It's Only A Paper Rose

I'm back from Alaska, and managed to meet my goal of making it through an entire visit with my mother without getting into a flaming row. Hooray for active listening!  Or perhaps we just got the row out of the way beforehand, heh.  On the less-good side, someone in my home state was kind enough to share a cold with me, which I'm still fighting off...and I have two classes to teach tonight. I suspect tonight's focus will be self-directed practice, heh.


What I've just finished reading

An Unsuitable Heir, by KJ Charles. What makes a long flight home with a cold bearable? Pseudoephedrine and a new KJ Charles romance. The former sort of tunnels my awareness, making me tend to hyper-focus on one thing rather than be aware of my surroundings, but in coach class that's not necessarily a bad thing (although I did almost miss the beverage cart a couple of times). And the story of Pen and Mark - a nonbinary Victorian era circus performer suddenly heir to an unwanted earldom, and a one-armed private investigator with a pragmatic outlook and catholic tastes - was a delightful thing to focus upon. The book also finishes the Sins of the Cities plot arc, which is pure Victorian serial melodrama, but elevated by Charles' usual excellent characterization, and given some interesting twists by Pen's nonstandard self-image. I also loved Pen's relationship with twin sister Greta; there are really too few supportive sibling relationships in the fiction I read.


What I'm currently reading

The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, by Ian Mortimer. This book continues to be a fascinating refinement of my perceptions of fourteenth-century England. There haven't been many outright revelations - I've read a fair amount of fiction set in the period, beginning with Karen Cushman's work in elementary school (Catherine, Called Birdy was always a favorite). But there are some minor details I hadn't realized - for instance, while personal cleanliness is more difficult prospect than it is now and standards for cleanliness are somewhat different (a healthy body odor is thought to be a sign of virility, at least among the lower classes), people still wash their hands and face when they get up in the morning, and handwashing is mandatory before and after meals. Most personal washing is done in basins, and thus somewhat more sporadically than we'd consider ideal (especially in the freezing winters), but especially among the more prosperous tradesmen and the nobility, it's considered bad form to go around stinking up the place, so people make do. Household cleanliness is made difficult both by the lack of good detergents and of labor-saving devices, but that doesn't mean it's neglected; cleanliness (or the appearance thereof) is closely linked to purity of spirit, and is thus highly valued in religious medieval England. So perhaps my grousing about how everyone in Galavant looks a little too clean is somewhat misguided.

Another point brought up that I found interesting was that of ignorance vs. misinformation, specifically as regards the medical profession of the time. Physicians were not ignorant; medieval medical texts were chock-full of 'knowledge' on treating illness. Unfortunately, since much of that knowledge came from flawed sources (astrology, humoral theory, superstition, hearsay, a little practical experience with no scientific method applied), it tended to be less-than-helpful at best. It does give you an idea of why Enlightenment principles had something of an uphill battle before them; it's much harder to convince people to change their outlook when there's already an established worldview.

Also, I'm quoting this passage in full, because it made me laugh. From the end of chapter 8, on the perils of taking hospitality in monasteries:

There is an old traveling minstrels' trick which you might want to keep up your sleeve. How guests are treated in a monastery is the decision of the almoner {man in charge of distributing alms}. If he treats you badly, or serves you the most miserly portions of food, or if you get given "a vile and hard bed", go to the abbot and praise him to the skies for the generosity of his house, and emphasize the large amount of money which the almoner must have laid out on your behalf.

As an aside, one of the interesting things about learning Swedish has been the ways in which the construction sometimes resembles medieval speech - the verb is nearly always placed second in the sentence (Hur mår du i kväll?, translates most directly to "How fare you this evening?"); and certain words such as passande (which translates to "suitable" or "appropriate") were used in nearly the same form in medieval English (such as here, in "passing good", which to modern ears sounds like "mediocre" but in fact means "quite excellent").  The language tree is passing fascinating!


What I plan to read next

I need to finish The Hummingbird's Daughter, even though Cat Sebastian's Ruin of a Rake is beckoning me on my Kindle - reformed bad-boy enemies-to-lovers gay Regency romance that won numerous awards?  Did somebody say "catnip"?