Julian: Rome’s Last Pagan Emperor
My knowledge of Roman history goes: not great to okay for the Republican period; not bad for the Julio-Claudians; verrrry sketchy and potted post the Year of Four Emperors, right up to… like, the fall of Constantinople. There are bits and persons in there I know about! But it’s not connected up.
Anyway then I learned there was a newish (2023) biography of Julian, and I was excited.
Julian “the Apostate” is one of those fascinating characters who pop up in Roman (and other) history: they don’t last long but they have an outsized legacy because of a key thing or moment. In Julian’s case, it’s that he is the nephew of Constantine – our man who moved the Roman Empire’s capital to the city he modestly named for himself, and also paved the way for Christianity to become the dominant religion in said empire. Was Constantine a “real” Christian? What do you even mean by that? Not relevant, for the purposes of this biography (and, uh, completely impossible to answer anyway). What IS important is that after Constantine, the empire was basically expecting a Christian emperor. And so when Julian comes along and goes PSYCH! I’ve been pretending for a decade or so!, there are a lot of people who are Unimpressed.
This is a short biography: we’re talking 133 pages, and they’re not huge pages either. So there’s not super detailed info about every day of Julian’s life. What Freeman does present, though, is an excellent overview of the main stages of Julian’s life: upbringing in Asia Minor after his now-emperor cousin kills the rest of their family (… yeah…), then raised to Caesar (sub-emperor) and sent to fight in Gaul – with no military experience! but apparently sometimes reading about a thing does make you good at it! Then back towards Constantinople, expecting to fight the cousin, who conveniently (fr) dies on the way, leaving Julian uncontested as Augustus. At which point he begins to try bringing back pagan ways, and eventually oppressing Christians.
And then he heads off to Persia. Apparently he paid more attention to Alexander than to, like, pretty much everyone else. It doesn’t go well.
Freeman’s writing is immensely readable. I don’t think you need to have much knowledge of Roman history to understand what Julian is doing; Freeman presents enough background that the various issues – like the place of Christians in society by this point – is easy to grasp. He doesn’t go into the weeds about what the Senate and others are doing at this point, or even what’s happening in the rest of the empire; this is a very focused, narrow biography, and it works for that reason.
Left-Wing Ladies
I received this book as a gift for speaking at a meeting quite some months ago, and I’ve only just got around to reading it – not from lack of interest, but just… you know. Life.
So! It’s quite short, at only 177 pages, and it’s very readable. There are a lot of acronyms, so it’s a good thing there’s a list of them at the start of the book. It probably helps to have a bit of knowledge about Australian, and particularly Victorian, history from 1950-2000, but honestly it wouldn’t matter if you knew nothing. It’s based on a lot of archival research – someone has clearly been very conscientious at keeping minutes, pamphlets, letters etc – and some oral history interviews as well.
I knew a very small amount about the Union of Australian Women before diving into this: that they existed, in the first place, which is probably more than most people my age. I had come across them in my anti-Vietnam War research, as there were several women in both Save Our Sons and UAW, and they kept getting discussed in passing with regard to other actions around peace and women’s stuff. What I did not know was the extraordinary breadth of issues that the UAW took on, nor anything about their internal politics.
For me, the most interesting aspect is what the women in the UWA worked towards. They started out as an explicitly working-class organisation, and saw themselves as more aligned with unions than anyone else; there’s a really interesting discussion about being concerned with wages not keeping up with price hikes, rather than being concerned with salaries, which I think is a difference that doesn’t get discussed so much these days. When you add that concern for class difference to the fact that in Victoria, in particular, the UWA had Aboriginal members and worked to support ideas like land rights – well before that was popular – and that they printed their information in languages other than English and worked to support migrant women workers: I rather think these women – many of whom would not have described themselves as feminist! – were expressing intersectional feminism decades before it was being discussed in those terms. Which is not to say they were always on the cutting edge of women’s issues; the book points out how members reacted to discussions of prostitutes as workers, for instance, and the early reluctance of UWA to support ease of abortion access. On both topics, though, the UWA did come around to supporting women broadly.
