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elsanePat McIntosh, The Rough Collier -- this is another historical mystery, this one set in 15th century Glasgow. (Long story short, I ventured into the library's mystery shelves looking for a specific Cadfael book, didn't find it, but discovered that trying to be the next Ellis Peters is a cottage industry. I checked out a few books that sounded interesting; results, as they say, varied. I am very out of practice with cold-pulling fiction.) This one I enjoyed! It's the bog body book. It is clever, well-written, and does a good job of sketching out a real world populated by real, individual, sympathetic people, and I enjoyed spending time with the characters.
Robert Irwin, Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography. This is fun and well written, a nice introduction to the life and thought of Ibn Khaldun, historian, philosopher, and sociologist/economist avant-les-lettres. Ibn Khaldun made his career in the 14th century Mahgreb and then Mamluk Cairo; famously, he met Timur (Tamerlane) and wrote about it. Khaldun is best known for his Muqaddimah and the unified theory of history it sets out, based on his observations of the rise and fall of dynasties in the Mahgreb; his work is full of ideas people still draw on today. I came away from this book chewing on many things, among them a new appreciation for the darkness and difficulties of the era, the astounding ability of people to project their own eras and priorities onto Khaldun's work, and the streak of selfishness that seems to be required for people to produce truly immortal intellectual achievements.
S. D. Sykes, City of Masks. This one I did not like. The book jacket promised a beautifully written, atmospheric story in 14th century Venice that threaded a murder mystery with personal pain and political intrigue, and. Well. You know those cake wrecks "what I ordered/what I got" photographs? (I'm dating myself.) Technically, all those ingredients are indeed present, if you read "beautifully written" as "features competent literary prose." The self-absorbed main character went around being contemptuous of pretty much everyone he interacted with, and the plot was stuffed with menace but rather lacking in intricacy or nuance. I'm still grumpy about it.
Robert Irwin, Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography. This is fun and well written, a nice introduction to the life and thought of Ibn Khaldun, historian, philosopher, and sociologist/economist avant-les-lettres. Ibn Khaldun made his career in the 14th century Mahgreb and then Mamluk Cairo; famously, he met Timur (Tamerlane) and wrote about it. Khaldun is best known for his Muqaddimah and the unified theory of history it sets out, based on his observations of the rise and fall of dynasties in the Mahgreb; his work is full of ideas people still draw on today. I came away from this book chewing on many things, among them a new appreciation for the darkness and difficulties of the era, the astounding ability of people to project their own eras and priorities onto Khaldun's work, and the streak of selfishness that seems to be required for people to produce truly immortal intellectual achievements.
S. D. Sykes, City of Masks. This one I did not like. The book jacket promised a beautifully written, atmospheric story in 14th century Venice that threaded a murder mystery with personal pain and political intrigue, and. Well. You know those cake wrecks "what I ordered/what I got" photographs? (I'm dating myself.) Technically, all those ingredients are indeed present, if you read "beautifully written" as "features competent literary prose." The self-absorbed main character went around being contemptuous of pretty much everyone he interacted with, and the plot was stuffed with menace but rather lacking in intricacy or nuance. I'm still grumpy about it.