Norwich’s A History of Venice is a good and thorough work covering from the initial colonization of the islands of the Rialto to the city’s fall to Napoleon (roughly 420 to 1797), but I found it a bit disappointing. However,[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Archive for Books
Late last year, I picked up Empires of the Silk Road, as it looked very interesting. And it is, I highly recommend it as an extremely well done history of a part of the world that most people just don’t[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Lost to the West is a very good readable brief history of the Byzantine Empire, and I recommend it as such to anyone who would like to familiarize themselves with the subject. However, the subtitle “The Forgotten Byzantine Empire that[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
My roommate Dave just wrote a snarky little rant about the quality of Baen’s main authors. There are some points I disagree with, but at the same time I have to agree with the overall assessment. The main thing I[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I just stumbled across this on Ruggles’ LJ. I did a direct response, but now I’m going to do my essay/rant on the underlying subject. There are three elements that any story will have: Language (or cinematography for movies, or[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Been meaning to get to this for ages. I try to leaven all my fiction reading with some non-fiction. As my primary interest is history, I generally end up reading something about the past. I don’t care for dry academic[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
This is salvaged from an ages old forum post. Reading and history are a couple of my main hobbies, so I naturally have an interest in books that talk about history. This is a list of books that are at[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I’ve just finished off A Clash of Kings, the second volume of George R. R. Martin’s sprawling fantasy series. I’ve got some thoughts on the books, so click on the link to see them: They’ve been very popular, and I’d[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…