What are you reading in 2024?

[WolfByte]

I just finished Ken Mondschein's 2017 book, Game of Thrones and the Medieval Art of War.

As the title suggests, this book serves as a comparison between George R. R. Martin's famous series (both the books and the TV series, albeit more the former than the latter) and how things actually functioned during Europe's medieval period. Various chapters cover different topics, such as weapons and armor, war/duels/tournaments, economics, women, etc.

Unsurprisingly, the format here is more didactic than critical. While Mondschein never abandons the idea of critiquing Martin's work in terms of fidelity to history, he openly acknowledges that this is more about shedding light on how things actually were during the medieval period (as opposed to medievalism, which is the pop culture take on various aspects of medieval life). In that regard, this book functions very well as an overall primer on medieval life, in that its disparate areas of coverage serve to give a wider view than what you'd find in a more specialized work, where each topic was the sole focus.

It helps that Mondschein is an engaging writer, having just enough verve (and the occasional aside) that the text never comes across as dry. That said, I found myself wishing on several occasions that he'd dialed it back just a touch, as his assertions can sometimes come across a touch too strongly.

This is most notable in the introduction; not only does his impassioned defense of the humanities (as college courses) seem somewhat misplaced (and his pointing to the culture wars of today makes that justification seem petty rather than pressing; far better is his unfortunately-abbreviated acknowledgment that the humanities (as far as this book's area of study goes) should be taught simply because people remain taken with the medieval period, and want to learn more about it), but I find myself grimacing whenever anyone makes a declarative assertion that they are one of the world's foremost experts on something. While Mondschein does proceed to back that assertion up by listing his credentials and experiences, it still comes across as bordering on arrogance, and I suspect that some readers will find it off-putting.

If so, that's a shame, because he knows what he's talking about, and presents it well. Frequent citations to classical works sit alongside excerpts from Martin's books, and this is one of those all-too-rare instances when something is both educational and entertaining at the same time. Of course, fans of Martin's will be pleased that Mondschein vindicates the ASOIAF series in virtually every category in which he examines it. Perhaps the only area where Martin's work doesn't measure up is the chapter on atrocities, where, for instance, the sack of the Saltpans (from A Storm of Swords) is shown to be mild compared to what happened during the Jacquerie.

Overall, I'd recommend this to anyone who's a fan of medieval history, especially if they've read/watched the GoT/ASOIAF series.

You may also be interested in "A History of The Art of War in the Middle Ages" by Charles Oman.

 

[WolfByte]

You may also be interested in "A History of The Art of War in the Middle Ages" by Charles Oman.

Oh, and if you are a "Game of Thrones" fan check out "The Worm Ouroboros" by English writer E. R. Eddison.

 

[Richards]

I just spent the last hour or so reading the first three issues of three homemade comic book titles I wrote and drew back in March - August 1979, that I unearthed in a folder in a drawer in my gaming library. That would have been the end of my first year in high school and the summer before I started my sophomore year. The titles were:

• Professor Precarious - a geneticist who experimented with animal extracts, injecting himself with various compounds that temporarily transformed him into various animal/human hybrids. His most successful was the ant/eel compound, which gave him the proportional strength of an ant, the ability to walk up walls, and the electrical zap of an electric eel. (Unfortunately, it also gave him the head of a human-sized ant, so he was mute while in that form - and he looked more like a monster than a traditional superhero, usually wearing slacks and his lab coat instead of a uniform.)
• Laserman - a superpowered humanoid from two alternate realities away from Earth, who was sent to explore these other realities, and who got stranded once the scientists back at his home dimension realized the launch-points from one world to another were forming permanent, one-way gates. So they shut down the program while they worked on coming up with a solution that didn't further mess up the realities, and in the meantime Laserman became a crimefighting superhero on Earth. He could shoot energy blasts from his hands and the buttons on his belt created a force field and temporarily transported him into an otherwise empty pocket dimension where he could heal up as necessary (or deposit enemies until he was ready to deal with them).
• Dawnspirit - a Los Angeles college student volunteered as an experimental subject in the rapid transfer of knowledge directly into the brain (the plan was for her to learn fluent Spanish in mere minutes), but an overload of the equipment hooked up to her head caused her to develop telekinetic powers (including the ability to fly telekinetically). So naturally, she decided to use her newfound powers to become a superhero.

It was fun reading these over (those I could make out, in any case, as some pages have faded significantly over the intervening years), and I could see my (primitive) artistic abilities increase in those few scant months; it's also pretty obvious I learned what I knew about comics from the Marvel Universe comics I was reading at the time. But I still have issues 4-6 of those three comics to read later, as well as the two issues I did of a fourth title:

• The Guardian Force - a group of five superpowered aliens from the planet Coragon assigned as the protectors of Earth from alien threats until the planet was deemed worthy of joining a Galactic Federation. The members were Sun King, Moon Goddess, Matter Shaper, Rain Master, and Hunter (the last two of which were significantly underpowered compared to the first three). Issue 2 of this series, the last of the whole bunch, has a date of July 1981, which would be in the summer before my senior year in high school.

I'm drowning in nostalgia over here!

