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What I'm reading these days:
Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber - I can't thank![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
klostes enough for recommending this to me, because it's *wonderful*. Traces the history of weaving from the first knotted strings in the Paleolithic through the intervening millennia, with a light, entertaining writing style that's nevertheless filled with detail and information. Despite the title and subject matter (dealing with gender roles through history) it avoids being overtly political, focusing instead on the daily lives of the women who spent much of their waking time weaving cloth for their families.
His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik -xparrot pushed this series at me with a "You'll love it!", and I did love it ... well, considering that I'm only one book into the series at this point. It's very heavily, and obviously, influenced by Patrick O'Brian's naval-warfare novels -- basically, this is the Napoleonic Wars with dragons. More interesting than the battles for me were the details of how dragonback cavalry in the British and French service have been integrated into the existing historical background. And I loved the mental image of dragons as warships or bombers, with gun crews on their backs. The characters are wonderful.
There were a couple of things I didn't like about the book, one of which was the ending (well, a certain aspect of the ending). ( This is going to be cut for obvious MAJOR spoilers )
Anyway, criticism aside, I *did* like the book and I *do* recommend it to those looking for fantasy of a slightly different flavor; my problems with it basically come down to personal taste rather than the quality of the book itself.
Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber - I can't thank
klostes enough for recommending this to me, because it's *wonderful*. Traces the history of weaving from the first knotted strings in the Paleolithic through the intervening millennia, with a light, entertaining writing style that's nevertheless filled with detail and information. Despite the title and subject matter (dealing with gender roles through history) it avoids being overtly political, focusing instead on the daily lives of the women who spent much of their waking time weaving cloth for their families.His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik -
xparrot pushed this series at me with a "You'll love it!", and I did love it ... well, considering that I'm only one book into the series at this point. It's very heavily, and obviously, influenced by Patrick O'Brian's naval-warfare novels -- basically, this is the Napoleonic Wars with dragons. More interesting than the battles for me were the details of how dragonback cavalry in the British and French service have been integrated into the existing historical background. And I loved the mental image of dragons as warships or bombers, with gun crews on their backs. The characters are wonderful.There were a couple of things I didn't like about the book, one of which was the ending (well, a certain aspect of the ending). ( This is going to be cut for obvious MAJOR spoilers )
Anyway, criticism aside, I *did* like the book and I *do* recommend it to those looking for fantasy of a slightly different flavor; my problems with it basically come down to personal taste rather than the quality of the book itself.