Way too late with this post, but then April was not a good month for me. A combination of work, private troubles and other priorities meant I only managed to read three books this month. It didn’t help that I was way too ambitious chosing which books to read, as you’ll see. This time last year I read ten books, in 2009 thirteen.
The Inheritance of Rome — Chris Wickham
Recommended to me by Chris Y: it did not disappoint. An excellent book that traces the evolution of the Late Antiquity Roman Empire into the early Middle Ages, without getting hungup on “the Fall of Rome” or the political-military aspects of this history.
Three Victories and a Defeat — Brendan Simms
Readable if at times repetitive history of the Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, as the cover has it, in the context of the British quest for a Balance of Power in Europe in the eighteenth century as successive governments, both Tory and Whigs, sought to guarantee Britain’s safety. A very traditional novel, as the focus is solely on diplomancy, war and the internal politics of the British Empire, with a soupcon of economic history. It’s repetitive because Simms points out with great glee how each new government made the same old errors.
China Mountain Zhang — Maureen F. McHugh
Another book read for my Year of Reading Women project, this is McHugh’s debut novel and is that rare science fiction novel that doesn’t have the fate of the world or universe at stake. Instead it tells the story of a gay American Born Chinese construction worker with a Hispanic mother who was big in the revolution that made the US a socialist country and vassal state of China sometime in the late or early 22nd century. Zhang just tries to live his life in a world that on the whole is neither worse nor better than our own.