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So what are some good books about real medieval life?
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Dec 13, 2016 10:18
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grittyreboot posted:So what are some good books about real medieval life? Unfortunately 'medieval' is far too broad a category to be really useful. You'll need to narrow down to at least the century and region.
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Dec 13, 2016 10:21
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grittyreboot posted:So what are some good books about real medieval life? Well, if you want decent historical fiction, you could try Bernard Cornwell. He occupies a strange spot where his books fall into fun adventure romance romps, but he does extensive research and nails authenticity. His take on Arthurian Legend is fascinating in how it is less "dark ages" and more "post Roman" in its world setting. The Romans are gone, but their landmarks remain, and it's just a bunch of small successor kingdoms squabbling over the ruins in the face of a massive Saxon migration.
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Dec 13, 2016 11:06
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Umberto Eco's Baudolino is decent and very real. Le Morte D'Arthur is great and extremely accurate. PIers Plowman is about the truth of our Lord and thus good and real.
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Dec 13, 2016 11:18
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Are Frances & Joseph Gies' books (Life in a Medieval [city/village/castle], and one on the technological advances that took place in the period, and probably some others) denigrated these days or is their scholarship still considered good? I haven't read them in a hot minute but I remember finding them informative and enjoyable.
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Dec 13, 2016 13:50
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poo poo, I hope they aren't, 'cause I really like those, too.
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Dec 14, 2016 00:29
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InediblePenguin posted:Are Frances & Joseph Gies' books (Life in a Medieval [city/village/castle], and one on the technological advances that took place in the period, and probably some others) denigrated these days or is their scholarship still considered good? I haven't read them in a hot minute but I remember finding them informative and enjoyable. Yes! Everyone read these. Super accessible, super well-researched and extensively cited. These are the foundation of a medieval history collection (for a non-academic. I dunno what the hell trained medievalists read.)
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Dec 14, 2016 02:01
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It's also worth it to ask in the various history threads over at A/T, they'll give some more scholarly choices as well.
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Dec 14, 2016 03:29
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The History of Private Life, Volume II: Revelations of the Medieval World, edited by Philippe Ariès & Georges Duby and translated by Arthur Goldhammer, is a good more-scholarly-but-still-pretty-accessible work that I enjoyed reading, although I kinda skipped through the segment on chansons de geste. There's a focus on France overall but also a long chapter on family life in pre-Renaissance Tuscany and just in general there's a lot going on in that book
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Dec 14, 2016 06:38
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I actually got curious enough a few years ago to research what the earliest known writings about Britain were. Turned out it was thought to be the ancient Greek explorer Pytheas who circumnavigated the isles and wrote on it at some point in the 4th century BC. The only reason we know what he wrote however was that his peers and successors, like Hipparchus and Polybius and the like, quoted him in their works directly, his own writings did not survive.
BioEnchanted has a new favorite as of 09:22 on Dec 14, 2016 |
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Dec 14, 2016 09:20
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Pytheas was cool as heck
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Dec 14, 2016 18:01
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Elpato posted:I remember reading these in fifth grade, and I thought the first one was really cool because blood and cursing. In 7th grade I read the book Rainbow Six. I don't remember if it was actually bad (though I think it probably was), but I remember even as a 12/13 year old seeing the line "their heads exploded like overripe watermelons" and thinking it was a hilariously dumb line.
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Dec 14, 2016 22:29
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Rainbow Six is where Clancy started writing revenge porn about environmentalists.
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Dec 15, 2016 02:24
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Marcus Bull's Thinking Medieval is a great, short academic book that I really like because it focuses specifically on the little differences of weltanschaung between now and the Carolingians to paint a picture of them as complicated sophisticates who may as well have been aliens for how mutually intelligible a people who believe themselves living in the downward arc of history is to us today. Like, as an example, in Carolingian Europe there was no real conception of the authorship function, because for the most part "being worthy of adding to the literary canon" was a property they confined exclusively to the been-dead-300-years set. Einhard, a courtier of Charlemagne, wrote a biography of the king, and that was a fairly radical act of literary impertinence b/c saying a living dude deserved to be written about in any serious way was basically saying that he (or any living human) was as good as the Church fathers or Roman emperors or (gasp!) Jesus. And Einhard's biography was just passages from Seutonius with the serial numbers filed off, because he considered himself basically unworthy of original composition--the idea of glorifying someone by writing down true facts about them, stating original opinions, (or glorifying yourself as a writer by being eloquent or clever) just... wasn't really there.
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Dec 15, 2016 04:26
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The latest episode of I Don't Even Own a Television reviewed some godawful piece of poo poo Five Nights at Freddy's novel... ...written (ghostwritten?) by a girl I had a huge crush on in high school. I don't know how I feel about this. Um, I guess it sold well, so that's good! Ironically, she was exactly the sort of person who might say she doesn't own a TV, and mean it.
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Dec 19, 2016 06:40
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Fleta Mcgurn posted:The latest episode of I Don't Even Own a Television reviewed some godawful piece of poo poo Five Nights at Freddy's novel...
