Conversations With Dead People

Reading, week of 11/9

2009-11-14T19:51:00.000-08:00

I promise next week I'll start with those writing craft and life posts. This week I was too busy actually doing the writing!

The theme of my reading week was Nostalgia. I picked up Betsy-Tacy (Maud Hart Lovelace, 1940) from the library hoping that I could read it to my five-year-old daughter who's just starting to like chapter books for read-aloud time. She wasn't interested--I'm learning not to bother with any book for her that doesn't have an animal on the cover!

But I'd heard so many people say the Betsy-Tacy series was an all-time favorite that I decided to read it myself anyway. And I enjoyed it, in a pure nostalgia sort of way. Betsy and Tacy are two little girls growing up Minnesota circa 1900. It's a sweet book, and I liked it enough that I'll probably try the later books, where I understand the reading level gets higher and the plots more complex.

In The Food of a Younger Land (Mark Kurlansky, 2009), Kurlansky discovers a never-published WPA project from 1941 looking at local and regional American foodways and cuisine. He provides an introduction and excerpts. If you're interested in the intersection between food and culture, you'll enjoy the book just to see how much has changed in the last 70 years or so. E.g. tacos were unknown outside of the Southwest, Pacific salmon were considered inferior to the Atlantic variety, etc. It's not the kind of book you read cover to cover. I focused on what I wished I could eat (everything from the Vermont sugaring-off, game dinners) and what I'm glad I don't have to (chitlins, lutefisk, and yes, I know both of those still exist).

Reading, week of 11/2

2009-11-07T23:11:00.000-08:00

I'm planning some changes to my blog in the next week or so. I want to make it less of a reading diary and more about writing, research, and the writing life.

I'm still figuring out how I'm going to go about that. I may set up a weekly schedule--say, Research Mondays, Craft Wednesdays, and Time Management Fridays--or I may just commit to blogging three times a week on a writing-related topic but not being terribly regimented about topics and times.

But I have decided to limit my reading diary posts to once per week. With that in mind, here's what I've been reading the first week of November:

The End of Empire: Attila the Hun and the Fall of Rome (Christopher Kelly, 2009): Until recently, I was only familiar with the Roman Empire at its peak in the 1st Century AD. I knew early church history and the Marcus Didius Falco novels (there's you a contrast!). But of late I've been seeing a lot of books about the fall of Rome. (Imperial anxiety on my own nation's part, perhaps?) The End of Empire explores what can be known about Attila the Hun and how his actions helped cause the collapse of the western empire within a few decades of his death. I had trouble keeping all the eastern and western emperors and their generals and diplomats straight, but it helped fill out my picture of a corner of history I'm just beginning to explore.

I read the first chapter of Betraying Season (Marissa Doyle, 2009) several years ago when Doyle entered it in an RWA contest I was judging. Between the time my daughter was born in 2004 and when I went back to work in late 2005, I must've judged over a dozen writing contests. RWA chapters are always looking for volunteer judges, and I had enough time on my hands to answer most of the pleas for judges that went out. Betraying Season was one of the two or three most outstanding entries I encountered, and I was thrilled when Doyle sold it and its prequel, Bewitching Season. It's the story of a magically gifted young British aristocrat in the 1830's trying to improve her witchy powers while visiting her old governess in Ireland. If you liked Sorcery and Cecelia, give Doyle's books a try.

Cake Wrecks (Jen Yates, 2009) contains many favorites from the Cake Wrecks blog along with some new material. Fun for a laugh after a long week.

Flesh and Fire

2009-11-01T00:56:00.000-07:00

Flesh and Fire (Laura Anne Gilman, 2009) is epic fantasy with an unusual twist--the otherworldly aspect of the story is magical wine. It's just the kind of fantasy I like best, set in a recognizable alternative Europe, with an epic, historical feel but without the standard swords & sorcery quest structure. And the world-building is wonderful, enough to hold my attention all by itself. That said, I was just warming to the characters and starting to put together the plot threads when the book ended--it's more set-up for the rest of the series than a self-contained story.

