Wednesday and Co.
Apr. 28th, 2021 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bWhat I've Finished Reading
A Fatal Thing Happened On The Way To the Forum is a lively, thoughtful book about murder in Ancient Rome by a very smart author who is also Too Cool For School. I am chronically Too Uncool To Leave Study Hall and reached my saturation point for cutesy pop-culture references somewhere around page ten; I also got annoyed with the sheer number of times Emma Southon gestured toward some interesting rabbit trail of clarification and said, "I COULD get way down into the weeds on this, but we'd all die of boredom so let's not." Speak for yourself! Plus, half the footnotes were just elaborations on contemporary true-crime allusions, which, as a humorless lump who hates true crime, I could only see as a waste of valuable footnote space. Also, as an adult who can decide for myself whether or not names are funny, I got no added value from Southon elbowing me in the ribs whenever she thought a Roman name was funny. In spite of this, would I read it again? Absolutely. It's pungent and insightful and full of great details. Would I give it as a gift to my dad? No, it's too insecure and loud about how Not Like Other Roman History Books it is. Will you like it? There's only one way to find out.
What I'm Reading Now
Jean and Co., Unlimited (1937) is a nice enough book about a nice American kid named Jean who goes on a European tour in the thirties with her museum-curator mother to buy up traditional costumes, and meets a bunch of other nice kids with other versions of the name Jean. They pledge to write round-robin letters to each other and to promote peace on earth through friendship. It's not bad, but so far there's not much to it other than quaint customs, cute accents, exotic food, and the ghosts of an invisible present. I learned just now, in the course of checking to see if author Helen Perry Curtis has a Wikipedia page (no) that this book has a small following, and the author is the subject of a recent passion project/biography published through Belt Publishing's vanity arm, Parafine Press.
All Very Nice, And Bad, But Inefficient
That's the verdict when an inspector from Horde Prime comes to inspect Hordak's planet-conquering apparatus in the latest episode of She-Ra, and it's hard to disagree. Hordak likes to grow hideous beasts in his own image in pools of bubbling mud; the inspector just wants to put an impenetrable crystal dome around the Whispering Woods and fill it up with robot laser bats. In the end, neither approach works because He-Man happens to be visiting from his dimension and between the two of them, the twins just lift up the whole dome and toss it away, like an enormous contact lens. This episode is credited to J. Michael Straczynski.
A Fatal Thing Happened On The Way To the Forum is a lively, thoughtful book about murder in Ancient Rome by a very smart author who is also Too Cool For School. I am chronically Too Uncool To Leave Study Hall and reached my saturation point for cutesy pop-culture references somewhere around page ten; I also got annoyed with the sheer number of times Emma Southon gestured toward some interesting rabbit trail of clarification and said, "I COULD get way down into the weeds on this, but we'd all die of boredom so let's not." Speak for yourself! Plus, half the footnotes were just elaborations on contemporary true-crime allusions, which, as a humorless lump who hates true crime, I could only see as a waste of valuable footnote space. Also, as an adult who can decide for myself whether or not names are funny, I got no added value from Southon elbowing me in the ribs whenever she thought a Roman name was funny. In spite of this, would I read it again? Absolutely. It's pungent and insightful and full of great details. Would I give it as a gift to my dad? No, it's too insecure and loud about how Not Like Other Roman History Books it is. Will you like it? There's only one way to find out.
What I'm Reading Now
Jean and Co., Unlimited (1937) is a nice enough book about a nice American kid named Jean who goes on a European tour in the thirties with her museum-curator mother to buy up traditional costumes, and meets a bunch of other nice kids with other versions of the name Jean. They pledge to write round-robin letters to each other and to promote peace on earth through friendship. It's not bad, but so far there's not much to it other than quaint customs, cute accents, exotic food, and the ghosts of an invisible present. I learned just now, in the course of checking to see if author Helen Perry Curtis has a Wikipedia page (no) that this book has a small following, and the author is the subject of a recent passion project/biography published through Belt Publishing's vanity arm, Parafine Press.
All Very Nice, And Bad, But Inefficient
That's the verdict when an inspector from Horde Prime comes to inspect Hordak's planet-conquering apparatus in the latest episode of She-Ra, and it's hard to disagree. Hordak likes to grow hideous beasts in his own image in pools of bubbling mud; the inspector just wants to put an impenetrable crystal dome around the Whispering Woods and fill it up with robot laser bats. In the end, neither approach works because He-Man happens to be visiting from his dimension and between the two of them, the twins just lift up the whole dome and toss it away, like an enormous contact lens. This episode is credited to J. Michael Straczynski.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-29 12:12 am (UTC)Jean and Co., Unlimited also sounds fascinating, but probably harder to get a hold of, so I'm going to hold off on that until you render a final verdict.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-03 11:34 pm (UTC)Ultimately I liked the Roman murder book more than I didn't like having things I knew a little about being constantly "illuminated" for me with oblique references to things I know nothing about, but mileage is probably going to vary a lot on this one.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-04 12:16 am (UTC)the girls all did the Fascist salute and giggled
Oh man. I bet the author facepalmed about that one in later years... But who could have guessed that it was going to age that badly?
no subject
Date: 2021-04-29 08:38 am (UTC)Lol, that is priceless
the inspector just wants to put an impenetrable crystal dome around the Whispering Woods and fill it up with robot laser bats.
So, maybe not so much more practical, either?
Roman true crime vs annoying authorial "cool" voice does sound like an unfair choice/pairing. Although, tbf to the author, it is not hard to feel sometimes that nobody is interested in history any more unless you make it cool, sexy, anachronistic, tidied up etc. Endnotes and footnotes are too scary to allow as well. But there are perfectly good NF history books still going and they should have taken heart and courage from that.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-03 11:45 pm (UTC)The endnotes here are a garden of wasted opportunities.
The problem with the evil bureaucracy is it just doesn't understand conditions on the ground. The crystal dome-robot bats combo probably has a lot of highly regarded studies behind it! It's cutting edge scientific conquering! Probably it crushes morale perfectly well if you don't have a couple of overpowered space barbarians hanging around.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-04 07:21 pm (UTC)To be fair, it is probably hard to plan for overpowered space barbarians.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-29 12:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-03 11:47 pm (UTC)