a little work stuff, plus some more extensive book stuff

[edenfalling]

I worked in the Collegetown office today, which was pretty slow on account of Cornell having spring break this week. (Yes, that is late for a school with a semester-based calendar. Cornell has a weird break schedule.)

I was able to get all the downtown rents updated in all the requisite locations, answered a ridiculous number of inquiries, showed New Hire 6 a few miscellaneous office tasks, and got him to handle part of some lease processing.

Um. In reading news, I recently finished When the Sahara Was Green: How Our Greatest Desert Came to Be by Martin Williams, which I checked out from the Tompkins County Public Library in hardcover and then kept several weeks past its extended due date because I have gotten out of the habit of carrying physical books around to read in random snatches of spare time. It's good, I recommend it, although the little sketched geological diagrams could stand to be significantly clearer and the maps and images are confusingly labeled and referenced.

I have also recently(ish) finished:

--On Safari in R'Lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera by Elizabeth Bear (novelette: scientist with family secret she was unaware of encounters parts of the Cthulhu mythos; slight but entertaining)

--The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World by Virginia Postrel (informative, enjoyable!)

--Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach (informative, enjoyable!)

--Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree (orc retires from adventuring and opens a coffeehouse; heavy on found family and somewhat incidentally a lesbian romance; nice relaxing fun)

--What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe (exactly what it says on the tin; the xkcd guy doing his thing; I had previously listened to this as an audiobook (narrated by Wil Wheaton!) but the illustrations are a significant part of the charm so I do recommend the text version)

--the Protector of the Small quartet (First Test, Page, Squire, Lady Knight) by Tamora Pierce (girl in Tortall decides to become a knight following Alanna's example... but openly; I devoured these in giant gulps)

--the Provost's Dog trilogy (Terrier, Bloodhound, Mastiff) by Tamora Pierce (girl in Tortall a couple centuries before Alanna's day rises through the ranks of the more-or-less police; interesting take on magic; surprising amount of focus on slavery and police brutality issues; I'm unsure how I feel about Pierce's ability to balance her messages but again I devoured these in giant gulps)

--Artemis by Andy Weir (heist caper in a moon colony; possibly illegal amounts of fun)

--Randomize by Andy Weir (short story: how to rob a casino with computer science; slight but entertaining)

--Iron Window by Xiran Jay Zhao (rage against the patriarchy by way of the tropiest damn giant mecha nonsense I have encountered in a long time; I'm unsure about the balance of the various elements, but this is entertaining as hell and it's very refreshing to see a female protagonist just fucking go for it with hardly any consideration for moral niceties)

--Frontier Wolf by Rosemary Sutcliff (Roman garrison up past Hadrian's Wall at the start of the long Roman retreat from Britain; Sutcliff doing her manly bonds thing and doing it quite well)

--Aurelius (To Be Called) Magnus and Portrait of a Wide Sea Islander by Victoria Goddard (two short stories in Goddard's Nine Worlds universe, which flesh out various worldbuilding and philosophical details)

I am currently working through at least a dozen books, which I will probably forget to report on for another several months. Ah well, so it goes!

And now I think I shall go to bed, because I have a 9am to 9pm shift at Not the IRS tomorrow and I would prefer not to nod off while on the clock. *wry*

Comments

[marmota_b]

The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World sounds both like exactly the sort of thing I would be VERY interested in, and worryingly potentially the sort of thing I would groan "that's not how it was, we have no evidence for this/we have evidence otherwise!" at - but ancient textiles aren't my forte. How is the author with references and bibliography? And how OLD are her sources? Textile history is a fairly new field and there's A LOT of dated and bad info floating around (even sourced info, passed down through a chain of respectable quotations, you know), which is what always has me preemptively worried.

[marmota_b]

Oh, possibly even more importantly: Where does the author sit on the scale from "we don't really know but these are the possibilities" to "this is how it was, definitely, which definitely means this other conjectural thing is definitely how it was"?

[edenfalling]

It's more of an overview than a detailed study on any one area, so there isn't a lot of space for extensive chains of conjecture. I think she was fairly open to the "we don't know exactly" option, but I read the book in January and don't recall specifics, sorry.

[marmota_b]

That's okay. I just... this is one of the areas where I can get a bit intense. :-) Thanks for the info!

[marmota_b]

I've found a very good, and glowing, review from someone a bit more sewing-oriented: https://astitchornine.com/2021/04/07/review-the-fabric-of-civilization-how-textiles-change-the-world-by-virginia-postrel/
So that sounds good. And I can actually buy it over here!

[edenfalling]

Oh, excellent! As I said, I found it a very enjoyable read -- some nonfiction is a bit of a slog, but Postrel is very good at creating text that both conveys a logical train of thought and is pleasant to read.

[edenfalling]

It's a pretty recent book. Postrel has an extensive notes/citations section rather than a bibliography, but most of her references seem to be within the past thirty years, and she bases a lot of her discussion on interviews with people in the textile industry and the textile history field.

This is a book about how textiles are still shaping the world as much as a history of textiles. Each chapter takes a topic (fiber, thread, cloth, dye, traders, consumers, innovators) and follows it from prehistory to the 21st century.

[marmota_b]

Ah! So basically not just my hobby but, currently, even my professional field - that WOULD be very interesting.