Had some very productive writing time recently. Turned down a couple of gigs and writing of reviews – they’re my escape from the intellectual project(s), but it’s easy to fill your time with those instead. Also avoiding a couple of conferences I’d normally support, to the point of feeling guilty, but still found myself reading – all writing / research related but – nevertheless:
Hard copies of these two:
And a Kindle copy of this:
So, in the order I’ve read them:
Charlie Higson’s history of our Kings and Queens. Not normally the kind of stuff I’d read, but wittily and readably done, with satirical / topical references to our 21st C politics. Like “1066 and all that, only accurate” – according to the Tom Holland. (I guess I was sub-consciously interested because of my mother’s post-Norman local-history that we published last year.) Read start to finish in just a couple of sessions. Recommended.
Andrea Wulf’s “The Traveller” biography of George Forster. Bought on the strength of her two previous biographies of Humboldt and the Jena Set, and it’s getting great reviews. In the same way that Humboldt was the first “ecologist” Forster was the first “human rights” advocate, where humanity included the locals encountered on his youthful foreign travels with his father in 1760’s Russia and with 1770’s James Cook. So many overlaps and influences on the great and the good (and the not so good). Mind-bogglingly fascinating. Won’t be reading to a conclusion for now, but recommended and back on the shelf as reference for now.
Laura Spinney’s “Proto” is a history of language (and geography, civilisations and culture) through the Proto-Indo-European language family. One of those topics I’ve written about multiple times before 2005/07/13/16, but always tainted with doubt as to the authenticity of “Aryan” stories told by 19th/2oth-C white, western, ex-colonialists. It’s real alright, 10,000 years of language, before written history, and now backed by so much 21st-C science in archaeology and genealogy. Endlessly fascinating already, after the front and end matter and just a couple of chapters. (A hobby-horse of mine; lots of those “rules” of sound and spelling changes as languages migrate, b<>v and art<>craft<>rta etc, which reveal essentially the same words across languages that diverged millennia ago. And, even the good-old “Mama” as first word / sounds of human offspring before any actual language “learning” – topical in recent days with “two-Dads” parenting cases.)
Will also put aside for future reference for now.
Back to the writing – picking-up on the inputs to my “Identity and Distinction” chapter from the RPA Dialogue with Keith Gillette. Just one more chore first.
Onwards and upward.
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