I read this last May and got sucked into the most bloody Amazon review argument I've ever seen. Sucked back last week when new reader posted on one of the reviews. The bone of contention? "Does an historical novel have to be historically accurate? No, say the smart people. YES wail the simple souls who can't tell a noun from and adjective.
sAnd then it gets ugly. Very ugly.
Reading again: I always re-read books I love. I got in the habit in elementary school when there was a shelf in each classroom with an assortment of library books -- an assortment that was changed only two or three times a year.
I'm so glad that _Assassini_ is finally on Kindle. It's a big book~ I love first the settings -- Princeton, Paris (even in the Contrescarp eat the top of the rue Mouffetard!) Alexandria, and, of course, Rome. The sections about WWII and the deal that Pope Pius made with the fascists are wonderfully set about with factual detail -- art theft is the least of the sins, but perhaps the most telling.
Having found Assassini on Kindle, I looked also for Gifford's other WWII novel. Here he takes us from the 20's in Paris through the London Blitz and on a secret mission against Rommel in the Western Desert. It's rare to find a writer who can produce two such different novels from the same historical research. No Kindle edition yet.
reassessing a genre
I've always shied away from historical mysteries with beautiful costumes on the cover, assuming -- evidently unfairly -- that they were romance novels in disguise. I bought this novel because Deborah Crombie -- who writes unfailingly good mysteries -- wrote a positive blurb for it. And now I've gone on to read the first book in the series and am saving the second for the plane ride next week. The are set in the years after the French Revolution and at the end of Napoleon's rule -- a period about which I knew next to nothing. So cool: a good spy novel with a lot of history.
reading for sabbatical
GIS grows more interesting
When I started this project two summers ago, I was completely derailed, distracted, and delighted by all of the material on Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Well yes, of course, that's partly because I've always loved maps, but then titles of GIS studies offered even greater delights: Mapping Ideas, GIS and the Humanities . . . . Too cool, huh?
Sadly, reality was less fascinating. Rather than actually mapping ideas, the GIS practitioners would talk about how GIS could be used in relation to maps to develop new analyses of material in other fields. Example: "oh wow, using GIS will change the way historians and literary scholars think about Troy or the Battle of Agincourt."
Here's a case of academic tunnel-vision, for sure. Lit and history folk have been mapping things about Agincourt, virtually since the mud on Henry's boots dried. And as for Troy . . . .
These two books, however, seem to be a sort of GIS next-gen. According to the Amazon blurbs, Hayles is very close to my questions about Donne: Hayles:
"goes on to depict the neurological consequences of working in digital media, where skimming and scanning, or “hyper reading,” and analysis through machine algorithms are forms of reading as valid as close reading once was. Hayles contends that we must recognize all three types of reading and understand the limitations and possibilities of each. In addition to illustrating what a comparative media perspective entails, Hayles explores the technogenesis spiral in its full complexity."
Hillier and Knowles suggest that:
"Historical maps are suddenly in great demand as digitally modified, georeferenced images that enable researchers to study GIS as a visual medium of communication and analysis."
Can't wait to start these, but I must wait til I've written my paper for the conference in London next week . . . .
finally
This is a series of essays, some too preachy ("how GIS can change your life!") but some useful. The most generally interesting is "What could Lee See at Gettysburg?" and the best for my purposes is a 20-page discussion of mapping time and space. There I acquired some new vocab -- rather like cricket reports, words I already know but with different & specialized meanings. Very interesting example with Napoleon's Moscow campaign. Other essays are concerned with mapping work/land use in Concord, mapping the history of China, and (best, I think) working with the Peutinger Map of Roman territory c 300 CE. That essay is very cool. If I knew how to make the scanner on my printer work, I'd post it.