Christopher > Recent Status Updates

Dwarves and giants, mermaids and human thumbs. An interesting book of history, science, and the history of science.

Something like 19 pages on Handel. By Pollux, Durant didn't even give that many to Locke or to Newton!!

Very slowly working my way alongside all the other books I read. This one is somewhat fascinating but in general quite a difficult read.

Such a simple story, so sweet, so...something.

I do not like this book. It is icky, ribald, toilet trash. But it is fun in its own way, and so I shall persevere.

I am greatly enjoying this one so far. Clever and so very even-flowing as always, the only sentence I disliked was when he described somebody (Swift?) as "Hiberniating" in Ireland, a stupid pun on Hibernia and hibernating. I love Will Durant truly, but I will not be the one to let him off on such impoverished wit.

Women are evil. Thus seems to be the moral of this story, a rather typical theme in literature I am noticing more and more. But who can blame them, when they live in the safety of their husbands' homes and with the boredom of darning stockings and knitting, for wanting to engage in more masculine pursuits such as murder?

I am not liking the choice of proper nouns to refer to places; rather than "Gaul" he writes "France", rather than "Campus Martius" he writes "Mars Field", and so on. I do not approve, and this stylistic choice therefore has doomed this to a loss of a star. 3 stars thus far.

A charming little story, quite poignant and touching. I am liking this far, far more than I had expected.

This seems like it shall be a rather dry book. Not dull, for I do not find such matter-of-fact accounts of dates and names to be dull, but not lively either in that there is little personality, little character behind all the names and dates.

Just now getting to Egil's birth and early childhood. At 3 he wasn't allowed to visit his grandfather. Why? Because there would be a lot of drinking going on, and Egil is miserable company when he's sober much less drunk!