This post was scheduled late partly because I was late in writing up all the books and partially because I wanted to finish some which I left half-finished in 2024! The usual caveats about writing one of these when I read like a scholar and not like a fan of romance novels apply. John Ting calls the way academics read reading like a mongrel (picking out useful morsels and then moving on, not working all the way through). My reading was disrupted when my Tolino eReader failed in late summer. And one novel which I wanted to read did not arrive until the new year!

Realien (15)

Marko Aleksić, Mediaeval Swords from Southeastern Europe: Material from 12th to 15th Century (Belgrade: Duraplast, 2007) An expansion of Ewart Oakeshott’s typology based on systematically collecting all swords in museums in eastern Europe (Oakeshott’s approach was more impressionistic, he was not trained in science and he had a day job for most of his life). One of Aleksić’s points is that the austere cruciform sword of the high middle ages was fading by 1450 as Catholic Europeans become much more comfortable with ornament, complex hilts, and blades which are not straight and two-edged. There are simple cruciform swords into the sixteenth century but after about 1450 they are not as simple and pure as the classical forms. Rating:+

Maria Guiseoouba Muzzarelli, Guardaroba Medievale: Vesti e Società del XII al XVI Secolo (Il Mulino: Bologna, 1999)

Jennifer L. Ball, Byzantine Dress: Representations of Secular Dress in Eighth- to Twelfth-Century Painting (Palgrave MacMillan: New York and Basingstoke, Hampshire, 2005) Handy short book focused on literary texts and art more than archaeology and technology. Convincing theoretical model emphasizing that Byzantine art was meant to communicate not mirror the visible world (so eg. figures can be given archaic clothing, or implausibly colourful clothing, if that communicates the right message). Some reviewers complained about the few poor illustrations but getting images and rights was hard in 2005. It needs an index and creating one for a short book is within the author’s power. Rating:~

Carole Gillis and Marie-Louise R. Nosch, eds., Ancient Textiles: Production, Craft, and Society. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Ancient Textiles, Held at Lund, Sweden, and Copenhagen, Denmark, on March 12-23, 2003 (Oxbow Books: Oxford, 2007) (Some articles are very ‘sketchy’ and lack necessary illustrations) Rating:+

Fernando Quesada Sanz, Weapons, Warriors, and Battles of Ancient Iberia (Pen & Sword, 2023) Review of sorts. Rating:+

Margherita Datini, Letters to Francesco Datini. Translated by Carolyn James and Antonio Pagliaro. Iter Press and the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Victoria University in the University of Toronto: Toronto, 2012. Rating:+

Johannes Schöbel, Fine Arms and Armor: Treasures in the Dresden Collection (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1975) Swords, shields, and armour! Rating: ~

Peter Capreau, ed., Dieric Bouts, Creator of Images (Prestel: Munich, London, and New York, 2023) Fine art book on one of the artists who inspired Michael Whelan. Some details are hard to see in online photos, commentary is clear and not too speculative. Rating:+

Christine Knowles, ed., Les Enseignements de Théodore Paléologue. Modern Humanities Research Association, Texts and Dissertations, volume 19. London: The Modern Humanities Research Association, 1983. What if the last of the Mohicans was the Paleologus prince of Montferrat in Italy?

Peter Spufford, Power and Profit: The Merchant in Medieval Europe (Thames & Hudson, 2002) A history of trade in Latin Christiendom from 1200 to 1500. Many case studies which support hypothesis by ancient historians, such as the collapse in the population and wealth of Paris after the king departed in the early fifteenth century. Extensive colour illustrations but no formal footnotes or endnotes and the catalogue numbers for the art can be hard to find. Rating:+

Colin Burgess, The Age of Stonehenge (Phoenix Press: London, 2001; first edition 1980) An archaeology of Britain in the Late Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Age. Burgess came to regret having used ‘site-names’ for periods and a chart of the periods in sequence with rough dates would help.

