World War I with a fantastical layer added in? Luanne Smith’s novel puts the historical horrors of the “war to end all wars” through an unexpected prism and combines the darkness with redeeming loyalty and friendship. I hope you enjoy my review.
The Romanov Impostor portrays a “what if she’d survived” story of Anastasia Romanov. The novel is an entertaining dive into 1920’s Hollywood with the exciting twist of maintaining Anastasia’s secret in the face of a woman whom she alone knows has to be an impostor. Here’s my review of this fun historical read.
Ancient sources describe Cleopatra as an amazing polyglot, but to what degree did she really speak a variety of languages and what is the significance of that knowledge? A Dutch scholar has a new “read” on the famous queen and I enjoyed it. I hope you will too.
I’m teaching a writer workshop on the topic of Point of View at the Avid Reader, the local bookstore in Davis, CA Feb 28th. Join me and my fellow instructor, Tim Schooley.
There’s currently a renaissance of mythic retelling novels. By portraying Medea, Quin set herself an especially hard challenge to create a character we will sympathize and root for. Her solutions to this challenge are intriguing and fairly successful. I recommend this one. Read my review and see why.
Interpreting Neolithic carvings and buildings seems perilous at best, but lots of fun. New excavations have upturned the previous understanding of Turkey’s Neolithic monumental sites with their amazing carvings of beasts and men. What stories are they telling?
We don’t usually associate too much rain with Egypt, but there was enough that a legal papyrus instructs judges how to settle disputes over rain gutters. But did they even have gutters? You may enjoy a snippet of ancient daily life on a subject we all love to avoid dealing with.
There’s the top 10 discoveries in archaeology overall for the year, and then there’s those in Near Eastern archaeology. I find this list more interesting–a map, dating by clay, wine, and the Queen of Sheba. Does that grab you, also?
When is sliver more precious than gold, and tin most precious of all? And how far would an Old Kingdom Pharaoh send his traders to fetch silver for his queen? These are some of the questions I’m asking myself after reading about a “surprising” new trading discovery buried in Hetepheres tomb.
Why did Hittites fight from chariots rather than horseback? At least part of the answer is that they hadn’t sorted out the right kind of saddle. So this “earliest” frame saddle found in Mongolia is intriguing. Up for some horse history?