Napoleon

2009-10-30T22:30:00.000-07:00

As my longtime readers know, I am not fond of Napoleon. Paul Johnson is likewise not fond of Napoleon. But as I read his brief 2002 biography (Napoleon: A Life), I found myself wanting to defend the emperor. Johnson sees Napoleonic France as the prototype of the modern totalitarian state, and therefore Napoleon as the progenitor of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and the like. Possibly it's because I've seen far too many sloppy comparisons to Hitler and Nazism over the past few years, but that left me rolling my eyes. He might have a point if he didn't insist on exaggerating it, tossing around the "evils" and the Hitler references, and blaming ideas whose time had come on one person.

Despite my annoyance with the author, I'm not sorry I read the book. When you're researching someone intensively for your own writing, it never hurts to get another perspective, even if you disagree with it. But if you read one Napoleon biography, this shouldn't be your choice. I'm not sure what should be--I like Evangeline Bruce's Napoleon and Josephine and Christopher Hibbert's Napoleon: His Wives and Women, but those focus too heavily on his personal life to be comprehensive. If I find one that leaves me nodding and saying, "Yes, that's him," I'll be sure to let my five loyal readers know. :-)

Across the Nightingale Floor

2009-10-27T20:02:00.000-07:00

I love the idea of Across the Nightingale Floor (Lian Hearn, 2003), a fantasy set in an alternative feudal Japan, complete with samurai and ninjas. I didn't quite love the characters, however--I just liked them--which kept me from being fully hooked by the story, though I finished it just to see how the plot would resolve and which of the three threads of his history the protagonist would choose to follow.

Shipwrecked and Seduced

2009-10-27T19:51:00.000-07:00

Yes, the title is corny. I know. But books shouldn't be judged by their covers or their titles...though I have to admit that Shipwrecked and Seduced (Amanda McCabe, 2009) is an accurate description of the story in question!

I say "story" and not "book" because this isn't a full-length novel. It's part of Harlequin's "Undone" series of short historical romance stories, only available electronically. It's not something I would've sought out on my own, since I prefer longer stories and have trouble suspending disbelief that a couple could fall in love and commit to a lifetime together in 50 pages or less! But an online writers group I'm part of is doing a challenge where we try to write an Undone, so I decided to read a few. (I ended up deciding not to participate in the challenge because I've got too much going on finishing my alternative history and getting it ready to submit in the next month.)

This story's heroine is a young Spanish servant girl who's the only survivor of a shipwreck in 16th century Cuba. She's mistaken for a highborn passenger and decides to play along, but a handsome colonial official suspects she's not what she seems...

It's a very quick, very sexy story. It's well-done, evoking a sense of place and time in a few short pages, so I'd recommend it if the length and sensuality sound appealing to you.

Three Napoleonic Battles

2009-10-18T23:57:00.000-07:00

In a way, I learned about Napoleon as a commander backwards. My interest in all things Napoleonic initially grew out of my reading of Regency romances, where the occasional hero is a veteran who served under Wellington. Nowadays it's rare, but in the 80's and 90's one sometimes ran across a Regency set in Brussels in the run-up to Waterloo, at the Congress of Vienna, or in Spain or Portugal during the Peninsular Campaign. Those were always my favorites, since I had a lurking interest in military history (possibly because one of my brothers started West Point the year I started kindergarten), and I liked the higher stakes than your typical Regency set against London high society or the pastoral English countryside.

Then I stumbled across Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series. I have to confess I started with the TV movies, after watching The Fellowship of the Ring and wanting to know what else the Boromir actor was in. But I read the books, too, and started researching the history behind them. Which meant mostly the Peninsular War, and mostly Wellington. Like the Great Duke, I first encountered Napoleon at Waterloo. As my interest in the era and the people broadened and I started to want to write about it myself, I learned more about Napoleon, but I still know Waterloo better than anything else from his career.

