[books 2013] Catching up - the end of May
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inulro33. The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman by Nancy Marie Brown
The woman in the title is Gudrid, who appears in the Greenland and Vinland sagas, who travelled from Iceland to Greenland and Vinland, and later in life made a pilgrimage to Rome.
As with most books on the early medieval period aimed the general reader, I came to it wondering how the author has padded out the source material to make a book.
The answer here is with lots of archaeology, experimental archaeology and travelogues. The result is an entertaining and really informative read about daily life in early Iceland, Greenland and Vinland. It brought home to me the immense hardhships of life in those places in a way that none of the previous (numerous) books I've read on the subject have managed.
There are interviews with many of the experts who are researching the settlement age in Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland, and Brown spends a summer working on a dig in the far north of Iceland.
Brown is mainly interested in recreating women's lives - but this is extremely relevant, as the only export that the Icelanders had to trade for much-needed materials they couldn't get in Iceland, was wool cloth. Which was made by women.
Sometimes she waxes lyrical about imagining Gudrid in certain situations, but always makes it clear where she is letting her imagination go, then presents the evidence for why she started thinking this way.
I do recommend this book, even though her American inability to cope with the metric system (and assumption that all her readers are also thus limited) is annoying at times.
34. A Scandal in Bohemia and Other Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle
Prior to starting this round of re-reads (I read The Hound of the Baskervilles not too long ago), I last read the original Holmes stories at about the age of 12. As a result, they're a lot easier to read than I recalled!
The stories in this collection are simultaneously more and less engaging than I remembered. The writing is more interesting, as are the plots, but it's basically all about Holmes being all superior and talking down to everyone - not much to get to grips with at all.
I've got one more of these small collections left (the ones the Radio Times put out to coincide with the BBC's Sherlock reboot).
The woman in the title is Gudrid, who appears in the Greenland and Vinland sagas, who travelled from Iceland to Greenland and Vinland, and later in life made a pilgrimage to Rome.
As with most books on the early medieval period aimed the general reader, I came to it wondering how the author has padded out the source material to make a book.
The answer here is with lots of archaeology, experimental archaeology and travelogues. The result is an entertaining and really informative read about daily life in early Iceland, Greenland and Vinland. It brought home to me the immense hardhships of life in those places in a way that none of the previous (numerous) books I've read on the subject have managed.
There are interviews with many of the experts who are researching the settlement age in Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland, and Brown spends a summer working on a dig in the far north of Iceland.
Brown is mainly interested in recreating women's lives - but this is extremely relevant, as the only export that the Icelanders had to trade for much-needed materials they couldn't get in Iceland, was wool cloth. Which was made by women.
Sometimes she waxes lyrical about imagining Gudrid in certain situations, but always makes it clear where she is letting her imagination go, then presents the evidence for why she started thinking this way.
I do recommend this book, even though her American inability to cope with the metric system (and assumption that all her readers are also thus limited) is annoying at times.
34. A Scandal in Bohemia and Other Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle
Prior to starting this round of re-reads (I read The Hound of the Baskervilles not too long ago), I last read the original Holmes stories at about the age of 12. As a result, they're a lot easier to read than I recalled!
The stories in this collection are simultaneously more and less engaging than I remembered. The writing is more interesting, as are the plots, but it's basically all about Holmes being all superior and talking down to everyone - not much to get to grips with at all.
I've got one more of these small collections left (the ones the Radio Times put out to coincide with the BBC's Sherlock reboot).
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Date: 2013-06-12 12:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-13 05:58 pm (UTC)