Comments | bri_himself: Jacket Potato

bri_himself

Jacket Potato

Jul 13, 2009 22:15

I may have bitten off more than I can chew with the books this month:

Cartimandua: Queen of the Brigantes by Nicki Howarth;

Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History by Owen Davies;

A Dutch Castaway on Ascension Island in 1725 by Alex Ritsema;

The Breaking Point by Daphne du Maurier (formerly published as The Blue Lenses & Other Stories);

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Comments 3

spiralsheep July 13 2009, 22:38:27 UTC

That Owen Davies book is on the To Read pile on my bedside table and I'm working up to ordering Grimoires. His previous books have been excellent.

The Armitage Gawain is rather good and I say that as someone who's never previously been taken with his work. It's not the original, of course ;-P , but if one's going to read a translation then for most purposes rollicking good > academically accurate, imo. Reading Piers Plowman next? ;-)

the Amazon corporation probably thinks I'm a liberated womyn from a liberal California arts college by now.

Luckily for my keyboard I had already swallowed my mouthful of coffee when I read that. Is there an acrohym for "snort out loud"? SOLZ!

bri_himself July 14 2009, 14:46:28 UTC

That Owen Davies book is on the To Read pile on my bedside table

Oh, hooray! I've only skimmed so far but it seems pretty readable.

and I'm working up to ordering Grimoires.

You're supposed to copy out your own! No, that's terrible.

if one's going to read a translation then for most purposes rollicking good > academically accurate, imo

That was my reasoning (except I didn't say 'rollicking'). This way I have one version of the story to enjoy, and, via the Internet, several hundred others to quote pretentiously at people, ha.

(For this reason, incidentally, I want the pretty Oxford World Classics' Mabinogion by Sioned Davies and a nice edition of the original Charlotte Guest translation. You know, when I have money again. I've never read the Mabinogion before; I'm not even sure I know how to say the word - but it keeps coming up in things I read about King Arthur.)

Reading Piers Plowman next? ;-)I had never even heard of this until now ( ... )

spiralsheep July 14 2009, 23:15:17 UTC

My finger was too slow on the ordering button and amazon have put Grimoires up from £10-49 to £11-49, bah!

except I didn't say 'rollicking'

Hush you! My use of less common vocabulary is a charming eccentricity.*

I'm not keen on the Guest version of the Mabinogion. It manages to combine inaccuracy with turgidity imo (although I know people who like the prose). You might want to eyeball it on sacredtexts or projectgutenberg before you buy.

I suppose it's entirely possible that I had, in fact, heard 'Piers Plowman!' and assumed he was a real personPiers Plowman proved so popular he became a recurring character in English literature for centuries (there's a whole "Piers Plowman tradition"). I think PP's mentioned less than other major works of similar date because (a) it's political/religious rather than Romantic like Gawain so it requires more social/historical context to enjoy and (b) it's written in dialect so even fewer people read the original than Gawain ( ... )