bedlamsbard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bedlamsbard) wrote2013-04-01 11:35 am
bedlamsbard) wrote2013-04-01 11:35 am
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March book roundup
Definitely read more books this month that last month, probably largely because (1) I had papers due and (2) I was (and still am) on vacation during the last week of March, which means that I basically tossed Rome out the window and settled down to work at my to-read pile. (Honestly, I should take a picture of it, it's absurd.)
My crowning achievement this month is finally finishing the book I started last September, An Imperial Possession. It's not a hard book, it's not even terribly thick compared to some of the archaeological theory I've read, it was just one of those books where for some reason it was really hard to read more than a chapter every couple of weeks. But I finished it!
The complete list (finished):
An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire, David Mattingly
Moon Over Soho, Ben Aaronovitch
Whispers Under Ground, Ben Aaronovitch
Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome, Arthur M. Eckstein
Master and God, Lindsey Davis
Graeco-Roman Slave Markets: Fact or Fiction?, Monika Trumper
The Murder of Regilla, Sarah B. Pomeroy
Clockwork Princess, Cassandra Clare
The Kingdom of Gods, N.K. Jemisin
The Mark of the Horse Lord, Rosemary Sutcliff
Lost Things, Melissa Scott and Jo Graham
Darkness, Take My Hand, Dennis Lehane
A Trail of Fire, Diana Gabaldon
Books in progress:
Calling on Dragons, Patricia C. Wrede
The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Homeric Hymns, trans. Apostolos N. Athanassakis
Rome in the East: The Transformation of an Empire, Warwick Ball
The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army in the East, Benjamin Isaac
The Convenient Marriage, Georgette Heyer (abridged audiobook, read by Richard Armitage)
Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
Did Not Finish:
The Medieval Universities, A.B. Cobban
True Soldier Gentlemen, Adrian Goldsworthy
Of the thirteen books I read, two were for directly for classes (Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, & the Rise of Rome -- this one is really interesting, by the way, if you like that sort of thing -- and Graeco-Roman Slave Markets: Fact or Fiction?, which was for a paper), while two were general Roman Studies reading, An Imperial Possession and The Murder of Regilla. This last might be of interest to those interested in women's history in the classical period, if you want to end the book really angry at someone who's been dead for two thousand years; I went off and ranted at my flatmate about it for about fifteen minutes. The other nine books were for fun; a couple of times this month I sat down and read five or six hundred page books all in one go in a few hours occasional bathroom breaks, which is always fun but also pretty exhausting.
Quite a few books still in progress as of April -- a couple are holdovers from before, the Wrede is still at home in another country an ocean and a continent away, alas, though I think I'm almost emotionally ready to tackle The Hobbit again. I'd like to finish up The Homeric Hymns. (You'll notice my original clever plan to read one piece of contemporary Greek or Roman writing kind of...collapsed, since I got stuck on the Homeric Hymns.) The two books on Rome in the East are for school, half-background, half for class; the Ball's pretty interesting, since that's the one I'm further into at the moment, but it's always strange to read someone who isn't primarily a Romanist. I started one of my many Richard Armitage audiobooks, mostly as background to some complicated cable knits that I couldn't look at a screen while working, but I appear to be comfortable enough with the pattern now that I can watch TV and knit at the same time.
This month I had a couple of DNFs -- The Medieval Universities was on the list from February, but I finally decided it wasn't going to get rid and sent it back to the library. I started the Goldsworthy book because I quite like his nonfiction -- he's a classicist and a military historian -- but I gave up on his Napoleonic War novel 25 pages in when I came down with a bad case of hating the characters. (I think there might have been an element there of the fact that the qualities that make a good history writer do not necessarily make a good novelist, but I don't know if I got far enough into the book to tell.)
I expect that April will be a very healthy reading month: I'm on vacation for most of it, although it's supposed to be a research vacation for my projects and, ohgodhelp, my dissertation. (I don't have a topic yet, so I have to read all the things and figure out what it's gonna be on.)
My crowning achievement this month is finally finishing the book I started last September, An Imperial Possession. It's not a hard book, it's not even terribly thick compared to some of the archaeological theory I've read, it was just one of those books where for some reason it was really hard to read more than a chapter every couple of weeks. But I finished it!
The complete list (finished):
An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire, David Mattingly
Moon Over Soho, Ben Aaronovitch
Whispers Under Ground, Ben Aaronovitch
Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome, Arthur M. Eckstein
Master and God, Lindsey Davis
Graeco-Roman Slave Markets: Fact or Fiction?, Monika Trumper
The Murder of Regilla, Sarah B. Pomeroy
Clockwork Princess, Cassandra Clare
The Kingdom of Gods, N.K. Jemisin
The Mark of the Horse Lord, Rosemary Sutcliff
Lost Things, Melissa Scott and Jo Graham
Darkness, Take My Hand, Dennis Lehane
A Trail of Fire, Diana Gabaldon
Books in progress:
Calling on Dragons, Patricia C. Wrede
The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Homeric Hymns, trans. Apostolos N. Athanassakis
Rome in the East: The Transformation of an Empire, Warwick Ball
The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army in the East, Benjamin Isaac
The Convenient Marriage, Georgette Heyer (abridged audiobook, read by Richard Armitage)
Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
Did Not Finish:
The Medieval Universities, A.B. Cobban
True Soldier Gentlemen, Adrian Goldsworthy
Of the thirteen books I read, two were for directly for classes (Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, & the Rise of Rome -- this one is really interesting, by the way, if you like that sort of thing -- and Graeco-Roman Slave Markets: Fact or Fiction?, which was for a paper), while two were general Roman Studies reading, An Imperial Possession and The Murder of Regilla. This last might be of interest to those interested in women's history in the classical period, if you want to end the book really angry at someone who's been dead for two thousand years; I went off and ranted at my flatmate about it for about fifteen minutes. The other nine books were for fun; a couple of times this month I sat down and read five or six hundred page books all in one go in a few hours occasional bathroom breaks, which is always fun but also pretty exhausting.
Quite a few books still in progress as of April -- a couple are holdovers from before, the Wrede is still at home in another country an ocean and a continent away, alas, though I think I'm almost emotionally ready to tackle The Hobbit again. I'd like to finish up The Homeric Hymns. (You'll notice my original clever plan to read one piece of contemporary Greek or Roman writing kind of...collapsed, since I got stuck on the Homeric Hymns.) The two books on Rome in the East are for school, half-background, half for class; the Ball's pretty interesting, since that's the one I'm further into at the moment, but it's always strange to read someone who isn't primarily a Romanist. I started one of my many Richard Armitage audiobooks, mostly as background to some complicated cable knits that I couldn't look at a screen while working, but I appear to be comfortable enough with the pattern now that I can watch TV and knit at the same time.
This month I had a couple of DNFs -- The Medieval Universities was on the list from February, but I finally decided it wasn't going to get rid and sent it back to the library. I started the Goldsworthy book because I quite like his nonfiction -- he's a classicist and a military historian -- but I gave up on his Napoleonic War novel 25 pages in when I came down with a bad case of hating the characters. (I think there might have been an element there of the fact that the qualities that make a good history writer do not necessarily make a good novelist, but I don't know if I got far enough into the book to tell.)
I expect that April will be a very healthy reading month: I'm on vacation for most of it, although it's supposed to be a research vacation for my projects and, ohgodhelp, my dissertation. (I don't have a topic yet, so I have to read all the things and figure out what it's gonna be on.)