One of the things I can’t get over is that so many of the things they were agitating for from the 1950s on are still relevant today. Pay equity (although at least that’s now legislated…). Accessible childcare. The problem of the price of goods rising faster than wages. Aboriginal rights. Environmental issues. Safety for women and children. And their number one issue, across five decades: peace.
The internal political situation is an important aspect, if not quite as gripping. As with so many organisations like this, there was much external discussion about whether they were merely a front for the Communist Party. And it’s true that many early members were members of both, and that the CPA contributed to the UWA and may have had a hand in guiding it. They were also associated with international socialist organisations for several decades, and the Australian issues brought about by the Sino-Soviet split showed themselves in the UWA too. But it’s clear that the UWA was never just a Communist organisation.
The Victorian branch of the UWA was the last one in existence. It has basically folded now: in 2021 they announced that their remaining funds would be used to fund activities for “the leadership, training and rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, girls, non-binary and gender diverse young people.” I can’t help but be a bit sad that I will never experience the UWA, although I have met some women who were themselves members.
The Raven Scholar
I read this because it’s in the Hugo Awards packet. When I got to the end, my main thought was “ah crap, another book that makes ranking my vote hard.”
Actually that’s a lie. On two fronts.
1. I had already thought that at about the 1/3 mark.
2. I also thought “eeeeee I need the second book NOW.”
Set in an empire where basically everyone pledges to one god of eight gods – who are all (in theory) revered for their different functions; and where the imperial title changes at the latest every generation – via a series of trials. This is really intriguing world. Yes it’s monarchy yet again, but this idea that the crown cannot be inherited and that the choice of who will be next is via not just physical tests but social, emotional, and intellectual tests – well, that’s nicely novel, and also makes up a substantial portion of the novel itself.
The story opens with a young woman whose father was condemned, when she was very young, as a traitor. It’s an excellent way to set up some of the problems with the system as it exists, highlight some of the inequities, and also demonstrate that Hodgson has an excellent storytelling knack. Because the novel is not about that girl, it’s about someone completely different – the titular scholar.
Talking too much more about the narrative gets into “I enjoyed discovering the twists and turns and don’t want to take that away from other readers” – I knew nothing about this book, going in, except that a) it was in the Hugo packet and b) Renay of Intergalactic Mixtape is always pleased when there’s a new review of. So if you’re keen on a clever take on fantasy, intriguing worldbuilding, morally problematic characters, truly superb twists (I thought I had figured one out but nope golly I was wrong) and a little bit of emotional devastation, this is for you.
A few slightly spoiler-y comments below the fold.
Continue reading →Object Lessons: Concrete
Read via NetGalley and the publisher, Bloomsbury Academic. It’s out in September.
The thing about this book is the thing about almost all of the Object Lessons: if you asked a random person, a short book about concrete should not be this enthralling. Because most people do not spend all their time thinking about concrete, even if – perhaps because – they are surrounded by it all the time.
And yet. Parnell shows that the history and cultural context of concrete is compelling. That it speaks to questions of modernity and sustainability, memorialisation and objectification, capitalism and whether aesthetics matter and the ramifications of controlling the literal building blocks of a society.
I enjoyed reading this and I learned an enormous amount. Will I still wander around oblivious to the amount of concrete around me? Will I still ignore all of the ways it’s used and what it actually looks like? A lot of the time, probably, yes; it’s hard to retrain your eyes and expectations. But every now and then I will look across a city, or consider a building site, and I will think about how concrete works under tension, and whether the use of concrete has helped divorce builders from their materials, and how environmentally problematic the use of current concrete is, as well as how incredibly useful it’s been over the last couple of centuries. And those are good things.
Glasses (Object Lessons)
I read this courtesy of the publisher, Bloomsbury Academic, and NetGalley. It’s out in July.
Firstly, I know this is an ARC but I really hope that the publishers deal with the editing issues. Eyes described as “shouldering blue”? There are a few points with very silly typos, and a couple of sections where sentences have clearly been rewritten but the original not removed.
