Maybe if I add enough features, I'll finally persuade myself to update my blog more than once a month, hahaha.
Due to the stacks and stacks of books that now sit around the house, accumulating faster than I can read them, I've tried to limit the amount of books that I bring home. But when books are both free and interesting, I have a hard time resisting. Nonetheless, I brought home just two last weekend:
Life in a Medieval Village by Frances and Joseph Gies. The title is self-explanatory. It's a non-fiction work describing what life was like in medieval English villages. So far, I have read the prologue and first chapter of this book. I have to admit that they were a little dry. However, I'm hoping the book gets a bit more engaging now that I'm past the anthropological "how villages arose" part and getting into the "what life was like" part.
Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History by Giles Milton. This is one of those maddening books where it gives you absolutely no synopsis of what it's about anywhere on the jacket. Seriously, why do publishers do this? I don't want to read critics' praises on the jacket; I want to know what the damn book is about!
At any rate, judging by the cover (!) and a glimpse at the first few pages, I gather that this book is NOT about the man who invented the soccer move of kicking the ball between an opponent's legs and instead about the European (possibly Englishman?) who discovered the spice nutmeg being used by foreigners in some distant land and brought it back to Europe. It is a non-fiction book. I have not yet started this book and probably will not for some time.
I love books like "Life in an [insert any time period here]. My Western Civ teacher in high school read to us about Bodo the peasant the first week of school and it was fascinating. That is what started me on my history major path.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm right there with you about the lack of synopsis.