Sunday Sum-Up: July 30, 2023

Kim @ Traveling in Books

Jul 30

How are we almost at the end of July??

Not that I want the month of July to linger, what with the heat and humidity (seriously, I am not made for a 118°F heat index), but where did the month go? It's almost August. School supplies are back in stores, and Halloween decorations are showing up at the craft stores. Where does the time keep going?

Autumn had better not fly by like this is all I'm saying.

Obligatory Mina Photo:

The awful heat wave broke on Friday night thanks to a cold front that swept through the area and brought a bunch of thunderstorms with it. The first storm was coming through while I was on my way home from work (it was pouring, but the heat hadn't broken yet so the heat index was still 110°F while the rain was coming down. Truly a miserable- but fortunately short- walk to my building), and of course it brought a bunch of thunder and lightning. Mina is terrified of thunder, and while I keep trying to tell her it's okay, the Very Loud Noises can't hurt her, she is unconvinced and hides at the first peal.

It took her a while to build up the courage to creep out of the closet after I got home during the storm (she usually comes to greet me, as she gets treats when I come in), and of course, there was more thunder. So she scurried into the bedroom to hide under the bed for another hour, and no amount of my rattling the treat jar could lure her out until long after the storm had passed.

What I Finished Reading Last Week:

The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia by Neil Price
Wild: Tales from Early Medieval Britain by Amy Jeffs
Niccolò Rising by Dorothy Dunnett, audiobook narrated by John Banks
The Lais of Marie de France by Marie de France, translated from the French by Robert W. Henning and Roberta Ferrante

I managed to make it through The Viking Way! I wasn't sure if I was going to for a while, since it is so very dense at times, and Price includes long discussions of his sources, the research methodology that has been guiding Norse studies over the past century or so, as well as including lists of Norse archaeological sites and the artifacts found in them. But I did make it through. Did I absorb everything I read? No. Did I learn a lot? Yes, I did. Do I recommend this in general? No, as it's a dense academic text written for someone who is already well familiar with the subject of Norse history and belief. I'm just happy that I actually finished it.

Wild was a gorgeous little book I recently ordered from Blackwells. I don't remember where I first saw it, but the premise behind is Jeffs's translations of Anglo-Saxon, medieval Welsh, and Irish stories, and how they related to the physical landscape and the cultural views of it. Basically, Jeffs told an old story set in, say, the fens, and then talked about how people viewed the fens at the time and how we understand them now. Her insights are as gorgeous as her writing, and I devoured this book in a single morning. If you're at all interested in British stories, medieval history, or how we view the wilderness, then this is a book try.

Niccolò Rising is the first of Dorothy Dunnett's series about Niccolò, a young man who starts his adult life working as a dyer's apprentice in a wealthy business in Bruges, and ends up in the midst of international political and economic machinations that earn him both love and enemies. The story ranges all over Europe and deals with things like the alum trade (which seems boring at first but is intensely political). Dunnett's storytelling is very fast-paced and expects the reader to be able to keep up with all the contemporary politics. If you don't know about the ongoing dispute between the Yorkists and Lancastrians in England, she's not going to stop and explain it to you. You just have to go with it. I kept up with everything just fine since I'm already familiar with the history of the era, but while I generally enjoyed Niccolò's story, I don't think I will continue the series. Perhaps someday I'll want to see what happens to him and his many ventures, but at the moment I'm going to move on to something else.

I can't remember if I'd already read any of the Lais that Marie de France wrote during my college classes, or if I'd given them a shot afterward, but regardless, I know I hadn't read the entire collection until now. Translations of medieval works can be difficult to get through, depending on how the translator chooses to approach the work. I've read a lot of medieval poetry that feels opaque like the translator was trying very hard to make the work sound very high-minded, or trying to fit the translation into the work's original meter/rhyme scheme whether or not that setup works in English. Fortunately, this translation was very accessible, if not the most musical or dynamic. The stories were all very straightforward, which made them easy to read and that's just fine with me. I'll take accessible over lyrical any day of the week, especially if it's my first foray into a collection of stories or poems. The discussions of the lais the translators provided after each one was especially helpful, as they provided valuable if brief, historical context as well as explaining if the story was meant sincerely or satirically. Will I read this again? I'm not sure, but I did enjoy it so maybe someday I will seek out a different translation and see how it compares.

What I'm Currently Reading:

City of Brass (The Daevabad trilogy #1) by S.A. Chakraborty, audiobook narrated by Soneela Nankani (52%)
The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History by María Rosa Menocal (13%)

I was on the waitlist for the audiobook of City of Brass for a few months, and my turn finally rolled around this week, so I downloaded it via Libby and started as soon as I was done with Niccolo Rising. It's about a young woman named Nahri, a con artist and some-time healer living in 18th century Cairo. During one of her con jobs, Nahri accidentally summons Dara, a djinn warrior who turns her life upside down and brings her to Daevabad, a magical city where magical beings live under an uneasy truce that could fall apart at any moment. When Dara and Nahri arrive at a pivotal moment, their unexpected presence could cause the fragile peace to disintegrate and plunge the city into war. So far, I am enjoying this story and the detail that Chakraborty has put into it. I'm also enjoying the fact that Nahri isn't a typical sassy, not-like-other-girls heroine who blows up at everyone around her for no reason and is automatically good at everything she does. Nahri and all the other characters are fully realized characters who have real personalities and motives for the things that they do, and I am here for it. I'm just over halfway through, and I think I'll be continuing the series because I'm enjoying this first book so much.

Am I tired of medieval history yet? No. Absolutely not. Especially with a book like this, with its deceptively dull title. The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History does not sound like its out to upend Western perceptions of European history, but that is what it's trying to do. In this fairly short book (it's only about 150 pages), Menocal presents her argument that, due to longstanding prejudices, Western historians have completely ignored Europe's Islamic history and the contributions that Islamic scholars made to European history and literature during the medieval era. She also discusses a notion that I've been thinking about a lot over the past couple of weeks: that while we're obsessed with the period known as "The Renaissance", there really wasn't some sudden grand appearance of ideas and Classical learning in Europe after about the 1450s or so (the timing depends on where in Europe you're talking about). These- usually Classical Greek- ideas were always around, and have always been a part of the foundation of thought, both in Christianity and Islam since either religion came into being. Historians will talk about 'The Carolingian Renaissance' or 'the Twelfth Century Renaissance', but if we keep doing that, we end up with a flock of Renaissances that just pick up one right after the other until you get to THE Renaissance. So instead of having a bunch of little Renaissances to keep track of, perhaps we should just admit that there really aren't periods where everyone decides to be stupid and eat rocks. There are always people who are good at doing things, and many of their ideas will carry on long after they're gone.