, as Obolensky's book is about medieval Eastern Europe as influenced by the Byzantine Empire & assumes the basic knowledge. The first chapter is a historical geography of the area, which I have been making my way through very slowly with my atlas. My geographic knowledge of the Balkans & what is now Bulgaria was shockingly bad. It looks like it's going to be interesting, but not easy.
Ages ago I came across a copy of The Byzantine Commonwealth by Dimitri Obolensky. I thought it best to leave until I'd finished the John Julius Noriwch Byzantium trilogy, which I finally did recently. I'm not sure whether it was my brain being more feeble than usual, but I really had difficulty keeping up with the last volume. Perhaps I should have drawn myself a flow chart. I definitely enjoyed the first volume the most, which is odd because in western Europe, late antiquity is Not My Thing at all.
Anyhoo, I started The Byzantine Commonwealth last week. It's a very good thing I left this till I'd read the basic history, as Obolensky's book is about medieval Eastern Europe as influenced by the Byzantine Empire & assumes the basic knowledge. The first chapter is a historical geography of the area, which I have been making my way through very slowly with my atlas. My geographic knowledge of the Balkans & what is now Bulgaria was shockingly bad. It looks like it's going to be interesting, but not easy.
