jducoeur

A quirky new book online, which might interest some folks here: The Book of the Damned, by Charles Fort. Fort is famous as the inspiration for the Fortean Times and such -- the original tracker of Weird Phenomena and arguably the patron saint of the Weekly World News.

The book is -- curious. In my quick skim, it reads like nothing quite so much as a precursor to the Subgenius-style rant, with more or less factual reports interspersed with musings that are a little too polite and civilized to quite be called "rants", but clearly a close cousin to the modern vari-fonted online rant page, full of paragraphs composed of nothing but sentence fragments. Entertaining to flip through, but I can't quite imagine reading it...

Just noticed an interesting new book on Project Gutenberg: The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and Harald the Tyrant (Harald Haardraade). I suspect some SCAdians may find these fun to dig into. It's an old translation, but still looks interesting...

Rather specialized and a tad dry, but it seems like some of my friends might well be interested: Project Gutenberg has just put up Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods, by J. W. Clark. This book from 1894 goes through the evolution of book-storage in period, from the early days when you might have a full desk for a single volume, through the later period need for more modern bookcases.

It's almost recursive to point SCAdians at a book on the history of bibliophilia, but does seem somehow apt...

Possibly of interest to rufinia: The Religion of Ancient Rome by Cyril Bailey.

Possibly of interest to miraclaire: Tintinnalogia, or, the Art of Ringing (1671) by Duckworth and Stedman.

And possibly of interest to anyone fond of wit: Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary.

Not so useful to me, but I suspect some of my friends list might care: Project Gutenberg has released Volume 1 of the Poetry of Christine de Pisan. This is a 19th century French edition, including the Cent Ballades and lots more. Francophiles may want to go check it out...

Another ebook worth noting from Project Gutenberg -- The Dance: Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D., by "An Antiquary". Bearing in mind that the book is from 1911, so the scholarship is likely a bit dated, this is nonetheless a rich source of dance pictures from all ages, including two chapters on SCA period...

Just noticed this in the daily update from the Gutenberg project (from a week or so ago -- yes, I'm still way behind): a new transcription of an 1889 edition of an 1866 transcription of the 15th century Book of Quinte Essence. From the EETS project, so it's still in the original middle English -- early enough to be fun to read, but late enough to be pretty easy. Attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, to give it the all-important imprimateur of Authority. In two books, the first of which tells you how to make it, and the second of which explains how to use it to cure everything from devilish influence to gout, lice and cramps. Complete with endnotes on the chemistry described therein -- what's going on here, and which bits are nonsense. At least on a quick skim it's rather fun...