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Dec 19, 2016 07:48
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Holy poo poo, really? Would you be willing to talk about it in the IDEOTV Party Pit? Because I'm sure Jay and Chris would love to hear more. I could, if you think it would be interesting, but I'd be very cagey about details because there were only, like, fifty people in our entire high school and I would be easy to identify. Do you have to pay for an account?
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Dec 19, 2016 08:34
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Fleta Mcgurn posted:I could, if you think it would be interesting, but I'd be very cagey about details because there were only, like, fifty people in our entire high school and I would be easy to identify. Do you have to pay for an account? It's just the Facebook group.
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Dec 19, 2016 08:36
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Fleta Mcgurn posted:I could, if you think it would be interesting, but I'd be very cagey about details because there were only, like, fifty people in our entire high school and I would be easy to identify. Do you have to pay for an account? https://www.facebook.com/groups/ideotvpartypit/
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Dec 19, 2016 08:37
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Hmm. Well, maybe. I don't have anything negative to say about her, but I also don't want her to get creeped out or have everyone from my hometownl find out about my occasional enjoyment of poon. I'll think about it, thanks for the tip. If Jay is still on here as Satellite High (right?), I could tell him some stuff anonymously to repost, if he wanted. Also: I excitedly purchased Carrie Fisher's The Princess Diarist because I was under the impression that it was about her experience filming the good Star Wars trilogy. It is not; it is a butt-puckeringly embarrassing account of her affair with Harrison Ford, complete with actual diary entries. They're well-written, in a Livejournal way, but it was just really cringey. e: Okay, and 1977 Mark Hamill was so handsome and I thought maybe there would be some information about him, like how he always wanted to make out with me. Fleta Mcgurn has a new favorite as of 09:07 on Dec 19, 2016 |
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Dec 19, 2016 08:49
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Actual diary entries from when she would have had the affair with Ford, meaning at an overall cringey age/time in most folks' lives when it comes to relationships? Or more like cringey because it's a diary entry so it's super-personal and uncomfortable sharing in its knowledge?
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Dec 19, 2016 14:26
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SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:Actual diary entries from when she would have had the affair with Ford, meaning at an overall cringey age/time in most folks' lives when it comes to relationships? Or more like cringey because it's a diary entry so it's super-personal and uncomfortable sharing in its knowledge? Both, but mostly the first one, since she was nineteen at the time. The diary entries aren't poorly-written, they're just drenched in pathos. Also, the word "Carrison" appears at least once. But I like Carrie Fisher and I think she's funny as gently caress, so I consider it a solid purchase, anyways.
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Dec 20, 2016 02:02
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It's not quite a book, but spotted at my local Michael's. 
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Dec 20, 2016 08:27
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Popular enough for a sequel!
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Dec 20, 2016 08:31
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I always loved those "How to draw badly" books because they skip the "boring" parts about learning anatomy, facial construction, constructing a pose that animates well and can be drawn from different angles - naw just draw off-brand Piccolo and you'll be cool.
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Dec 20, 2016 09:54
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BioEnchanted posted:I always loved those "How to draw badly" books because they skip the "boring" parts about learning anatomy, facial construction, constructing a pose that animates well and can be drawn from different angles - naw just draw off-brand Piccolo and you'll be cool. 
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Dec 20, 2016 17:49
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BioEnchanted posted:I always loved those "How to draw badly" books because they skip the "boring" parts about learning anatomy, facial construction, constructing a pose that animates well and can be drawn from different angles - naw just draw off-brand Piccolo and you'll be cool. Pretty much. Drawing furries is easy if you actually know how to draw generally, there's no specific knowledge required. However, a lot of people would like to bypass this, so everyone has Lion King or Balto faces.
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Dec 20, 2016 17:59
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BioEnchanted posted:I always loved those "How to draw badly" books because they skip the "boring" parts about learning anatomy, facial construction, constructing a pose that animates well and can be drawn from different angles - naw just draw off-brand Piccolo and you'll be cool. There's an all inclusive geekery convention I go to annually for the past three years, and every time there's a table set up for this artist vendor where all his art looks exactly like the stuff you see in those types of books, all half-assed anime style, often of popular characters too, and I always feel so bad because you know he thinks he's a good enough artist to make a living at it and he's really, really not.
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Dec 21, 2016 00:39
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xiw posted:Rainbow Six is where Clancy started writing revenge porn about environmentalists. Apparently there's been seven more "Ryan-verse" books released since Clancy's passing in 2013  I stopped right around the time they recruited a doctor who lost a brother in 9/11* to induce heart-attacks in a captive terrorist as a form of super-interrogation. * loving 9/11 still happens in an alternate history where Detroit already got nuked.
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Dec 21, 2016 03:53
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gradenko_2000 posted:Apparently there's been seven more "Ryan-verse" books released since Clancy's passing in 2013 I've never really read any of the Clancy books, but the weird right wing bullshit is rampant in the video games too. The entire premise of Splinter Cell is that there's a special heroic agency that exists to do things the government can't normally under the constitution, which is..uncomfortable.
