Teaser Tuesday: Sept 4

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly book meme originally featured at Should Be Reading. To participate, just open the book you are currently reading to a random page, and choose two ‘teaser’ sentences from somewhere on that page. (no spoilers!)

Moving on from the magic and fantasy of Patrick Rothfuss’ The Kingkiller Chronicles was quite tough, as I am sure you could tell from my reviews of it, but I can’t stress how engaging and interesting this non-fiction book has been so far! Such a fascinating and relevant theme in the current political climate!

“Individual leaders, ideas, technology and other factors all play a role in shaping events, but they are temporary. Each new generation will still face the physical obstructions created by the Hindu Kush and the Himalayas; the challenges created by the rainy season; and the disadvantages of limited access to natural minerals or food sources.” (xi)

Teaser Tuesday: July 3rd

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly book meme originally featured at Should Be Reading. To participate, just open the book you are currently reading to a random page, and choose two ‘teaser’ sentences from somewhere on that page. (no spoilers!)

So I decided to go away from magic and dystopia, and instead educate myself a little bit with this read 🤓 Don’t mind if I do! I find that many non-fiction novels can be very poorly written, and just a bombardment of names, dates and time. But I am loving already about this book is there is a clear structure that Matthew Kneale follows. Each chapter has three parts: introduction to the enemy that is about to sack Rome at different points in it’s life, then part 2 talks about what the enemies would see in Rome at that period, followed by the conclusion of the sacking and how it took place. So far so good!

“What kind of Rome awaited Henry IV and his army? Of the seven incarnations of the city that will be examined in this book, that of 1081 was certainly the strangest. It was a kind of Gulliver’s Travels town, where tiny houses existed among the ruins. Many Romans lived actually inside the ruins, which they called cryptae, making their homes in the broken remains of thousand-year-old apartment blocks, in long dry baths, and in the storerooms and corridors of abandoned theatres and stadiums. The Colosseum was now the city’s largest housing complex.'” (123-4)