David Nicolle, Crusader Warfare two volumes (2007) An omnium gatherum history done very well. The writing and editing are workmanlike, the maps and illustrations not quite enough, but it works because the author has mastered his broad topic after twenty years of research and digested the material rather than simply quoting and paraphrasing. Rating:+

Sullivan, Denis F.: “A Byzantine Instructional Manual on Siege Defence: The De Obsidione Toleranda,” in J.W. Nesbitt (ed.), Byzantine Authors: Literary Activities and Preoccupations. Texts and Translations Dedicated to the Memory of Nicolas Oikonomides, Leiden: Brill 2003, pp. 139-266 The last Greek poliorcetic text which I have not read! Rating:~

Novels (16)

Andy Poulastides, Eric V. Muirhead, et al. We Have Engaged the Borg: The Oral History of the Battle of Wolf 359 (TranquilityPress, 2023) https://archiveofourown.org/works/49418989/ Star Trek fanfic Rating:+

Heather Rose Jones, The Language of Roses (Queen of Swords Press: Minneapolis, MN, 2022) Rating:+

R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War (2018) Retelling of 1935-1937 in an alternate China with shamanic powers, drunken masters. Poul Anderson would have approved of the Chinese setting, but real life is dark enough that I don’t need to relive a particularly dark period of history and volume 1 leaves a lot of Chekov’s guns on the wall. Rating:~

Effie Calvin, Daughter of the Sun (NineStar Press, 2018) “As a girl, Orsina had been certain that she would never commit any of the crimes that might cause one’s paladin status to be revoked: murder, theft, extortion, kidnapping. She did not know if kissing a chaos goddess was on that list. Perhaps the justices had not forseen a need to state it explicitly.” One question, without patriarchy or an Abrahamic religion why do people on Inthya have a nudity taboo? Rating:+

Susanna Clarke, Piranesi (Bloomsbury Publishing: New York, 2020) Rating:+

Bob Shaw, Who Goes Here? (Ace Books, 1977): From The Kelly Manning Memorial Library. Light absurdist comedy which reminds me of Monty Python and Doug Adams. Part of the story is a parody of a classic science fiction story. The remarkable cover art is not credited. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Shaw Rating:+

L. Sprague de Camp, The Continent Makers (New American Library of Canada, 1971) Collection of short stories published 1949-1951 in the Viagens Interplanetarias setting. Rating:~

Leigh Brackett, “STAR WARS Sequel Screenplay” (1978) https://www.starwarz.com/starkiller/the-empire-strikes-back-first-draft-by-leigh-brackett-transcript/ Rating:+

Robert Jackson Bennett, The Tainted Cup (2024) A very creative genre mix with fantasy, mystery, military fiction, and Kaiju in a Roman-Ottoman-East Asian setting with biotech. “What a world it is, Signum,” said Fayazi, “where you are forced to change yourself, break yourself, all for a little scrap of money.” Clever writing, elegant plotting, but its a novel for teenagers who need encouraging to try their first adventure not for adults who have tried the adventurous life and found that their brains and bodies did not cooperate. Rating:~

Bill Fawcett and Brian Thompson, eds., Masters of Fantasy (Baen: Riverdale, NY, 2004) Short story collection, the ones I remember from 20 years ago still stand out. David Weber wrote fantasy novels! Rating:+

Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens (Corgi Books, 2019, first edition 1990) Excellent comic novel about the end of the world. Pratchett’s and Gaiman’s styles work well together. Rating:+

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey (1891) Rating:+

Isaac Asimov, The Caves of Steel (1954) In a world-city, an alien robot and a human detective must partner to solve crime! Rating:~

Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun (1957) Alien robot and Terran detective solve another crime! Rating:~

Arthur Clarke, Fall of Moondust (1961) Could you surf in a hovercraft on a sea of moondust? What if something went wrong? Time to break out the emergency tobacco ration! I had never read a novel by Clarke who used to be promoted as one of the Big Three after Elron got a bit too eccentric in public. Rating:+

Mark Lawrence, The Book that Wouldn’t Burn (2023) Fantasy novel. Could not finish. Rating:~

Business (2)

Erin Brenner, The Chicago Guide for Freelance Editors: How to Take Care of Your Business, Your Clients, and Yourself from Start-Up to Sustainability (University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London, 2024) By a very entrepreneurial person, good on topics like time management, business process, and marketing which people who become freelance editors tend to be weak on. Rating:~

Michael W. Lewis, Domesticate Your Badgers: Becoming a Better Writer Through Deliberate Practice (2021) I liked this better than I should. Its written in ‘substack voice’, the chatty, confident style that people who like corporate social media use. The voice is unscientific, with phrases about “your truth” and not much guidance of what counts as a skills that can be deliberately practiced. I agree that almost all advice on how to write is useless to the reader but Lewis seems to have consumed much more of it than I have (I study the writing business, because the writers I respected growing up agreed that its much easier to find general principles for ‘how to make money from writing’ than ‘how to write’). But the basic point that each type of writing is made up of skills many of which can be practised is hard to argue with. Rating:+

Finance (4)

Robert J. Shiller, Irrational Exuberance second edition (2005) Vivid description of investor storytime from 1998.

