October - December 2016 - Medieval Times (plus the Vikings)

In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery.



Books listed in LT tagged as medieval can be seen here: http://www.librarything.com/tag/medieval

Please update the wiki with your books: http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Reading_Through_Time_Quarterly_Theme_...

P.S. - New to this so please make suggestions if you need this to be different or have other suggestions.

Great set-up, Jean. I have a couple of books that I would like to read for this time period. The Ruthless Yeoman by Valerie Anand set in the 13th and 14th century as a family of English villeins strive to pull themselves out of serfdom. Also Elizabeth Chadwick's The Falcons of Montabard a crusade story set in the 12th century.

I'm going to make a stab at completing The Tale of Genji. I got through a bit of it some months ago and should be able to finish it in these next three months.

This is my favourite time period. I have so many books on my shelf to choose from, plus plenty more on the wish list

I have a copy of St Peters Fair which will be my first Brother Cadfael story.

My plan is to read the last two books in the Mistress of the Art of Death series by Ariana Franklin, set in twelfth century England, and then something Viking-ish.

eta: A fun book I'm currently reading for the October American Author Challenge in the 75ers group, Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon, also fits this challenge - 10th century middle east.

I'm going to give a stab at completing The Tale of Genji. I started it quite some while ago for some other RTT category or another so I'll just be picking up where I left off.

I also picked up the Penguin edition of The Diary of Lady Murasaki (author of Genji), which might make reading Genji a bit easier. I've got Genji in Everyman's Edward Seidensticker edition and I don't know if that's the best edition.

Genji (but not Diary) will also qualify as a ROOT, and Genji of course will also be a doorstopper for the Big Fat Book challenge.

I have started The Death of Robin Hood, the most recent addition to Angus Donald's Outlaw Chronicles.

I have completed The Death of Robin Hood. It is the final book in Angus Donald's series and was every bit as good as the others. I wonder what he is going to write about now.

I've read another Medieval book set in England, leading up to and including the infamous year of 1066, The Chosen Queen by Joanna Courtney. It was a very good read, featuring romance, history and adventure. I will definitely be reading the next two books in the Queens of the Conquest trilogy.

Life and Times of Chaucer by John Gardner (medieval literature professor and translator, poet, and novelist, most famous for his novel Grendel). Generously perhaps, 3½***. Good discussions of Chaucer as a writer, but the history is a bit weak and the biography too speculative.

I have finished The Falcons of Montabard by Elizabeth Chadwick. Set in the Holy Lands during the reign of King Balwin, this was a very good combination of a love and adventure story.

This was strictly speaking not historical fiction, but it has Vikings: The Technicolor Time Machine. It shows off Harrison's strength: a rather irreverent look at time travel. It's from 1967 and set in Hollywood, so very sexist, but it was inspired by recent (at the time) discoveries of Viking settlements in North America, and although some clichés are obviously ineradicable, he makes a nice effort to include dialogue in Norse. Very entertaining.

Looking at the graph in the first post, I realised that Impératrice fits here: it is the life of Empress Wu Zhou, told by herself, from her birth, her years as a concubine and then wife of a Tang emperor, until she takes the throne herself and is finally toppled by an intrigue. It's a remarkable life, which we know only through the distorting mirror of Confucian, misogynic males. One of the most interesting aspects of this was the constant re-writing of history, as the Empress posthumously assigns titles and nobility to her ancestors.

I've read two books for this challenge:

Bracelet of Bones by Kevin Croslley-Holland which is an older children's novel about a young girl, Solveig, who travels from Norway to Constantinople (or Miklagard as the Vikings called it) in search of her father who has gone there to serve Harald Hardrada (or Harald Sigurdsson). It's written in an almost poetic style and was interesting to read about the Vikings outside of Scandinavia and from a young girl's point of view.

For non-fiction so far I've read A History of Britain: At the Edge of the World? 3000 BC - AD 1603. Although this covers a wider period than the Middle Ages, over half the book is focused on the 5th-15th century and it gives a good overview of British history throughout this period.

