January books round-up
Feb. 1st, 2013 12:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardI dunno, I've been keeping track of what I read for the past few years. I didn't do an end-of-the-year round-up, but I thought it might be interesting to do one each month? I like seeing what other people are reading, so maybe other people feel the same way. And since I do keep track of everything I read, might as well, right?
I started off with a couple of holdovers from 2012, David Mattingly's An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire and Richard Bauman's Crime and Punishment in Ancient Rome, both for my postgraduate degree. I'm still working my way through the Mattingly -- my chart says I started it on September 28, 2012 -- since that one isn't specifically for a class, it's general background. It's slow-going, though I haven't quite worked out why.
During the beginning of the month I was still on vacation, so I have a pile of old favorites and fiction that I read then. The first book I read (and finished!) on New Year's Day was Tamora Pierce's Melting Stones, and that triggered a full-on reread of all the Circle of Magic and The Circle Opens books. There was also some Diana Wynne Jones (Year of the Griffin) and Robin McKinley (Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits), and I'd just started on a reread of Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles when I had to fly back to England; I am actually still in the middle of Calling on Dragons, but I didn't bring it with me, so I'll pick it up again the next time I go home or if I can find it at the Leicester Central Library. I read one other book for school while I was home, Naomi Janowitz's Magic in the Roman World.
The first thing I started reading in England was a reread of The Hobbit. This is another one that's still in progress, because now we've reached the Lonely Mountain and Smaug's roaring around eating ponies while Thorin sulks, and I don't want to read to the end because I know what happens. Which is okay, I'll get around to it sometime. The majority of the remaining books I read in January were also for my fall term papers, which were on incest laws in the Roman Empire and magic in the Roman world respectively. Since there aren't exactly a lot of books on Roman incest, they were all on magic in the ancient world.
I also reread Theocritus's Idylls (translated by Robert Wells); one of my goals for this term is to read one piece of classical literature a week. (Sadly I haven't yet started this week's, whoops.) I also read Giles Milton's White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves, which is a book I first saw in the Stanford University bookstore in the summer of 2006 and have wanted to read ever since, and only just got my hands on (yay!). Right now, I'm reading Gwyn Morgan's 69 A.D.: Year of the Four Emperors, whose title is pretty self-explanatory. I started it yesterday, so it still sort of counts as January reading!
The complete list (finished):
Crime and Punishment in Ancient Rome, Richard A. Bauman
Melting Stones, Tamora Pierce
Year of the Griffin, Diana Wynne Jones
Sandry's Book, Tamora Pierce
Tris's Book, Tamora Pierce
Daja's Book, Tamora Pierce
Briar's Book, Tamora Pierce
Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits, Robin McKinley & Peter Dickinson
Magic Steps, Tamora Pierce
Magic in the Roman World, Naomi Janowitz
Street Magic, Tamora Pierce
Cold Fire, Tamora Pierce
Shatterglass, Tamora Pierce
The Will of the Empress, Tamora Pierce
Dealing with Dragons, Patricia C. Wrede
Searching for Dragons, Patricia C. Wrede
Taboo, Magic, Spirits, Eli Edward Burriss
Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World, Matthew W. Dickie
Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World, John G. Gager
Magic in the Ancient Greek World, Derek Collins
The Idylls, Theocritus (trans. Robert Wells)
White Gold, Giles Milton
Books in progress:
An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire, David Mattingly
Calling on Dragons, Patricia C. Wrede
The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
69 A.D.: Year of the Four Emperors, Gwyn Morgan
The notes that I keep for myself are considerably more substantial; I also keep a color-coded chart during the school year of what and how much I read each day of the week and for each class (this includes books and articles, but not websites, since I can't easily track pagecount there). If anyone is actually interested in that, I can screencap my Excel charts and post them. (I'll be honest: I actually don't know how to use Excel, I just know that it's easier to do charts there than in Word!)
The amount I'm reading is skewed a little because I was on vacation at the beginning of the month: I can tell you from past years that I normally don't (or can't) read that much fiction when I'm in school, alas.
