Recent Reading
Feb. 20th, 2011 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowI finally finished rereading McNeill's The Rise of the West. Unsurprisingly, it's rather dated (as you might expect of a book published in 1965). For example, he attributes the fall of the Harappan civilization to the Aryan invasion, which was once widely believed but appears to be discredited now. Perhaps oddly - or perhaps not - it seems most out-of-date in its interpretation of the recent past, frozen by the bipolar world of the Cold War. McNeill discounted the ability of Islam to withstand the secularizing trend, also. (He may yet be proven right, but both extreme and moderate versions of the faith seem to be holding or even gaining ground at the moment.) Still, there's quite a bit of useful material in the book. My new bus book is Lost Delta Found, about... well, I'll hold off on pronouncing on "what it's about" until I've read a bit deeper into it. It began with an attempt to write a biography of Muddy Waters....
I also just finished First Lord's Fury by Jim Butcher, which brings the Codex Alera to a conclusion. It's not bad, but I think some of the earlier volumes were stronger. Butcher does confirm that the Alerans are the descendants of a lost Roman legion, but that leaves a number of questions. Leaving aside the inclusion of women (camp followers?), there's the fact that some of the Alerans, like Bernard, have Germanic names, and Schultz's name is flat-out German. The legion could have had German auxiliaries, of course, but - when did the Second Sound Shift occur? Fifth century? And yet there's no indication of Christianity, or even Mithraism, having been present. None of the classical gods, no Isis or Serapis, nothing. Okay, handwave that; any religious tendencies could have been worn away in the tumultuous first few centuries after they came to Alera. But what really gripes me is Butcher's complete failure to grasp the Roman system of naming. "Gaius" is not a family name....
Elsewhere on the light-reading front, I've been occupied with Dick Francis (Flying Finish), Jack McDevitt (Omega), Marilynne Robinson (Home - I really should post a review of Gilead and Home, taken together), plus Patricia Briggs, Jennifer Crusie, and Charlie Stross. Apart from the Robinson, none of it's really outstanding, though I may do a little bone-picking with McDevitt later on. Now I'm reading Axis, the sequel to Robert Charles Wilson's Spin. As usual with Wilson, patience seems to be required, but he usually pays off pretty well.
I also just finished First Lord's Fury by Jim Butcher, which brings the Codex Alera to a conclusion. It's not bad, but I think some of the earlier volumes were stronger. Butcher does confirm that the Alerans are the descendants of a lost Roman legion, but that leaves a number of questions. Leaving aside the inclusion of women (camp followers?), there's the fact that some of the Alerans, like Bernard, have Germanic names, and Schultz's name is flat-out German. The legion could have had German auxiliaries, of course, but - when did the Second Sound Shift occur? Fifth century? And yet there's no indication of Christianity, or even Mithraism, having been present. None of the classical gods, no Isis or Serapis, nothing. Okay, handwave that; any religious tendencies could have been worn away in the tumultuous first few centuries after they came to Alera. But what really gripes me is Butcher's complete failure to grasp the Roman system of naming. "Gaius" is not a family name....
Elsewhere on the light-reading front, I've been occupied with Dick Francis (Flying Finish), Jack McDevitt (Omega), Marilynne Robinson (Home - I really should post a review of Gilead and Home, taken together), plus Patricia Briggs, Jennifer Crusie, and Charlie Stross. Apart from the Robinson, none of it's really outstanding, though I may do a little bone-picking with McDevitt later on. Now I'm reading Axis, the sequel to Robert Charles Wilson's Spin. As usual with Wilson, patience seems to be required, but he usually pays off pretty well.