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Dec 21, 2016 05:30
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I had to read a Tom Clancy novel for a research paper in my History of Espionage class. The writing was so lovely that I just googled a plot synopsis and went with it; I literally couldn't stand to read his crappy right-wing propaganda. I probably spent more time reading that synopsis than Clancy did on editing, come to think of it.
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Dec 21, 2016 05:36
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gradenko_2000 posted:Apparently there's been seven more "Ryan-verse" books released since Clancy's passing in 2013 12 if you include non-Ryan novels. As I recall, what happened was that he basically retired and sold the rights to his name to Ubisoft for several million dollars plus royalties.
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Dec 21, 2016 07:42
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WickedHate posted:I've never really read any of the Clancy books, but the weird right wing bullshit is rampant in the video games too. The entire premise of Splinter Cell is that there's a special heroic agency that exists to do things the government can't normally under the constitution, which is..uncomfortable. Yeah, thinking back on it there were a number of pretty uncomfortable parts. I think it was the second part where you were working together with an israeli agent for most of the mission, but about halfway through your handler suddenly tells you to shoot her as she's about to leave. You actually have a choice in the matter, but when you refuse to do so it'll turn out she's actually a traitor, and you'll have to contend with additional enemies later in the level. So the implicit lesson there is that it's cool and good to immediately follow orders to murder whoever without asking, because those at the top always know what's best.
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Dec 21, 2016 12:46
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WickedHate posted:I've never really read any of the Clancy books, but the weird right wing bullshit is rampant in the video games too. The entire premise of Splinter Cell is that there's a special heroic agency that exists to do things the government can't normally under the constitution, which is..uncomfortable. There was a preview of I think Blacklist that neatly summed up the weird sociopathic nature of these games. You interrogate a guy by shoving your fingers in his bullet wounds, and have to wiggle the thumbsticks to extract information. You're then given the option to let him live, or to execute him : "That's right, a moral choice after an interactive torture scene"
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Dec 21, 2016 13:24
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I remember there was one Tom Clancy novel or movie adaptation from the mid-1990s where they changed the antagonists from Islamic terrorists to neo-Nazis because they didn't think the idea of Islamic terrorists presenting a serious threat to the mainland USA was realistic. Granted, this was when the militia sorts were stockpiling guns and ammo in anticipation of the Great Satan of Liberalism Bill Clinton and to a lesser (?) extent Hillary sending black helicopters to land in their backyards and cart them off to FEMA death camps or poisoning them with chem-trails, which culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing, so in that context it was perhaps a more reasonable decision, but looking at the past 20 years in retrospect, it's sort of funny (not "ha ha" funny, but "huh" funny). Wheat Loaf has a new favorite as of 14:35 on Dec 21, 2016 |
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Dec 21, 2016 14:33
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It was actually the other way around. In the novel The Sum of All Fears, released in 1991, Palestinian terrorists recover a lost Israeli nuclear weapon and use it to nuke Denver (not Detroit as I had first posted) In the movie The Sum of All Fears, released in 2002, the Palestinians are turned into Austrian Neo-Nazis instead. I don't know if they changed it away from "Islamic terrorists" out of tastefulness in the wake of 9/11, or if anti-Muslim sentiment just hadn't ramped up that hard yet, or the third option that comes to mind is that perhaps the original faction wasn't "Islamic terrorist"-y enough: they were supposedly members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which identifies itself as secular Marxist-Leninist Pan-Arab advocates.
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Dec 21, 2016 15:11
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It was Germans in the book, too, they were going to use it to get the Cold War to go hot.
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Dec 21, 2016 16:02
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gradenko_2000 posted:Apparently there's been seven more "Ryan-verse" books released since Clancy's passing in 2013 An interesting thing is that he hadn't actually written anything for quite a while before he died. Even his last two officially written by him novels, Red Rabbit and The Teeth of the Tiger, are rumored to have been ghostwritten. Red Rabbit mostly because it is a prequel that he never felt the need to address before and The Teeth of the Tiger because the tone and quality of the writing is so different than his usual work.
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Dec 21, 2016 22:21
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tbf it's pretty absurd that Palestinian terrorists would find a misplaced Israeli nuke, then instead of doing the obvious they smuggle it all the way to the US to give Clancy's readers motivation for some gitmo fanfic.
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Dec 21, 2016 23:06
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^Don't forget the subplot about how women shouldn't be in high government positions because they'll just weaken with the President with their sex and girl cooties and make him indecisive in a crisis!WickedHate posted:I've never really read any of the Clancy books, but the weird right wing bullshit is rampant in the video games too. The entire premise of Splinter Cell is that there's a special heroic agency that exists to do things the government can't normally under the constitution, which is..uncomfortable. So, Section 31, but not in space, and without those pesky moral dilemmas.
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Dec 22, 2016 00:39
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