Overall I enjoyed this book, if not quite as much as others in the series. The history of lenses used to either improve eyesight or shade the eyes from bright light is genuinely fascinating – I had no idea about the use of emeralds and green-tinted glass by Venetian nobles, nor the use of visors by artists. I was a little perturbed by the discussion of how kids with glasses are viewed: not the repeating of stereotypes so much as that it didn’t feel like there was enough reminder of the fact that these ARE stereotypes. There’s also a weird tendency across the book to suggest that in some cases the assumption of genius in the glasses-wearer is born out by some individuals, which feels like making assumptions about cause and effect – and individuals don’t make stereotypes real – etc etc. There’s also a discussion about the aesthetics of facial shape and what glasses work with what shape, which also honestly just felt weird, when there was no “or you just pick the glasses you like!”
I liked that the book included exploration of sunglasses and their use by celebrities – and also what wearing corrective glasses does for celebrities, and that this included extended discussion of Clark Kent. The section on sunglasses included mention of blind people like Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles, which was great – but the omission of Roy Orbison felt egregious, given how his use of sunglasses was counter to basically every example provided in the book.
All up, an interesting overview, but not as insightful or engaging as others.
A Bite-Sized History of Italy
Read courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher. It’s out at the start of June.
This book was an absolute delight.
The ‘bite-sized’ is an important part of the title, and the point is reiterated in the introduction: Callegari isn’t claiming this as a definitive look at Italian food, Italian culture, Italian identity, or their connections. What it is is a starting point, a set of vignettes (appetisers?) pointing to important moments and aspects of food and culture and identity, which are starting points for a deeper investigation – if you want to. If you just want an overview, that’s what this is!
Starting from Roman history and coming through to today, touching on many geographical areas and many Significant Italian Foods, Callegari touches on how certain things became ‘Italian” – tomatoes are not even European, let alone originally Italian! – as well as what it means for certain foods to exist in very specific regions. And beyond that, she touches on what it even means to be “Italian,” how that has changed / is changing, how food has influenced it, and also how talking about food (looking at you, Dante) has been a factor in this.
Not only is this a really great overview of a lot of interesting topics, it’s incredibly engaging. Chapters are short – like I said: appetisers – but they usually don’t feel too superficial because Callegari is very clear about the purpose of the book.
If you’re interested in food history but not looking for an encyclopaedia, this is an excellent starting point on Italy. Also: what a brilliant bibliography.
LOTR: Book 2
Here are my thoughts on Book 1. Note again that I am not being anywhere near as thorough as Nick and Abigail, who are linked there!
Well, as something of a reward for finishing several review books, I finally got around to reading Book 2 of The Lord of the Rings. And it was a reward, because Book 2 is a delight. Everyone is still together, there are some really interesting interactions and lovely descriptions, we get Galadriel… there’s hope and horror and excitement and the exquisite pain that isn’t quite nostalgia but something like.
So, some thoughts:
- The stay in Rivendell is much more extended than I recalled. Like their stay in Lothlorien, it’s such an interesting way of showing how the Elves are slightly removed from the rest of the world – that time doesn’t quite work for them as it does for mortals. 100% I would want to stay there rather than going on. I had also forgotten how little we get of Arwen here. But we do get further glimpses of Impressive Aragorn. I am endlessly fascinated by the different perspectives we are shown of him.
- As noted last time, I was 12 and relatively sheltered when I first read this (in the mid 90s). But my readings from at least late adolescence, and definitely in my 20s, absolutely noted the queer under (over) tones of Sam towards Frodo.
- Once again I enjoyed the travel story. Maybe I just impressed on it at a young age – although I do still enjoy a travel story in other contexts too. Tolkien both gives us the details of their travails, and the difficult terrain – but it doesn’t go on for chapters, so it’s still a fair pace so it doesn’t bore me.
- I do think the films captured Moria beautifully, and also the Balrog.
- It’s interesting that for all the Nine Walkers are officially an ensemble cast, actually we don’t see the actions of most of the characters across this particular book. Pippin gets scolded for checking the depth of the well, but otherwise he and Merry have little to do. Sam is scared of heights. Boromir gets to be large in the snow, and concerned about Galadriel, and of course is under the ring’s ‘fluence at the end. But otherwise… it’s Gandalf and Frodo and Aragorn. Gimli is literally to the fore in Moria, Legolas a bit in Lothlorien. I think it’s different from how writers tend to approach it these days.