Johnathan

 

[Alzrius]

I just finished reading The Diamond Sutra and the Sutra of Hui Neng, having found an old copy of this particular monograph at a local bookseller.

As the title suggests, this is an English translation of the Diamond Sutra and what's now known as the Platform Sutra, both of which are profound texts in Mahayana Buddhism. I have little commentary on these, as I believe that both speak for themselves quite thoroughly.

That said, I will add a personal anecdote here: while the copy I picked up was quite old (being a 1974 printing) and well-worn, I still can't help but marvel at the symbolism to be found in how, just as I was finishing the Diamond Sutra, the book's pages began to fall out.

 

[Autumnal]

Finished rereading Kim Newman’s four early ‘90s novels for Game’s Workshop’s Dark Future setting, published under his Jack Yeovil pseudonym. They are…exuberant. It’s the end of the 1990s. Oliver North is president. (Presidents since 1960 include Nixon, Agnew, and Heston, among others.) The whole middle of the US is a desert where it hasn’t rained in years to decades. North’s economics advisor turns out to be a serial-killing psychopath who’s engineered a permanent depression. Private police agencies do most law enforcement. Ian Paisley was prime minister of Britain until just recently.

Oh, and Nguyen Seth, the leader of the Brothers of Joseph, an increasingly popular weirdo sect, has been alive for thousands of years and is a gateway to the Dark Ones in the outer void, whom he is preparing to unleash. One of the heroes facing him is former Army colonel, now Sanctioned Op, Elvis Presley. After he did his time in the army, he realized just how screwed up his manager Colonel Parker and Parker’s mysterious associate Nguyen Seth were and reenlisted for a twenty-year-hitch. In his absence, the center of gravity in pop music shifted to Britain for a while, then to the Soviet Union, with stars like ‘70s idol Andrei Tarkovsky.

It’s basically Warhammer 1999, combining the ludicrous and the horrific seamlessly. I’m thinking about it as a Savage Worlds setting.

“Glastonbury, England. Prime Minister Archer today opens the state-sponsored popular music festival, showcasing the best of British culture. He has announced that he will join patriotic singer Johnny Lydon, host of the popular British variety program The Johnny Lydon Band Show, in a rendition of the star’s biggest hit, ‘God Save the Queen.’ Other British showbiz greats scheduled to appear include Matt Monro, Clive Dunn, Tessie O’Shea, Norman Wisdom, Mrs Mills, Valerie Singleton and the comic duo of Benny Elton and Ricky Mayall, with American guest stars Liberace and Conway Twitty reaffirming the Special Relationship. Rumours that Ken Dodd plans to come out of retirement for this one last concert have been denied by the reclusive multi-billionaire entertainer’s manager, Peter Hall. John Lennon, the leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, who was briefly a member of an unsuccessful group called The Quarrymen back in the 1960s, was apparently asked if he wanted to reform to appear on the bill. ‘Nobody was interested back then,’ he told our reporter, ‘I don’t see why they should be now, like.’

 

[theBardic life]

I'm working my way through the Traitor Son Cycle series by Miles Cameron.
Book 1: The Red Knight was really great, he does a great job merging the details of a knight's life with fantasy in a way that makes me feel the man is a reenactor.
Book 2: The Fell Sword picks up the worldbuilding and paints the story across a larger canvas of locations and societies.

Starting on Book 3 soon.

Read The Wizards and the Warriors by Hugh Cook, thanks to reading a review by Patrick Stuart (veins of the earth) on his blog.
It was a great read, but not a conventional story by any means so be warned. In a weird way it reads like an actual account of some adventurers strugging to make a goal work in a vast world amidst historical forces.
I'd reccomend all the books above!

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I'm gonna have a go at Joyce's Ulysses.

Will you read it naked? Or with an annotated version? Or perhaps you've read it before...?

 

[overgeeked]

Finished The Shadow #9. Mobsmen on the Spot. Published April 1, 1932.

In this yarn a falsely accused jailbird named Cliff acts as the agent of The Shadow as they take down several gangs of racketeers all ultimately controlled by a single mastermind. This one read like three or four thematically related short stories slightly reworked and stitched together to be a single novel featuring The Shadow. Not a great story. Mostly Cliff running around with maybe 4-5 scenes featuring The Shadow.

 

[Autumnal]

I read that as “in this yam”, and wondered if this was Steve Gerber’s The Shadow or something.

 

[Richards]

I started The Shattered World by Michael Reeves, a really good fantasy novel I read in high school and really enjoyed. I'm only rereading it now because I received not only it but its sequel, The Burning Realm, which I haven't read yet and am eagerly wanting to do so - but I figured I'd probably enjoy it more if I had a more recent recollection of the main characters.

Remember all those Yes album covers with chunks of a planet floating around in the sky? That's basically the setting for The Shattered World - in ages past, a magical catastrophe tore the planet asunder, and only some frantic scrambling by powerful wizards allowed the resulting chunks to remain habitable as they float around the sun. Now each fragment is more or less its own kingdom, and the main character, a werebear thief named Beorn, is captured and sent on a mission that could have a profound effect upon the Shattered World as a whole.

Already highly recommended. I hope the sequel remains as well-written and entertaining.

Johnathan