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What are you reading Chapter 4

Mackintosh's Masterwork Charles Rennie Mackintosh And The Glasgow School Of Art.jpeg
 
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Just picked this out at the library on a whim last weekend. It's pretty funny. One guys journey through beekeeping, the colorful characters who enjoy it and a working knowledge of bees and other critters associated. It's a humorous read into that world if you don't know much about it.

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Finished two recently, with some overlap between them. "The Sagas Of Icelanders" and "Eirik The Red And Other Icelandic Sagas" - one of the texts is basically an extra tale concerning some of the characters of "Beowulf", which is likely my favorite story. So it was pretty cool to get a Beowulf-adjacent saga out of all of this. That brings my list of Beowulf translations, adaptations, and related texts to 23.
 
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Just finished "Life In A Medieval City" by Joseph and Frances Gies. A great, in-depth and yet broad explanation of the various roles of citizens in a Medieval city. Quite an interesting, simple, and eminently readable text. Now I'm reading its counterpart - "Life In A Medieval City", and I found one of Frances Gies' other books - "The Knight In History" - which is next on the list. Then I may try another Beowulf translation/adaptation, another Gawain translation, or see what else may take my fancy by then!
 
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Just finished "Life In A Medieval City" by Joseph and Frances Gies. A great, in-depth and yet broad explanation of the various roles of citizens in a Medieval city. Quite an interesting, simple, and eminently readable text. Now I'm reading its counterpart - "Life In A Medieval City", and I found one of Frances Gies' other books - "The Knight In History" - which is next on the list. Then I may try another Beowulf translation/adaptation, another Gawain translation, or see what else may take my fancy by then!
I can no longer edit, but to clarify, I'm currently reading the counterpart which is "Life In A Medieval Castle", NOT "City"! I'm not reading the same book twice in a row! (Though I DID do that way back in high school when I had first read "The Lord Of The Rings".)
 
i'm reading "go like hell", which is the very much-changed source material for "ford vs ferrari". it's engrossing even for someone like me who's not into racing. the writer based a lot of the work on interviews, news stories and so on, but it reads like a thriller with tangents that give deep background into racing, the companies and the people, none of whom- thank goodness - was anything like they were written for the movie. i'm really enjoying it.
 
Onto "The Saga of Grettir The Strong" (also known as "Grettir The Outlaw" or a few other similar titles) - I'm rather enjoying it so far. He's basically a grumpy coot who doesn't take gruff from anybody. I'm almost halfway through, and as far as sagas go, he's a pretty memorable character for the author's direct and simplistic approach. After this, I'm not sure what I'll read. I have another of the "Life In A Medieval _______" on the way, but I think it'll be a few more days before it arrives. I'll definitely finish Grettir before that, and maybe even another book. I'm quite liking how many of these characters overlap and I'm getting a general feel for the various "ages" these Viking/Norse/Icelandic/Germanic/etc. stories take place in. I'm even starting to recognize characters and genealogies from other sagas when they introduce him/her as a "new character" in a saga.
 
I'm still reading that U.S. Grant personal memoirs! I get side tracked so easy.... I have read electrical manuals, gardening books and those college lit compendium texts (which can be very interesting), earth science texts etc... but I really need to get that U.S. Grant memoir finished!

I have a Whaling and a Cod history on the shelf plus a couple of science fictions, an Orwell reader and 2 authoritative books on the Violin and the Cello! Plus I need to re-read Sandberg's Lincoln


Ahhhhhhh!!!!
 
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Finished my series of "Life In A Medieval _______" last night by reading the author's related text - "The Knight In History". Like the others, eminently readable, but fascinating and in depth. This one traces the evolution of the medieval knight from essentially armored barbarian to romantic ideal, and culminates in the knight's end as a professional solider while becoming symbolic in the modern day, and even goes into how knights were romanticized even during their own day. The chivalrous knight was typically the ideal, but rarely the reality. Good stuff. Next - another translation of Beowulf - my third in the past few weeks!
 

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