I picked up Three Napoleonic Battles (Harold T. Parker, 1944) as part of my ongoing effort to get a broader perspective on Napoleon's career. Parker analyzes the battles of Friedland (1807), Aspern-Essling (1809), and, yes, Waterloo (1815). In the first, Napoleon was at the top of his game and facing a Russian commander who made serious blunders, in the second he made blunders of his own against a solid opponent and was checked, but through his and his marshals' skill and his opponent's overcaution avoided a crushing defeat, and, well, we know what happened at Waterloo. (At least I hope we do. If you're reading this and thinking, "I vaguely recall Napoleon from high school history class, but isn't Wellington a boot and Waterloo an ABBA song?" please talk to me. I have books to recommend. You'll love them, I promise. History is exciting, and 1789-1815 especially so.) For the most part, Parker's conclusions are pretty straightforward--Napoleon got older. His health and energy declined, enough that he lost a mental step, too, though he was obviously still beyond unusually intelligent. His natural optimism was perhaps less tempered by realism--e.g. his stubborn refusal to believe the evidence that the entire Prussian army was indeed marching to unite with the Anglo-Dutch forces at Waterloo. Plus, his opponents got better, both in the sense of learning his game plan and that over decades of war, the cream of the other powers' generals eventually rose to the top.

For all that, it's a worthwhile and well-researched read, dense with detail. I expect I'll be turning back to the Friedland and Aspern-Essling sections as I develop my alternative history, and I never get tired of learning more about Waterloo. Wellington once commented (I'm paraphrasing wildly here) that you might as well write the history of a ball as of a battle--everyone who was there gives a different account, and it's impossible to pin down what really happened. To me, that's precisely what makes Waterloo especially so endlessly fascinating. Every time you look at it from another angle, you get another facet of the glorious horrible chaotic epic of it all.

What I've been reading lately

2009-10-11T19:46:00.000-07:00

In my continuing Kindle excursion through the worlds of Louisa May Alcott, I read Jo's Boys. It is indeed very preachy, and I confess to skimming past a lot of the sermons to find out what happens to everyone. Oh, and if I'd written it, everything would've turned out differently for Dan. I sometimes envy 19th century writers--I'd give a lot to be able to introduce my characters with a nice backstory synopsis like Jane Austen does, for example--but I'm glad I don't have to set up characters for punishment as Moral Examples.

Staying in YA but on a much lighter note, I curled up with The Ex Games (Jennifer Echols, 2009). The heroine, a snowboarder with fear of heights left over from a childhood accident, has to overcome her fears to defeat her ex-boyfriend in a battle of the sexes that engrosses their whole high school, and incidentally to take advantage of a chance to take lessons from a pro.

Refuse to Choose (2007) was my second self-help book by Barbara Sher. In it, she describes "Scanners"--people who have trouble settling on one single direction in life. I recognized myself in almost every page. I've always felt like I should have some grand passion or vocation. And in one sense I do--my love for history and my hunger to write have been with me all my life--but at various points I've wanted to be a reporter, a theologian, a paramedic, a professor, etc., etc. And because I've never been able to make up my mind which one is my One True Vocation, I haven't done any of those things. Sher's book helped me see that it doesn't have to be all or nothing. She suggests that many Scanners search for a "Good Enough Job"--one that will match their interests and work style well enough to give them stability and contentment, while leaving them enough life space and mental energy to pursue other interests at the same time. Somehow that phrase alone was a revelation for me. A day job isn't quite the same thing as a Good Enough Job, you know?

Sad news

2009-09-30T16:07:00.000-07:00

I won't be having a baby in April after all. I woke up to some bleeding this morning, and when I went in for an ultrasound they discovered that there was no heartbeat.

Naturally we're sad, especially after having such an upbeat visit with the blood pressure specialist last week. But Dylan and I are taking care of each other and will call on our support networks as needed.

An Echo in the Bone (and Kindle)

2009-09-27T18:38:00.000-07:00

For our tenth anniversary, my husband got me a Kindle. Having read ebooks on my iPhone, I was ready to make the transition to a full-fledged e-reader, so the gift was a winner.