>15 souloftherose: Heather, I've had Bracelet of Bones on my tbr for sometime now. Good to hear some positive feedback!

The Locked Crowns by Marion Garthwaite, a 1963 middle-reader adaptation of Havelok the Dane. Considerably better than I expected (4**** review) considering that Garthwaite tended to specialize in children's historical fiction of early California and I wasn't so sure that a non-California book was going to be all that good.

I finished Samarcande by Amin Maalouf, which begins in 1072 in Samarkand, when the famous poet and mathematician arrives in the city.

Habent sua fata libelli...
This is the story of a fictional book, a manuscript of the Rubaiyat written by Omar Khayyam himself, told by a young American who actually found it centuries after having been thought lost in the pillage of Samarkand, only to lose it again when the Titanic hits an iceberg. If you summarise the plot like this, it sounds preposterous, but it is so convincing because it could have happened like this.
This is a wonderful book. The first part describes the life of Omar Khayyam from his arrival in Samarkand to his death, the second part is the tale of Benjamin Omar Lesage, actually named after the poet, who goes looking for the manuscript and witnesses the painful and abortive attempts of Persia to join the modern world and build a democracy – abortive because they were thwarted at every point by the Russian and British empires playing their Great Game. In many respects, we reap today what their arrogance sowed back then.

>1 majkia: I love that chart!! Is there a way to enlarge it on my screen. I'd like to delve further....

> Eliz Chadwick is a favorite author of mine, and Falcons of Montabard is among my favorite. A few other HFs include Judith Tarr Queen of Swords and Sharon K Penman Lionheart

>4 Roro8: Same here, since I was a kid. I have shelves of them...Maybe I'll reread Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman. It was one of the first non fiction adult books I read on the subject, and I've reread it off and on. Might be time.

>11 CurrerBell: I should read more about him. Most of my knowlegde comes from Katherine by Anna Seton.

>19 cindydavid4: This is as big as I can currently find:

https://flic.kr/p/M3H8uN

Ok its a little bigger thanks; thats fine, just trying to save my eyes. Now, I thought when I click on the topic it will lead me to more information but that doesn't seem to be happening for me. How do I do that?

The thread for January-March 2017 is up: http://www.librarything.com/topic/242528

>24 cindydavid4: I copied it to past it. I got it from wikipedia. I can't find it now but you can look here to get more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Middle_Ages

>16 DeltaQueen50: It had been on my TBR for a while Judy so it was good to get to it!

>21 cindydavid4: I'm hoping to read A Distant Mirror this month for the first time - glad to hear it merits rereading :-)

>20 cindydavid4: Elizabeth Chadwick is a great favorite of mine as well, I like that she captures the history without sacrificing a good story.

Yes - she doesn't feel the need to add a current time character to keep it interesting. The history she writes about is interesting, esp with her writing!

Have you read any Sharon Kay Penman? She is another author who captures history and makes great stories. I got hooked on her when I first read There Be Dragons, about a daughter of King John married to the real prince of Wales. Great history with some romance to boot,and amazingly well drawn characters.

>29 cindydavid4: I have read Sharon Kay Penman. I have read Here Be Dragons and The Sunne in Splendor and thought both we excellent. I really must pick up more of her books!

I chose a juvenile nf--Outrageous Women of the Middle Ages--as a curiosity. It's a great overview of women who made a difference, but the title is totally wrong, perhaps to catch the attention of middle schoolers. Strong Women in Hard Times in the Middle Ages, would be more accurate.

A very medieval story is Peter Ackroyd's The Clerkenwell Tales. It is the story of Richard II and Henry Bolingbroke (Henry IV). It is told through the eyes of various Londoners with short chapters telling each episode. Hmm, sounds familiar.

I have read The Summer Queen by Elizabeth Chadwick, the first in her Eleanor of Aquitaine series. It took me a while to get into it (possibly due to the fact that I was busy with Christmas preparations) but once I got going I thought it was very good. A four star read for me.

Two audiobooks, The Knyghtes Tale in Middle English and The General Prologue & the Physician's Tale in Middle English & in modern verse translation.