beyond the wide world's end

I just don't know how I feel about The Walking Dead, man. Like, my feelings on all the characters tends towards "wow, these people would all be more interesting if they were eaten by zombies" and also "wow, this is so cliched it burns."

Also, I have seen better apocalypses. This one is just sort of making me twitch and wonder if I have the time to dive back into Dies the Fire or Island in the Sea of Time. (Well, I do need to start getting brushed up on the Emberverse for when I actually have time to read The High King of Montival.)

On the other hand, I doubt I'm going to stop watching; there's only three episodes left in the season, apparently, and that's more knitting time. And it's something my roommate and I can talk about! (And disagree on, I believe.)

Seriously. Three episodes in and I don't care about anyone. (Well, maybe Dale, and the blonde chick, the one whose name I can't remember. But only in the sense I find them marginally more interesting than the other characters.)

If I had time, I would totally be reading Stirling to take the bad taste out of my mouth. As it is, I shall content myself with Polybius and Livy. (And I don't care about zombies enough to wonder about an AU where Hannibal had to team up with the Roman Republic to fight off the zombie hordes.)

J.H. Thiel, author of History of Roman Naval Warfare Before the Second Punic War (which is bizarrely not on Amazon), totally agrees with my thesis statement that Rome is freakishly stubborn, a statement with which my seminar professor was bizarrely fascinated by last weak. He kept saying, "I don't usually approve of adjectives! But this one really works!"

But the terrible miscalculation [of the Carthaginians] lay in the very fact that now they had not to fight quarrelling Greeks, but solid (and stolid) Romans who never knew when they were beaten and therefore were not beaten at all, bulldogs who clung to their aims in spite of the most dreadful reverses, whose reserve strength, though severely sapped, was far from exhausted and who would certainly return to the sea in the end, unless they were knocked out while they were still shaking as a result of the terrible blows dealt them in 249.

See? Freakishly stubborn. Nine out of ten Roman historians agree; the tenth is obsessed with the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

Also, I really like the prose that a lot of the historians I'm reading for this class are using. My seminar professor is using a lot of older works -- Party Politics in the Age of Caesar was published in 1949, this one was published in 1954 -- and there's a slightly different writing style to these books than there is for the more recent ones. Although Adrian Goldsworthy is also absolutely lovely, and I would totally be reading Caesar: Life of a Colossus right now if I had the free time. Donald Kagan doesn't do much for me, though, but I'm less into Greek history anyway.

Am reading the Laxdaela Saga for class. The intro is very, um, special. And by special I mean, "I think we were reading different books." Also, sexist, but hey, there are other parts that didn't jive with what I read. (I read the saga before I read the intro.)

I mean, for one thing, I wouldn't immediately pinhole Gudrun Osvif's-daughter as a tragi-romantic heroine; she has elements of it, sure, but she has much more agency than most Western European tragi-romantic heroines. (Although I have to admit that my idea of a tragi-romantic heroine is perhaps more closely rooted in Shakespeare and early-modern literature than medieval lit, so I could be biased.) And Bolli Thorleiksson totally had personality! Just because he isn't as flashy as Kjartan Olafsson doesn't mean he's utterly devoid of personality, bah. And Jorunn Bjorn's-daughter, totally not a complete shrew, considering her husband clearly favored his concubine more than his wife. (Dude, just because a woman has personality doesn't mean she's, I don't know, either a complete bitch or some kind of archetype of the forceful matriarch or tragi-romantic heroine type. Bah, mid-sixties male academics, FAIL.)

Oh, oh, and the closing paragraph of the introduction is very...special. Yes. Special is a good word.

But dominating them all is Gudrun Osvif's-daughter, lovely and imperious, as fierce in hatred as in love, proud, vain, jealous, and infinitely desirable. Like all great women she remained an enigma all her life; and long after her death we can still argue about her, and admire her, and care about her; and wonder still who it was she really loved the most.

This is the translation I read, in case anyone is wondering. Now, if one happens to want strong, fierce female characters in medieval lit, the Scandinavian sagas are totally the place to go; the women tend to play a major part in the action, and are, a lot of the time, the core of the story. Mostly because they end up with four husbands and murdered sons and murdered parents and murdered brothers and so on, but they are fierce, and proud, and don't roll over just because a man walks on stage. Most of the time they're the ones egging on the menfolk to go and kill something already, and why the hell are they hesitating, anyway? Are they letting their emotions overwhelm their pride and/or honor?

...huh. One could do a very interesting academic paper on gender relations on the Scandinavian sagas. (Well, I do have to write an honors thesis, but I was really hoping it would be more classical than medieval, although I'm still holding out for something in that period of Late Antiquity just to tie the two together.)

Reading Beowabbit for class. Dying laughing. (Actually, the family tree at the end cracks me up just as much as the actual poem. "PETER I x 947 killed in Battle of Briar's Patch." Harold Fairhare! Welsh Wabbit, killed and eaten by Farmir Brown!)

HERE INKY CAT PRINTS OBSCURE TEXT

Then a slave or thegn or something
found a meadcup in a barrow
showed it to the elder Beowabbit
who snatched it for his very own
after laying last survivor
the thegn or slave or what have you
then found out to his dismay
that a dragon gender neuter
didn't take to having people
filch from barrow cups most golden
nor nothing else for that matter.

There are three different mystery series set in ancient Rome that I have been recced so far. Of course there are. Oh, writers, never change. *beams*

(I think it was Davis's Falco books that my professor was talking about, BTW.)