It arrived on Monday, so I decided to try it out by pre-ordering An Echo in the Bone (Diana Gabaldon, 2009), which was released on Tuesday. The book was downloaded and waiting for me when my alarm went off at 6:30--much preferable to making a special trip to the bookstore or waiting weeks for it to show up in my library hold queue. Also, I enjoyed being able to read on a fairly light handheld device I could stuff in my purse rather than toting around a bulky hardcover. On the downside, it's harder to page back to a previous chapter to remind yourself of some little detail you barely noticed at the time but that turns out to be important the next time the character shows up. And at least in this book there was a glitch where sometimes two words in a row would be italicized where clearly only one should've been. But on the whole I was satisfied with my Kindle experience and plan to use it extensively in the future.

Now, the book...as usual, it's hard to review a book deep in the series. If you love the Outlander books, you'll want to read this one. If you haven't, you'd be totally lost. (Actually, you'll be a little confused if you haven't read the Lord John series as well.) As has been the case in the last few books, the emphasis is less on Jamie and Claire and more on the broader cast of characters--we see a good bit of Lord John, Willie, Brianna and Roger back in the 20th century, Ian, a Quaker brother and sister whom both Willie and Ian befriend, etc. I've seen some readers complain about that, especially the emphasis on Willie and Lord John, but I liked it. Gabaldon has the IMHO unusual gift of making me care about a large cast of characters almost equally, and I thought those two were especially valuable because they're both English officers, thoroughly loyal and baffled that anyone would consider their king and their government tyrannical. Always good to show both sides, IMHO, especially when both sides have a point.

My only complaint is that authors who take three years to write a book shouldn't leave quite so many cliffhangers!

Announcing...

2009-09-27T17:54:00.000-07:00

A few posts ago I mentioned that I have a lot going on in my life, some of which might eventually merit revelation here.

I can now reveal one piece of all that: I'm pregnant, due April 28. All seems to be going well so far, though since I'm over 35 and had slightly high blood pressure going in, I'll be getting more monitoring than I would otherwise.

Little Men

2009-09-27T17:42:00.000-07:00

I've been getting free and cheap downloads of classics and reading them on my iPhone's Kindle app lately. Mostly I've been reading old favorites, but after revisiting Little Women, I decided to get Little Men and Jo's Boys, neither of which I've ever read.

Little Men is a soothing read, just what I'm looking for an iPhone book, i.e. something I read in short snatches while waiting in lines or late at night when I'm having trouble falling asleep. That said, Louisa May Alcott's preachy strain, which shows up to some degree in all her books, is on steroids here, and none of the new young characters are as engaging as Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, and Laurie.

The Poor Relation

2009-09-20T09:25:00.000-07:00

I've got a lot going on in my life now, some of which may eventually rate a mention on this blog once I know a bit more about how it's all going to turn out. Since I'm dealing with more stress and chaos than normal, I find myself turning to comfort reads. I've downloaded lots of free and cheap classics onto my Kindle-for-iPhone app, and I've been working my way through L.M. Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott. Also, I've been trying out some of those older traditional Regency romances I buy whenever I can find them in thrift stores or used bookstores and pile onto my To Be Read shelf against the need for a good escapist read.

One such book was The Poor Relation (Cathryn Huntington Chadwick, 1990). It has all the usual trappings of the traditional Regency--high society life, a Cinderella heroine, a dashing hero in a red coat (the poor relation of the title), heiresses, fortune hunters, etc. It doesn't break new ground, and it isn't thought-provoking, but it's not supposed to be. And last week it was just the kind of literary comfort food I was looking for.

The Unlikely Disciple

2009-09-13T18:55:00.000-07:00

The Unlikely Disciple (Kevin Roose, 2009) is yet another entry in that currently popular memoir subgenre, Person X Does Uncharacteristic Activity Y for Z Time Period. This one is even a direct descendant of a previous work: Roose got interested in his topic while working as a research assistant for A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically. But it's also the best outsider view of the evangelical subculture I've read yet.