- I will always love the chapters in Lothlorien. But that moment when it says that Aragorn never returned to Cerin Amroth as living man? That’s the moment that pierces my heart. It’s future-oriented – well, not nostalgia, which tends to be seen as more sentimental. Anyway: Aragorn will die. He is mortal. There are things he has done that he will never do again, even if he survives the coming war. And this knowledge is present throughout these chapters in particular – Galadriel even says it out loud: even destroying the ring, which is good for the world, will have negative consequences for the elves. This sort of complex approach to the task, and the world, is definitely not something I understood as a kid and am only grasping more fully as I age.
- I simply cannot imagine reading The Fellowship of the Ring and having to leave the crew as a) Sam and Frodo head east, and b) there might be sounds of battle but we’re not sure?? To Everyone who read this as it was published: I see you.
Lords of the Salt Road
I read this courtesy of the publisher, Osprey, and NetGalley. It’s out at the start of June.
Overall I enjoyed this book very much. I have a couple of caveats, which I’ll get to, but in general it has expanded my understanding of the role “the Norse” played in the history of the British Isles, as well as what it meant to be Norse / a Viking.
I came to this book with some knowledge already of “the Viking Age” – and I use those quote marks advisedly, since it’s a term that many historians aren’t happy about and is anyway incredibly vague (after all, what is “viking”?). Still, this is my context: I have a decent understanding of British history between when the Romans nicked off and the Normans stomped in; I have slightly less, but still some, knowledge of what was going on with that area now called Scandinavia. Would this book be as accessible to someone with zero knowledge of those things? It’s hard to say. Perhaps not, not least because one of the very difficult things is all of the Hara/olds, and there are a couple of other names that pop up repeatedly too; it’s hard to keep track of who’s who, even if you have a basic grasp of who should be when.
So, the book: a history of the Earls of Orkney (who also had control of the Shetlands, for most of their existence, as well as parts of northern Scotland for a fair chunk of time). It uses as its base a Norse saga about the earls, along with some other bits and pieces. Konstam makes a good argument for seeing the earls as a really important part of understanding the history of both Scotland, and Britain more broadly, and Norway in particular. It has been very easy for a very long time to insist on a French/maybe also Spanish tilt to British history, but the truth is that the Norse played much more of a role than just occasionally burning some monasteries down. And this book goes a ways to showing how that was true. I learned a great deal that I had no idea about, and some things I did already know got a lot more context.
Now, the caveats.
- The treatment of women. There’s one woman in particle, Ragnhild the daughter of Queen Gunnhild, whose role in various terrible events is taken with basically no hesitation straight from the sagas – that she was responsible for the deaths of “four notable men”, was evil, nearly destroyed the earldom, blah blah. I honestly can’t believe that this got past the editors: that there was no discussion about “maybe something else was going on here?”
- The first irked me. The second is actually more of a problem: there are a couple of things that I know for sure are actually errors. Harald Hardrada is described as having founded the Varangian Guard – nope. And a couple of the earls had to do with Macbethad ac Findleach – Macbeth. Konstam says that “Shakespeare followed the right historical script” in terms of murdering Duncan; again, nope, it seems to have been in battle. Both of these things do trouble me as to the veracity of other parts.
- Linked to the above: there’s not quite as much external verification of the Orkney saga as I might hope. The author brings in points from other sagas, and I get that there’s not many other sources, but the book also doesn’t caveat a lot of the ideas quite as much as I might have liked.
- Finally, a stylistic choice that drove me spare. Most of the Earls and other significant men have nicknames, like Harald Hardrada and Magnus Barelegs. Throughout the book, Konstam writes this as Harald ‘Hardrada’. And I can’t help but read these as ironic quote marks, as if the author is having a little joke or something. I’m sure that’s not true, but it did make for a frustrating reading experience.