Am still reading about the Punic Wars (what, y'all don't pre-study before classes start? How very Hermione Granger of me). Rome is fucking awesome, you guys. Hannibal is so very confused, poor guy: Rome is not playing by Hellenic rules. "Take your bloody victory and shove it!" Rome roars, and Hannibal goes, "...but I just slaughtered 50,000 of your soldiers, and I have 8000 Roman prisoners." "WE ARE FREAKING ROME WE DO NOT PAY RANSOMS AND WE DO NOT LOSE WARS." "...do I have to kill everyone?"

Have finished The Fourth Crusade, which was -- like all the other Crusades, except moreso -- the biggest clusterfuck you can imagine. Oh, Constantinople, I am so sorry. I really did not mean to get this emotionally invested in the Byzantine Empire, of all the damned things.

I now hate Western Europe, by the way, though my love for Venice is pure and true. There was such a fundamental difference of opinion between the Byzantines and the Latins! This book is going on my list of non-fiction to rec, although I'm not sure how well it works without having some background knowledge of the Crusades and the Byzantine Empire. (It was one of my textbooks. What, you don't read your textbooks until after the class and the final are both over? I know, I fail at academia.) It is seeming less and less likely that my field is going to be primarily Western Europe; if I lean medieval/early modern, I will probably go for either Italy or the Byzantine Empire, and if I go ancient/classical...well, again, we end up with Rome or Greece, heh.

I wonder if I can put the sack of a city in Dust? It's possible -- I think we're emotionally invested enough in Cair Paravel, and we're going to spend a lot of time in Anvard -- but I'm not sure how likely we are to see a sack onscreen, given that the Calormenes are already in Cair Paravel. Maybe in an introduction/interlude. I am not sure what is happening in Cair Paravel, and Anvard is a different matter. (For clarification: there are a few things I am wedded to in the novel, and what happens with Archenland is, in theory, the climax of part two. Yeah, I don't know what else is happening. I am always open to shoving new things in given whatever historical era I happen to be studying at the moment!)

I HAVE FINALLY FOUND A VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF THE PENIS BIRD.

My professor finally put up all the powerpoints from the semester, because of the final (tomorrow...*dies*), and this one hadn't been up already, and do you know what googling "penis bird" gets you? Not classical Greek art, I'll tell you that.

( screencap beneath the cut )

For brain bleach, I will offer up the Derveni Krater, which is fucking awesome and of which some variant is going to show up in Dust, somehow.

The Crusades have to have been the biggest clusterfuck in history, and that's saying something.

ETA: Whoever is throwing the party and blasting music outside is the most heartless bastard alive. You want to party and blast music, go down to the Quarter! It's JazzFest weekend! Party on your own time! *snarl*

It's probably some dorm's official party, but I don't care.

Life was hard back in the days before Internet and cable, you know.

Perhaps the most celebrated [sergeanty service] among historians is that attached to the manor of Hemingstone in Suffolk, whose tenant was to leap, whistle and fart for the king's amusement every Christmas Day.

So far, in the rankings of medieval military historians I have read, for readability: John Sadler (Border Fury), Michael Prestwich (Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: The English Experience), Maurice Keen (Chivalry), and waaaaaay down at the bottom, David Cornell (Bannockburn).

I just wish I'd actually read through all these books; do not ask how far along I am on my big research paper for Medieval England. You know, the one due Thursday morning. FAIL BEDLAM. (However, I am fairly secure in the knowledge that I will probably get at least a C on the paper, despite the fact that I haven't started it yet, and will probably get at least a B in the class, because I got As on both midterms.)

You know, by now I should pretty much take it as a given that when I bear an irrational dislike for a book, the rest of the class will enjoy it greatly and the professor will think I am a little crazy. *dramatic sigh*

Although seriously, if anyone thinks Bannockburn: The Triumph of Robert the Bruce was novelistic, they have been reading the wrong novels, and I will have book recommendations after class. I'm actually pretty surprised there was such a general concensus that the book was novelistic, because...no, it wasn't. Sure, David Cornell talked a lot about how the battlefield looked afterwards, and how tired and sore the English soldiers must have been after sleeping in their armor, and how cold the waters of the Bannock Burn must have been, but that hardly makes a book novelistic. Also, seriously, for the love of God, stop talking about how Robert Bruce "would have thought" or King Edward "must have felt" or how the soldiers "might have considered", because that's just annoying. And that does not make a book novelistic either. Nonfiction doesn't have to be novelistic to be good, or even readable! Do you know how many bad novels there are? Yearning for a book to be novelistic does not make it good, and in many cases, can just make it (a) bad or (b) annoying.

I've been thinking about this, about my reaction to this book, and -- it's not the book is bad, because it's not. It has several actual flaws (MAPS PRAISE ATHENA), but by the end it -- didn't leave me cold, but it left me wondering why I had just wasted several days of my life reading the book, when Cornell's general conclusion was that the battle was utterly pointless and had accomplished a grand total of nothing. At that point I was just left going, "Why the hell did I read this book to figure that out? Why the hell did you write this book?" Because that's what it came down to -- maybe it was just his writing style -- but I got the distinct impression that Cornell just didn't give a damn about anything he was writing about. It read like -- a paper, that someone does for a class, but not an actual topic that he was passionate about. The other book that we read for class, King John, was something that you could actuall tell W.L. Warren was excited about. Cornell -- it just read like he was intellectually interested in the subject, but he didn't actual care, he wasn't excited about it. And it could have been really interesting -- engaging, even. And it wasn't hard to read, wasn't boring, but the book just lacked that spark that would have made me excited about the subject, and now I just kind of want to avoid Scotland and England fighting for the next century or so (which is evidently going to be a little hard to do, because next up is the Hundred Years War).

Also, the other thing he did? Left out the juicy little bits that will grab a reader's attention. History's full of them, but did we get any of them? No. Thus adding to the "he didn't really care" feeling I got off the book.