As a 19-year-old Brown undergraduate, Roose decided to study abroad without leaving the country by spending a semester at Liberty University, having discovered he knew so little about evangelical Christians that he didn't even know how to talk to them. After a crash course in the lingo from a high school friend, he plunges into the Liberty life, taking 6 credits in the core curriculum and joining the Thomas Road Baptist Church choir. (At Brown he sang in an a capella group.) He goes undercover, posing as a relatively new Christian so he doesn't seem too suspicious for such errors as pronouncing Paul's Epistle to the Philippians as "fil-ip-PYE-ans." (It's "fil-IP-ee-ans.")

Though he never stops being appalled by his classmates' homophobia or the political and creationist indoctrination in his classes, he also can't help seeing his classmates and the faculty as human beings, many of whom he forms lasting friendships with. It's a useful reminder for me. As someone who's either evangelical left or slightly on the conservative side of mainline Protestantism, I don't like being lumped in with the Falwell brand of Christianity. I kept getting annoyed when Roose mentioned songs he sang at Thomas Road that we also sing at my church because how dare they sing what we sing when we have so little in common? But if Roose can befriend them, I can at least admit we're co-religionists.

The Chosen One

2009-09-12T18:29:00.000-07:00

The Chosen One (Carol Lynch Williams, 2009) is a YA novel about a young girl in a fictional fundamentalist Mormon sect. Her family--father, three wives, multiple siblings--is loving and affectionate, and apparently somewhat on the fringes of the sect despite their devotion to their prophet and his teachings. The 13-year-old heroine, Kyra, is a loner and a rebel even within her family, sneaking out to get a book from the mobile library every week (all books except sacred texts being forbidden) and indulging in what in mainstream society would be an innocent romance with a teen boy from another of the compound's families.

When the Prophet has a vision that Kyra must become an elderly uncle's seventh wife, she has to reconcile her love for her family--and the knowledge that her resistance can put them at risk--with her unwillingness to go through with the marriage. The book is a page-turner, and the ending, though satisfying, leaves a host of realistically unanswered questions.

Eugenia

2009-09-12T18:09:00.000-07:00

My hometown library had an extensive collection of Clare Darcy's Regency romances when I was growing up, but I don't think they had Eugenia (1978). It's a fun, quick read whose heroine is plucky, young, and unconventional, but not obnoxiously so. As is not uncommon in early Regencies, the romance is underplayed. The hero and heroine seem well-suited, both being rural, horse-mad types, but they don't spend enough time interacting to convince me that they know it. That said, if you like old-fashioned Regencies, heavy on the comedy of manners, light on the sensuality, Darcy's books are a good choice.

Rick Steves' Amsterdam, Bruges & Brussels

2009-09-12T17:06:00.000-07:00

I skimmed Rick Steves' Amsterdam, Bruges & Brussels (2009) as very early scouting for a trip I'm planning to take in 2015. I mean to be at Waterloo (just south of Brussels) on the bicentennial of the battle, 6/18/2015.

It wasn't that useful for my purposes, because so much of the book is devoted to Amsterdam and so little to the two Belgian cities. Waterloo is a dot on the map, but doesn't even rate a mention, though it seems like an obvious day trip from Brussels to me. Even aside from my personal and admittedly quirky interest, I found myself more interested in the two Belgian cities than Amsterdam.

Day of the Barbarians

2009-09-05T14:30:00.000-07:00

Alessandro Barbero wrote The Battle, one of my favorite books on Waterloo, and the one I always recommend to readers who aren't already students of Napoleonic military history. So when I found out about The Day of the Barbarians (2008), I decided to see what he had to say about an event I knew nothing about going in: namely the Battle of Adrianople in AD 378.

