false 13 976 911 true 5628858 read 1 true 798641 currently-reading 64 true 798640 to-read <![CDATA[Helen added 'Why Everything Is So Shit']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/80274051 Why Everything Is So Shit (Hardcover) by Charlie Brooker
bookshelves: currently-reading
]]> <![CDATA[Helen added 'We Need to Talk About Kelvin: What Everyday Things Tell Us About the Universe']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78828655 to: We Need to Talk About Kelvin: What Everyday Things Tell Us About the Universe (Hardcover) by Marcus Chown
Advanced scientific and quantum concepts explained beautifully. Really enjoyed it and found it very helpful. ]]> <![CDATA[Helen added 'The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78133910 to: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (Millennium, #3) by Stieg Larsson
]]> <![CDATA[Helen is on page 352 of The Girl Who Kicked... ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78133910 Helen is on page 352 of 599 of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest ]]> <![CDATA[Helen added 'The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78134112 to: The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land (Paperback) by Thomas Asbridge
Signed with the Cross - "The Crusades" by Thomas Asbridge
location: London
mood: impressed
music: Toxic Valentine - All Time Low
I've frequently whinged about the rather dispiriting lack of anything resembling a proper popular cultural history of the Middle Ages. There's loads of great Tudor era material, but not much from earlier. I have my much-loved copy of The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer, which is an utter life-saver, but unfortunately it concentrates on the Fourteenth Century, and the character in Sleepwalker is actually from the Thirteenth. Furthermore, he's a Crusader; specifically a Knight Templar.

I had of course done some reading on the Crusades just out of general interest before I started writing Sleepwalker (they'd been a matter of personal fascination to me since I'd visited Jerusalem as a student), and I'd particularly enjoyed The New Knighthood by Malcolm Barber, the multi-volume History of the Crusades by Steve Runciman, and also the very populist but no less fun and interesting The Crusades by Alan Ereira and Terry Jones.

So I was happy to get a chance to look at Thomas Asbridge's forthcoming book The Crusades (published by Simon and Schuster, who very kindly set me up with access to an except), and I was very glad I bothered. It proved a fast and yet authoritative read and distinguished itself on two fronts - through the device of giving equal time and consideration to the Muslim view of events (Saladin's tactics are analysed and critiqued - it's clear that Asbridge feels that it's a downhill slide for the Islamic champion after Hattin) and the book also offers more than a passing treatment of what it might actually be like to be fighting in the Siege of Acre.

Though bound to be a straightforward military history by its very nature, it's actually spiked through with lively storytelling and wonderful anecdotes, such as the scandalised Muslim historian reporting on "300 young and lovely Frankish maidens" who arrive to earn a living servicing the Crusaders (and, it is implied, Muslims) besieging Acre, who "brought their silver anklets up to touch their golden earrings [and:] made themselves targets for men’s darts". Ingenious jihadis get a supply ship to the beleaguered city of Acre by shaving their beards off and filling the decks with pigs and crosses, fooling the Christian sailors manning the cordon. An emir caught transporting the hated and feared "Greek Fire" (which features in Sleepwalker, so I was delighted to see it) is captured trying to get into the city, and a Latin knight ‘stretched him out on the ground, emptying the contents of the phial on his private parts, so that his genitals were burned’.

But it's not all (admittedly grisly) fun and games: there is also the horror of starvation, disease, of being surrounded by rotting corpses which are constantly being replenished with fresh ones to the tune of up to 200 a day.

There's also a very human treatment of the main actors - Saladin is passionate, determined, but maybe a little too cautious; Richard the Lionheart is flamboyant, canny, and vain, but capable of ruthless acts of massacre. The use of evidence, historical context, and personal supposition is mingled convincingly and their characterisations drawn with an elegant economy of language. The political history is delivered with the same sprightly verve as the military history, and from the point of view of an interested amateur, this treatment worked well for me.

Apparently the word "crusader" comes from the Latin portmanteau crucesignatus - "signed by the Cross". One can forward social and political reasons that render the Crusades a matter of mere expediency, but those reasons on their own are insufficient - ultimately the genesis of the Crusades is ideological. Sadly, in the last couple of decades, the Crusades and their troubling questions of religious fanaticism and grasping political adventurism are closer in spirit to us than they have ever been. Asbridge's accessible and above all humane take on them is thus an entirely welcome approach to this very topical subject. ]]> <![CDATA[Helen added 'Her Fearful Symmetry']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/75362467 to: Her Fearful Symmetry (Hardcover) by Audrey Niffenegger
]]> <![CDATA[Helen added 'Transition']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/75362532 to: Transition (Hardcover) by Iain M. Banks
]]> <![CDATA[Helen added 'The Little Stranger']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/72863899 to: The Little Stranger (Hardcover) by Sarah Waters
]]> <![CDATA[Helen added 'Naamah's Kiss']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/61559103 to: Naamah's Kiss (Kushiel's Legacy, #7) by Jacqueline Carey
I enjoyed this, but felt it never really got going til 200 pages from the end. I never, unlike the other series Carey has done, got a sense that Moirin was ever in any real danger or that much was at stake - a feeling that continued until she finally gets to Chi'in.

It's a shame, but if I hadn't loved the Kushiel's Dart series so much, I don't think I would bother with another Carey after reading this. ]]> <![CDATA[Helen added 'Invisible Cities']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/70849690 to: Invisible Cities (Paperback) by Italo Calvino
Beautiful prose - a collection of impressions of the self in space. Very instructive. ]]>