lesbiassparrow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lesbiassparrow) wrote2006-08-03 10:53 am
lesbiassparrow) wrote2006-08-03 10:53 am
Book Glee
So I finally managed to get my hands on volume one of the Dunnett Lymond series. (Thank you public library!) I hope it as good as people on my flist say because I am looking foward to settling down with it. I had a whole list of recs from other people but I have lost some of them (I know that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elspethsheir had a great one a while back that I must hunt down again) which might be as well for the pile of other books I have to read.
And from me a book I love: The Great Cat Massacre and other episodes in French cultural History by Robert Darnton. Anything by Darnton is worth reading (how can you not like a man who wrote a book with the titleThe Forbidden Bestsellers of Pre-Revolutionary France) but this one is especially marvellous.
Basically it is a series of snapshots of what are really minor events in 18th century French history (they're not even what you would think of as historical events, more just odd moments gathered together); what makes the book so wonderful is how Darnton builds a world view around them. In the titular essay he tries to explain why a bunch of apprentices held mock trials for and hung a group of cats and found it so hilarious they reenacted it in pantomime again and again. And no, it's not because they were psychopaths or freaks, but had everything to do with cats being identified with their owners and the position of animals in the period. I know it might sound horrid, but when you read the essays you get carried into these scenes and you actually feel like you know something about how ordinary people thought, as opposed to their leaders or the aristocracy (because, boy, those people are always writing - it's not that hard to sort out what they thought).
I don't actually tend to enjoy the great person history book that much unless it's about a few select people or unless it's your only option (true of a lot of classical history) so Darnton is someone I always love reading.
elspethsheir had a great one a while back that I must hunt down again) which might be as well for the pile of other books I have to read.And from me a book I love: The Great Cat Massacre and other episodes in French cultural History by Robert Darnton. Anything by Darnton is worth reading (how can you not like a man who wrote a book with the titleThe Forbidden Bestsellers of Pre-Revolutionary France) but this one is especially marvellous.
Basically it is a series of snapshots of what are really minor events in 18th century French history (they're not even what you would think of as historical events, more just odd moments gathered together); what makes the book so wonderful is how Darnton builds a world view around them. In the titular essay he tries to explain why a bunch of apprentices held mock trials for and hung a group of cats and found it so hilarious they reenacted it in pantomime again and again. And no, it's not because they were psychopaths or freaks, but had everything to do with cats being identified with their owners and the position of animals in the period. I know it might sound horrid, but when you read the essays you get carried into these scenes and you actually feel like you know something about how ordinary people thought, as opposed to their leaders or the aristocracy (because, boy, those people are always writing - it's not that hard to sort out what they thought).
I don't actually tend to enjoy the great person history book that much unless it's about a few select people or unless it's your only option (true of a lot of classical history) so Darnton is someone I always love reading.