Dave Chilton, The Wealthy Barber Returns (2011) Style reminds me of Dave Barry or Jennifer Roach. Many short chapters of 1k to 3k words. Rating:~

Dan Bortolotti, Reboot Your Portfolio: 9 Steps to Successful Investing with ETFs (Milner & Associates, 2021) A short and not very dense book. Bortolotti has come to believe that the psychology of most investors is the main thing to address, so he focuses on persuasion and a few key concepts like “keep your costs low” and “you are not going to pick investments better than teams of PhDs, and they may not do better than throwing darts at a list of securities.” Like many, it takes many examples from the US market and does not always cite sources for the performance of investments in other countries. The past hundred years were very good for stocks in the USA but the next 50 years in other countries may be different! (On p. 65 Bortolotti refers readers to something called the Credit Suisse Global Investment Returns Yearbook 2019). Rating: ~ (if you have not read his blog might be a +)

J. Bradford DeLong, Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century (Basic Books: New York, 2022) Review

People-Watching (6)

Samantha Cole, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex: An Unexpected History (Workman Publishing: New York, 2022) A short journalistic book on what the title suggests. A strength is that it focuses on the Internet before iPhones and tube sites, and before the battle between the people who use the Internet to find sex and romance and the people who want sex and bodies off the Internet got so intense. A weakness is that it tries to hide how the design and management of sites shapes user behaviour (just look at how seemingly independent-minded people acted when they got on pre-Musk twitter!) Challenging the view that smartphones made everything worse (rather than bigger) is valuable since many people have rosy ideas about the early Internet. Rating:+

L. Sprague de Camp, Time and Chance: An Autobiography (Donald M. Grant: Hampton Falls, NH, 1996) Rating:+

L. Sprague and Catherine Crook de Camp, Spirits, Stars, and Spells: The Profits and Perils of Magic (Canaveral Press: New York, 1966 resold with a new dust jacket by Owlswick Press, Philadelphia) Every bookish person with a certain kind of mind creates a giant tome or website to organize everything that can be known about a topic, only to find that the public is not as interested in it as they are. This was Sprague de Camp’s, rewritten at half length by Catherine twenty years after the publishers refused to touch it because they predicted it would not sell (and the shortened version did not sell). It did lead to his commercially successful book on lost continents. Rating:+

Charles Keith Morison, A Book Pedlar in British Columbia (1969) Memoir of a BC Public Library Commission officer who spent the 1930s and 1940s wandering around rural British Columbia helping to set up and manage libraries. Also serves as a geography of urban BC. Short and a bit jerky, with abrupt endings to sections. Rating:+

Dave Obee, The Library Book: A History of Service to British Columbia (Vancouver: British Columbia Library Association, 2011) More polished than Morison’s book with glossy paper and many colour illustrations. Rating:+

Robert Heinlein, Grumbles from the Grave, edited by Virginia Heinlein (Del Rey: New York, 1990): From the Kelly Bert Manning Memorial Library. A collection of excerpts from letters, mostly between RAH and his agent Lurton Blassingame. Heinlein was bothered by correspondence with fans taking him away from writing much like writers today fret about social media. He come across as a man of endless interests and talents: not just the Navy, fiction writing, woo, and swinging, but landscaping, architecture, drawing, and for a while even the Arabic language. There are many references to Ladies’ Home Journal and a few references to boxes full of magazines and journals and technical books which he would work through in a batch (after the war I don’t think they ever lived somewhere with a good research library). Giny’s influence is amusing, as when she refers to Leslyn MacDonald as ‘his wife of a few years’ (fifteen years is few from a certain point of view, page xvi) or wants the reader to share her indignation that John Campbell read the manuscript of Podkayne and asked ‘Bob, as a childless man in his 50s are you sure you are the person to tell American parents they are raising their daughters wrong?’ Its also an example of someone who was successful in their career without being good at everything someone in their field is supposed to be good at: Heinlein did not enjoy public speaking or back-and-forth with fans, and until his ‘dirty old man’ phase he did not publish words at a fast pace. I don’t recognize the ‘meanness of spirit’ which Isaac Asimov saw but some of these letters are kind of plaintive and might not be the sort of thing I would share. Rating:+

Miscellaneous (1)

John Cassidy, The Klutz Book of Knots (Klutz Press: Staunton CT and Palo Alto CA, 1985) Useful knots and how to tie them. Rating:+

What about my gentle readers? Did you especially enjoy any books in 2024?

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(scheduled 15 February 2025)