Do I regret reading the book? Not in the slightest. It’s definitely made my knowledge of the late 800s-1200s in northern Scotland and Norway much more expansive. It’s not perfect, but that’s why multiple books should be written about similar topics.
Moon Over Brendle
Read c/ the publisher, Angry Robot, and NetGalley. It’s out now.
This is one of the most remarkable books I’ve read in a long time.
It’s 1968, and Joe is 11. It’s the summer holidays, which means hanging out with best friend Denny, and generally exploring his small town. One day, the pair stumble across the dying body of the local drunk, Tom Halfpenny. Then Eileen starts turning up to hang around with Denny; then Joe sneaks into a weird, semi-neglected house, getting caught by the elderly inhabitant. The old man is a science fiction writer, and for a period of 1968 he and Joe form a strange, important relationship.
Those three things sound like they should be given very different values. But when you’re eleven, they might have fairly similar weight. Indeed, Eileen maybe stealing your best friend may have the greatest import.
In terms of the book, there’s one significant point I haven’t noted yet. This is not our world. Joe is a witness: he can see the Greot, the colourful dust that flows over everything in the world, in varying hues and in different densities according to its own rules. Only witnesses can see Greot all the time – except at 3.06am, when everyone can – and an even fewer number of people can see what Greot sees; and there’s even fewer who can manipulate Greot.
The novel is written as a memoir: a man looking back over his life, the paths he followed from 1968, how the events of that year had an impact on him. It could very easily have been written in a realist style: young boy influenced by slightly mysterious older mentor. It could have been magical realism, too – did the young boy really experience something magical? Instead, Noon commits fully to the novel as fantasy. and it’s richer for it. Joe’s experiences with the Greot, understanding what it is (and is not), what it can (and can’t) do, how it impacts on other people; all of these are significant factors in his growing up. The fact that the Greot is never explained, and that otherwise this is recognisably our world, add to the beauty and delight and captivating-ness of the novel.
This novel is just stunning. I hope many people find it.
The Lord of the Rings: a(nother) re-read
The year I turned 12, I had an extended reading competition with a friend. It was determined by both number of books (so I read lots of Babysitter Club books, which dates this competition to some degree), and also page numbers. This enormous, tape-mended book was on the shelf, so I thought: The Lord of the Rings. Why not?
For a while, in adolescence and early 20s, I was indeed one of those people who read LOTR every year. I think I’ve read it ten times? I haven’t read it since 2017, although I’ve watched the films almost every year for at least the last decade.
This year, though, there are several LOTR re-reads being blogged around the place, so… I felt like it was time to dive back in. I am not going to write about it as thoroughly as Abigail Nussbaum, and I don’t have the deep knowledge and analytical skills to come anywhere near what Nick Hubble is doing, although I’m following along closely and learning a lot.
So: I have just finished Book 1. And the truth is – the reality is – I still love it. I’m one of those people who enjoys the wandering in the wilderness, and finds the place descriptions evocative and delightful. Partly this is nostalgia for the first time I read it, when I was absolutely captivated… but I do just like it.
Some other thoughts:
- I had forgotten how organised Merry was, and what a lead he takes in getting things done. I like it.
- I enjoy Tom Bombadil, and I’m not going to apologise. He and Goldberry are a fascinating diversion into aspects of Middle-Earth we just don’t see much elsewhere in this novel, and I appreciate the depth and breadth they provide.
- I have always felt uncomfortable about the “master” language from Sam. Even as an adolescent. It’s still not something I particularly like. Having read a lot of Biggles novels etc, I eventually came around to reading their relationship as being like an officer / batman one, and I can place it in an historical context. But I don’t have to like it.
- Farmer and Mrs Maggot are wonderful.
- Barliman Butterbur is poorly treated by the film (I mean, I love those films but I am very aware of the ways in which they Not The Novels).
- Nick Hubble makes some interesting points about reading Fellowship in particular as a sequel to The Hobbit, and I was very aware of that as I read it this time. The structure, and the language – at this halfway point it’s easy to imagine the story being finished in another 200 pages or so.
My main struggle from here is going to be making sure I don’t just keep reading this. There are other books I have committed to reading!
Randomly Yours, Alex 