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Just finished Simone Bertière's (I don't think anyone besides Camilla shares my interest in her... maybe Dom?) book "Les Femmes du Roi Soleil" - about the women in the life of Louis XIV. Fascinating stuff, and a good number of anecdotes ranging from the slighty bizarre to the utterly hilarious. Apparently the Marquess de Montespan, one of the king's mistresses, owned two pet bears (I guess cats or dogs weren't exotic enough for her tastes...), whom she set loose overnight in the newly redecorated rooms of a rival; the result drew crowds of curious viewers, and the young Jean Racine somehow managed to get himself locked inside the rooms with a friend after lingering too long admiring the ravages, so he was forced to spend the night, "camping in the same place the bears had done the previous night".
View original postI sometimes wonder why monthly reads are even worthwhile, considering the dearth of traffic here these days. Leaving aside such thoughts, what are you attempting to read?
Just finished Simone Bertière's (I don't think anyone besides Camilla shares my interest in her... maybe Dom?) book "Les Femmes du Roi Soleil" - about the women in the life of Louis XIV. Fascinating stuff, and a good number of anecdotes ranging from the slighty bizarre to the utterly hilarious. Apparently the Marquess de Montespan, one of the king's mistresses, owned two pet bears (I guess cats or dogs weren't exotic enough for her tastes...), whom she set loose overnight in the newly redecorated rooms of a rival; the result drew crowds of curious viewers, and the young Jean Racine somehow managed to get himself locked inside the rooms with a friend after lingering too long admiring the ravages, so he was forced to spend the night, "camping in the same place the bears had done the previous night".
Next up - no idea yet. Still have a book on the Thirty Years War laying around ("Europe's Tragedy" by Peter H. Wilson), but there are also a dozen or more other books that I still need to get to.
I meant a permanent thread for longer than a month, since a few years ago it used to be around 100 replies/month.
Illusions fall like the husk of a fruit, one after another, and the fruit is experience. - Narrator, Sylvie
Je suis méchant.
Je suis méchant.
Well, it's now April 2. No fools, excepting those who read. So what are you reading, fools?
- 02/04/2014 07:50:50 AM
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A few histories and novels of World War I are likely
- 02/04/2014 07:52:56 AM
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Curious, why are you so interested in WWI?
- 09/04/2014 07:52:31 PM
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I think it's because 2014 is the 100th anniversary of the start of the war...
- 09/04/2014 08:08:19 PM
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When I was a history grad student, I focused on German cultural/religious 1914-1939
- 10/04/2014 03:35:30 AM
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On the contrary - they are one of the few things that still has some semi-decent activity.
- 02/04/2014 07:12:53 PM
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Have you read the Veronica Wedgwood history of the Thirty Years' War?
- 02/04/2014 07:31:51 PM
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No. Haven't read anything on the Thirty Years' War other than the first few chapters of this one.
- 02/04/2014 07:54:11 PM
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You misunderstood me
- 03/04/2014 05:35:56 AM
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Having a lot of fun now with Felix Palma's "El Mapa del Tiempo" / The Map of Time. *NM*
- 10/04/2014 08:45:14 PM
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I am finally getting around to For Whom the Bell Tolls.
- 02/04/2014 07:34:46 PM
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still reading words of radiance. slow going because not much time. *NM*
- 06/04/2014 02:39:56 AM
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Just blew through 3 books of Rosemary Kirstein's The Steerswoman, very good
- 08/04/2014 04:38:13 PM
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We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
- 08/04/2014 06:33:56 PM
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Karen Joy Fowler is a must-read writer for me
- 10/04/2014 03:38:03 AM
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She might be for me, now. I had not heard of her until about a month ago.
- 10/04/2014 09:15:04 PM
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It's not very weird, at least compared to some of his other recent works
- 11/04/2014 05:40:09 AM
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