As I learned, Adrianople took place during an uprising by Gothic tribesmen who had come into the Eastern Roman Empire as refugees from the Huns but were quickly exasperated when the emperor's promises of land and food were not fulfilled. The Goths were well-led, and Adrianople was a debacle for Rome--2/3 of the army on the field that day was destroyed, and the emperor died on the field. Barbero's thesis is that the empire wasn't in severe decline prior to the battle, and that while Adrianople didn't cause the decline and fall of the empire all by itself, it was an important event along the way. Looked at that way...it's a bit sobering how quickly a powerful nation/empire can go downhill.

Barbero has one more book that's been translated into English, on Charlemagne. I'll have to give it a look soon.

Live the Life You Love

2009-09-05T14:07:00.000-07:00

Live the Life You Love (Barbara Sher, 1997) is one of my occasional forays into the self-help genre. What makes it different, and what makes me think I might buy my own copy (I got it at the library) and/or look for Sher's other books, is her contention that you can't change your fundamental nature, so you shouldn't try. Instead you learn what you want and what motivates you, and work with it.

Napoleon: His Wives and Women

2009-09-05T13:58:00.000-07:00

Christopher Hibbert writes in-depth, readable biographies, but he doesn't engage in much speculation on the inner workings of his subjects' souls. Napoleon: His Wives and Women (2003) is no exception. It's probably the best route, but I found myself wanting him to express opinions so I could argue with them or approve them as the case warranted.

This shouldn't be your first biography of Napoleon, since, as the title indicates, it focuses on his personal life rather than affairs of state and war. It assumes a certain knowledge of the major events and figures that a casual reader wouldn't have. But it's a good supplement if you're interested in the man and/or the era to get a detailed look at a part of Napoleon's life most histories barely explore. It didn't make me like Napoleon any better than I did going in, but I do feel like I have a fuller picture of his life and personality.

The Complete Writer's Guide to Heroes and Heroines

2009-09-03T23:14:00.000-07:00

The Complete Writer's Guide to Heroes and Heroines (Tami Cowden, Caro LaFever, Sue Viders, 2000) is a book of archetypes for writers and screenwriters. I like archetype-based approaches to plotting and characterization, e.g. The Hero’s Journey, because they don’t feel as paint-by-numbers as writing advice tends to be. And I definitely found food for thought in this one. It clarifies my thinking about one of the major characters in my WIP, for instance, to conceptualize him as a Swashbuckler evolving into a Chief by way of a Warrior.

That said, I didn’t particularly like the book’s approach to gender. The authors present parallel but separate archetypes for heroes and heroines. The male Chief’s counterpart is the female Boss, the Bad Boy is analogous to the Seductress, and so on. In several cases I felt like the male archetype was more positive and/or powerful. E.g. my associations with the word Chief are broadly positive. A Chief is a great leader who’s proven his worth, someone you’ll happily follow into battle or to the ballot box. A Boss? Well, that’s the person who signs your timesheets. Even if you have a good boss, you probably don’t think of him or her as inspiring. “Bossy” does not have positive connotations. And while a Professor and a Librarian are both good things to be, Professor implies higher rank.

Also, four of the eight male archetypes are at least partially fighters: the Chief, the Bad Boy, the Swashbuckler, and the Warrior. Women get exactly one fighting archetype: the Crusader (the equivalent of the Swashbuckler). I’ve already mentioned the Boss and the Seductress; the female counterpart to the Warrior is the Nurturer. Admittedly, as a woman currently writing a military historical, I probably care more about this one than the average reader…but you can’t cram every fighting woman into that Crusader archetype the way the authors seem to want to. F’rex, I wouldn’t call Buffy Summers a Crusader. At least by the end of the series, she’s a Chief. NOT a Boss. A Chief. And, staying in the Jossverse, how could you call Zoe on Firefly anything but a Warrior?

So. Useful book, though I wish the authors hadn’t split the genders. I think they could’ve just gone with eight archetypes and talked about the different ways they tend to appear in heroes vs. heroines.

Brighton Honeymoon

2009-09-03T23:00:00.000-07:00

Last night I got back from a week at my mom's house in Alabama where I had limited internet access but a decent amount of time to read, so over the next few days I'll be catching up my reading diary.