I started off with a couple of holdovers from 2012, David Mattingly's An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire and Richard Bauman's Crime and Punishment in Ancient Rome, both for my postgraduate degree. I'm still working my way through the Mattingly -- my chart says I started it on September 28, 2012 -- since that one isn't specifically for a class, it's general background. It's slow-going, though I haven't quite worked out why.
During the beginning of the month I was still on vacation, so I have a pile of old favorites and fiction that I read then. The first book I read (and finished!) on New Year's Day was Tamora Pierce's Melting Stones, and that triggered a full-on reread of all the Circle of Magic and The Circle Opens books. There was also some Diana Wynne Jones (Year of the Griffin) and Robin McKinley (Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits), and I'd just started on a reread of Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles when I had to fly back to England; I am actually still in the middle of Calling on Dragons, but I didn't bring it with me, so I'll pick it up again the next time I go home or if I can find it at the Leicester Central Library. I read one other book for school while I was home, Naomi Janowitz's Magic in the Roman World.
The first thing I started reading in England was a reread of The Hobbit. This is another one that's still in progress, because now we've reached the Lonely Mountain and Smaug's roaring around eating ponies while Thorin sulks, and I don't want to read to the end because I know what happens. Which is okay, I'll get around to it sometime. The majority of the remaining books I read in January were also for my fall term papers, which were on incest laws in the Roman Empire and magic in the Roman world respectively. Since there aren't exactly a lot of books on Roman incest, they were all on magic in the ancient world.
I also reread Theocritus's Idylls (translated by Robert Wells); one of my goals for this term is to read one piece of classical literature a week. (Sadly I haven't yet started this week's, whoops.) I also read Giles Milton's White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves, which is a book I first saw in the Stanford University bookstore in the summer of 2006 and have wanted to read ever since, and only just got my hands on (yay!). Right now, I'm reading Gwyn Morgan's 69 A.D.: Year of the Four Emperors, whose title is pretty self-explanatory. I started it yesterday, so it still sort of counts as January reading!
The complete list (finished):
Crime and Punishment in Ancient Rome, Richard A. Bauman
Melting Stones, Tamora Pierce
Year of the Griffin, Diana Wynne Jones
Sandry's Book, Tamora Pierce
Tris's Book, Tamora Pierce
Daja's Book, Tamora Pierce
Briar's Book, Tamora Pierce
Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits, Robin McKinley & Peter Dickinson
Magic Steps, Tamora Pierce
Magic in the Roman World, Naomi Janowitz
Street Magic, Tamora Pierce
Cold Fire, Tamora Pierce
Shatterglass, Tamora Pierce
The Will of the Empress, Tamora Pierce
Dealing with Dragons, Patricia C. Wrede
Searching for Dragons, Patricia C. Wrede
Taboo, Magic, Spirits, Eli Edward Burriss
Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World, Matthew W. Dickie
Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World, John G. Gager
Magic in the Ancient Greek World, Derek Collins
The Idylls, Theocritus (trans. Robert Wells)
White Gold, Giles Milton
Books in progress:
An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire, David Mattingly
Calling on Dragons, Patricia C. Wrede
The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
69 A.D.: Year of the Four Emperors, Gwyn Morgan
The notes that I keep for myself are considerably more substantial; I also keep a color-coded chart during the school year of what and how much I read each day of the week and for each class (this includes books and articles, but not websites, since I can't easily track pagecount there). If anyone is actually interested in that, I can screencap my Excel charts and post them. (I'll be honest: I actually don't know how to use Excel, I just know that it's easier to do charts there than in Word!)
The amount I'm reading is skewed a little because I was on vacation at the beginning of the month: I can tell you from past years that I normally don't (or can't) read that much fiction when I'm in school, alas.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-02-01 03:28 pm (UTC)I've been reading The Hobbit during my commute to work over the last few weeks and as of this morning, I am exactly right at the same point where you are in the book.
And oh, I loved The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Wrede. Cimorene and Morwen were awesome characters.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-02-01 07:34 pm (UTC)Cimorene and Morwen are amazing. I'm pretty sure I wanted to be Morwen when I grew up when I was little. Well. Maybe I still want to be Morwen when I grow up.