My Scattered Thoughts

Just following along on my history kick. (This one, like the Venice book, recommended by this Contraptions newsletter.) I didn’t know very much about horses before I read this book, but I learned a lot about them from reading this book. Nor did I know that people were using horse-drawn chariots before they rode horses, because horses weren’t strong enough to carry adult humans until people started breeding them for that purpose.

The core premise of the book, in a sense, is that horses have been so common throughout history, that people (and historians) have sort of collectively overlooked their importance and impact. (Like someone writing about how important cars are today, I suppose.) This book aims to amend that lack.

The most intriguing thing to me about this book was the way it illuminates the ways in which the geography of the central Asian steppe and its abundance of food for horses led to the roving cultures and lifestyles that built into things like the Mongols and the Huns. That it was the hunger for horses from more sedentary countries that led to this centralization of steppe power and the cycle of violence it created. The history of China in this book felt like a constant cycle between China’s hunger for horses and steppe tribes hunger for their treasures.

Anyway, there’s so much great detail here. As the author got into the 20th century and the importance of horses began to wane, I could feel his interest waning too. (Or maybe the 20th century is just too complex to try to cram into a couple chapters.) But all in all, a solid book of history. I learned a lot of things that didn’t know and built up quite a bit on things I only vaguely knew. I’d recommend this one.

One of the things I like about books is if there’s something I’m interested in learning more about, there’s always a book to read. A while back (this was months ago) I realized I didn’t know much about the history of Istanbul. This is the book I found.

The scope of this book is pretty epic, spanning hundreds of years. It starts in pre-history talking about the geological region around Istanbul: the Marmara Sea, the Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, the Black Sea, and the Aegean not too far from there. It goes from the earliest days of Byzantion to Byzantium to Constantinople to Konstaniye to Istanbul. I was struck by how much the geography of this place has shaped the humans and their choices over the centuries.

A compelling writer, Hughes kept the book rolling along, while providing just enough detail to keep it interesting. This book paired nicely with that book on Venice I read last month, providing a perspective that sort of laid aslant from that of Venice.

What did I take away from this book? Well, over and over and over, there are those who spend long, slow years building things up and creating beauty and community and then there are those who, in an instant, burn it all down.

I liked this. A solid work of history.

I often prefer The Odyssey to The Iliad. The former is more interesting structurally, with a greater variety of things and characters within it. The latter often feels like bros broing out. That being said, I appreciate the epic quality of the story and the terrifying ways in which the gods meddle in people’s lives. War Music isn’t a strict translation. It’s sort of poem inspired by The Iliad. Why’s there a helicopter on the cover, you might ask? One of the things that makes this book sort of interesting is the way in which Logue throws in modern metaphors to emphasize things within the story. In a way, it sort of ties the absurdity and bloodthirstiness of war from ancient times directly to the absurdity and bloodthirstiness of war today. The sad thing about this book is that it’s unfinished. An epic project that surpassed the author’s life. There’s a ghost that haunts this book. A ghost of what might have been and reading it, I felt a kind of bone-deep sorrow. But time runs ever on. I think this is a worthy read for any fan of The Iliad, but I’ll probably be going back to The Odyssey next time.

(I read this book at the recommendation of Max Read, who has a newsletter that I like with pretty solid book suggestions.)

This 1948 novel by Sylvia Townsend Warner tells the story of an English nunnery from the 12th through the 14th century. Characters come and go, the nunnery drifts into various states of disrepair, and the nuns live their lives. It’s the story of a religious institution and the ways that it affects the women and (some) men who live within and around it. For a book about a nunnery, there’s less religious fervor than I was expecting. The marvel of this book is in the detail of the day-to-day which manages to never be boring. The pragmatic realities of the feeding, clothing, housing, and maintenance of the nunnery for the people within take center stage. There’s also a subtle theme about the ways in which power and authority of positions change the people who inhabit them in sometimes unexpected ways. Everyone in the book feels real. No small feat for a book that has scores of characters. I can’t think of another book that I’ve read that’s quite like this one, even the other book by this author that I’ve read. I’d strongly recommend this one.

A book of Irish myths with lovely illustrations by P. J. Lynch. I especially liked “The Birth of Cuchulainn”, “Bricriu’s Feast”, and “The Enchanted Deer”. Cuchulainn was born as Setanta, but he killed Chulainn’s dog and took the dog’s place, becoming the cu (or hound) of Chulainn. There are lovely little dodges and half turns throughout, in the same way that “The Birth of Cuchulainn” has two meanings. A good intro to some Irish mythology.

I read this book on the history Venice based on the recommendation of Venkatesh Rao, a writer I like. It tracks the history of Venice from its very beginnings to the height of its imperial trade network to its eventual downfall and marginalization. This has a lot of what I look for in a history book: excellent detail from primary sources, an authorial voice and point of view, and larger historical context.

One the fascinating things about this book is the way in which their full-throated capitalistic enterprise required an intense police state and an embrace of community collective action. Their trade empire worked because they could rely on the accuracy of their bookkeeping to keep track of things coming in and things going out. Their system faltered when the collective and private civic virtue. Well, that and the Portuguese finding an alternate way to get spices from India.

Worth a read, I’d say!

Red Rabbit never went where I expected it to go, delightfully so. It’s a spooky, supernatural Western with witches, ghosts, cannibals, demons, and lazy sheriffs (well, just one). There’s a lot of gore and violence in this one, so it may not be for everyone, but there’s a core of kindly compassion in it that I found appealing. Also, that cover is pretty great!

I was immediately struck by the cover with its picture of the burning tower. I think I would’ve read it just on the cover alone. There’s something stark and unsettling about it, apart from the obvious ruin and destruction.

Hav is actually two books: The Last Letters from Hav (1985) and Hav of the Myrmidons (2005). It’s a travelogue of a fictional country that was so compelling when it was published that people wrote the author asking her how to get there. It reminds me very much of one of my favorite books, Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, about her travels in the Balkans between the two World Wars. Hav is filled with people washed up from other places, settled into a kind of aimless mishmash of languages and cultures. The sequel paints a picture of a world that I think we all might recognize in how much has changed in what we’ve lost and gained.

It’s a slow, quiet, meditative book and I was happy to have found it.

Shades of Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco, in that they both explore the ways in which wealth and power use explorations of the occult to subdue and exploit those who aren’t. Whereas Eco’s book is steeped in academia, Enriquez’s book dwells more in the mundane, the domestic, the day-to-day. This makes the intrusions of horror more, well, horrific. Not a pleasant book, by any means, but one written thoughtfully and with great care. One of the rare books that captures the complicated relationships between children and adults in a way that feels real and true. If you’re up for a long unhappy book filled with some pretty unpleasant stuff that manages to thought-provoking and profound, this is the book for you. I’d also recommend her books of short stories, The Things We Lost in the Fire and The Dangers of Smoking in Bed.