Brighton Honeymoon (Sheri Cobb South, 2000) is a well-executed light, comedic Regency romance. A sequel to THE WEAVER TAKES A WIFE, it features the newlyweds from that book taking in a girl claiming to be the husband’s long-lost sister. She’s lying, and they doubt her claims from the first, but her circumstances are desperate enough that she’s still a sympathetic character.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

2009-08-22T20:14:00.000-07:00

I was never required to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for school, which I'd say was a bad decision, if not a particularly surprising one, on the part of whatever committee planned English and History curricula for Alabama in the 1970's and 80's.

Over the past twenty years I gradually realized it was a book I needed to read, though all I knew about it is that it involved Huck and a runaway slave named Jim on a raft down the Mississippi River, that it's an Important Book in American Literature, and about the famous "Then I'll go to hell" scene. So when I got it as a free ebook as part of an iPhone app, I decided it was high time I remedied the defects of my education.

I'm glad I've read it--I can cross it off my bucket list, for starters--but I think I would've gotten more out of it if I'd read it at a younger age. I enjoyed it, but with more intellectual appreciation than emotional engagement. Knowing its Importance to American Literature, I was somewhat surprised to discover how much of it is pure kids' book. (Not that I was oblivious to the deeper layers there, or how much satire and social criticism there was in the antics of the Duke and the King, but the surface of the read wasn't what I was expecting.) It's brilliantly written, of course, and the "I'll go to hell" moment, once I finally got there, was wonderful. I was relieved, however, to read the Wikipedia article after I finished the book and discover I was far from the only person to think the Tom Sawyer plot at the end dragged on pointlessly! I'd been afraid I'd been committing some kind of unpardonable sin against Important American Literature.

A Breath of Snow and Ashes

2009-08-19T19:55:00.000-07:00

I've spent the past week with A Breath of Snow and Ashes (Diana Gabaldon, 2005), so I'm now all caught up with the Outlander series, just in time for An Echo In the Bone to debut next month.

This is the sixth doorstopper tome in the series, so it's by no means the right place to start. But it's a wonderful place to spend time with characters you already know and love. This volume takes the characters from 1774 to 1776 in North Carolina, with Jamie, who knows how the Revolution is going to turn out thanks to his time-traveling wife, daughter, and son-in-law, having to balance that knowledge with the fact that most of the rest of his friends and relatives are Loyalists.

What Gabaldon excels at is combining the grand, violent sweep of history with the little intimate moments of daily life. I hope I can write something half so rich someday.

Dangerous Games

2009-08-08T09:20:00.000-07:00

Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History (Margaret MacMillan, 2009) is adapted from a series of lectures the author gave at a Canadian university. Because of its origin, it's a short book that doesn't go into tremendous, footnoted detail on any of its examples. On the other hand, it's a quick, accessible overview of an important subject.

Basically, MacMillan's thesis is that history is very useful for us in the present, but only if we're willing to view it both broadly and realistically. We get in trouble with nationalistic histories designed to show how brave and just and chosen by God our nation is, or with cherry-picking our historical analogies (Chamberlain at Munich being a popular choice with which to smear one's opponents).

All that, on the face of it, seems too obvious to bother with. But that doesn't keep us from making the same mistakes again and again. I know that the more I learn about the past, the less surprised I am to learn that the assumptions I walked in with are false. This applies to everything from the relatively trivial (clan tartans in Scotland were the product of 19th century marketing rather than ancient tradition, the Duke of Wellington never said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton) to the deadly serious--just from MacMillan's book I learned that everything I'd always heard and assumed to be true about WWII being caused in large part by the punitive reparations placed on Germany after WWI isn't quite as straightforward as that, and that a lot of the Soviet rhetoric of the Cold War was just a cloak for the same Russian nationalism and strategic self-interest that existed before the Communist takeover.

It's a good book, and one that questions the assumptions of all sides of the political spectrum.