Elizabeth

I hadn't heard of this before I picked it up in a (real life!) bookshop, but apparently it garnered plenty of attention when it was published last year. And with good reason, I think.

It's the story of a woman, Esme, framed by the compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary, the way the meaning of words are shaped by use (as her own life's meaning is shaped by use), the words/lives considered worthy or unworthy of recording for posterity and who gets to decide that worth.

I enjoyed this one: slow and character-driven, no high drama, some tearful moments. I would have appreciated a content warning, but it's seriously spoilery and it would have ruined the moment, but I leave it here for you: childbirth, child loss, adoption .

The final chapter and the epilogue continue past Esme's work on the Dictionary, and I feel the book would have been stronger without it. Ditte's final letter would have been the perfect end-point, in my mind although clearly Megan's lecture shows Esme's work given the public attention she hoped it would someday achieve . 

If you're interested in how books came to be book-shaped, this is for you. A readable and humorous, but academically referenced, tale of how we got the ink, printing, paper, covers, sizes, and shapes in the way books currently are produced.

This one was of particular interest to me as both a book nerd and a medievalist, and I was pleased to see the topics I was already familiar with covered in an accurate way - this bodes well for the rest of the story, always a concern when you've picked up a book in the popular and cheaply-priced end of the spectrum.

If you are going to pick this up, I definitely recommend getting a Dead Tree version, simply because the author so often refers to the object you're holding as a demonstration of the ideas he talks about.

And also it's very sexy.

 For a first outing, this isn't so bad. If you're into the absolute fine details of flight, space flight, space agencies and 70s cold war political strategy, you'll enjoy it. The page-turning element you want from a thriller is there. The characterisation and POV is wobbly, however, and could throw you from the story easily.

It feels like a paint-by-numbers, in which all the elements and plot beats a book needs are there, but in an unrefined way. Hadfield could definitely make a great thriller writer with more practice at smoothing the edges, and I would read the next one. 

As others (including Porter himself) have noted, this is a pared-down version of [b:The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity 340577 The Greatest Benefit to Mankind A Medical History of Humanity Roy Porter https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388321686s/340577.jpg 1963028]. If you wanted to actually learn the history of medicine, I'd start with that one instead. Clocking in at just under 200 pages and spanning over 2000 years, this was not just a highlights reel, it was a greatest hits. There is no discussion of any negative consequences at all, with the exception of a brief extra line for Thalidomide, until the final few pages of ripping into US insurance-based healthcare. Porter seems to expect the reader to know the names of the key players and institutions, although if you knew them already I'd suspect you'd be looking for something with more depth than this one provides.Although Porter doesn't reference the book, he does provide further reading for each chapter, and a general bibliography. This is the greatest strength of the book. Unless it is required reading or something you've picked up for a quick read from your library, I'd pass on this book altogether.

A textbook doing a good job of covering such a broad topic over a broad timescale would be far too big for this job this one tries to do: briefly cover the major heretical movements from the 11th to the 16th centuries.

Although aimed at students, this book sadly doesn't put the various heretical movements into much social and political context. I was disheartened to see that events that would have had major impacts on the flourishing or repression of heresies, such as the Great Schism, barely even get a mention. The final chapters, although not the direct focus of the book, assume a prior knowledge of the events and key players of the Reformation. In conjunction with other readings I'm assuming this textbook will get me through my class, but on its own it doesn't do enough with the space it's given.

On a more nit-picky note, the language used in this book was really difficult to wade through. Obviously of its time (the first edition was published in 1977), the contents may have been updated in the 2002 edition but the language hasn't. I had to read the majority of it aloud so the run-on sentences would actually make sense, as they were going nowhere in my head, and Lambert is liberal with his use of foreign phrases and archaic words in the place of a more simple (and direct) English phrasing. Obviously, I have the ability to Google them, but surely English in an English-language book makes sense? My favourite was the repeated use of ‘quondom', when ‘former' would not only not affect the word count, but contains fewer letters. And don't even get me started on all the extraneous commas.

If you've been assigned this book for class, IMO it's worth your time. The specifics on the major heresies (Waldensianism, Catharism, Hussitism) are quite thorough. Just remember that you need to look elsewhere to give it all some context.

It took me until about half way through to realise that my problem with this book is not me being a medievalist who can't overlook anachronisms (although that is TOTALLY true), but that this book is really just quite average. (The ‘it not me, it you' defence).

The book follows the lives of a few people as they are touched by the creation of an illuminated Book of Hours, each of them coming with baggage (as people do) and, through their experience with the book, coming to a resolution. And I did not care, not one bit, about these people and their insights into their psyches.

I mean, I could have just put it down and not ever thought about it ever again, but since I paid for my copy and I didn't hate it, I pushed through. I hope my local library would like a donated copy.

Basically I think all the Helen Lovejoys in our current government should have a read of this in light of their refusal to contemplate gay marriage. Gilding discusses the ways in which the image of the family in Australia has been moulded according to social, government, and market forces, and none of it has to do with the raising of children until the 1950s.Having read [b:My Wife, My Daughter and Poor Mary Ann 926045 My Wife, My Daughter and Poor Mary Ann Beverley Kingston https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1307246649s/926045.jpg 911050], a rounded and more fleshed-out approach to the ‘making of the housewife' was particularly nice to see. While Kingston's position was that women essentially created a suburban-housewife-life rod for their own backs, Gilding comments on external pressures from government in particular that created the typical 1950s woman at home.Published in 1991, Gilding focuses on the turn of the twentieth century. His comments on the homosexual identity and family are limited and do not touch on marriage or children in the homosexual ‘family' (quotes because, as it becomes evident while reading the book, the definition of ‘family' isn't a fixed thing, it is a social construct based on who is doing the constructing of the idea).

An excellent work on animal prosecution in from Medieval to Modern Europe (and elsewhere), but it's currently 112 years old (first published in 1906 and expanding on work published in 1884), and although it is a great compilation of the source material, the theory is clearly obsolete in many respects. Interesting that no one has attempted to update it.

I'm a fantasy reader so while I did read Howard's story (so I could listen to the relevant Writing Excuses episode), I really enjoyed the two fantasies from Mary Robinette Kowal and Brandon Sanderson. I'm a sucker for religion.

And there is a whole bunch of writing craft stuff in there too if you're into that sort of thing.

I can't write a proper review of this book because I cannot finish it. I am a third of the way in and it is tedious - to the point where I don't want to pick up my kindle because I know it's there, waiting for me. I just can't do it. I don't know if it gets better if you trudge through it a little longer but I like my female YA protagonists to actually be able to do more than look to the men in her life for guidance. If I wanted to read about men saving the day and guiding the girl I'd just read adult fantasy. I have been trudging for days now and it's not looking any better.

Like all memoir, I found this one equal parts insightful, naff, and self-indulgent, depending on what resonated with me and what I thought just belaboured the metaphor. If I were not the same age as May, having already learned the same lessons about burn out, toxic workplace, chronic illness, motherhood, and the unexpected things that flank attack you, I might have enjoyed it more. It's a short one though - it might be worth your time.

Don't misinterpret my two stars. It really is an ok book: uneven in parts with skipped scenes that should have been written and plenty of scenes that could have been trimmed. But, in the end, a fast and readable amateur detective story. As with the first, ([b:The Lifers' Club 18245888 The Lifers' Club Francis Pryor https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1407163458s/18245888.jpg 25696339]), give it a miss if you are not at all interested in archaeology (as horses are to [a:Dick Francis 5561 Dick Francis https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1208830270p2/5561.jpg], so digging is to Francis Pryor).