Category Archives: books

Bird’s Eye View of History

Posted on February 6, 2019 by forstegrupp

Yuval Noah Harari wrote his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind in 2015. The book provides an expansive overview of 202,000 years human pre-history and history in under 450 pages (including index). His most provocative tenet is that the … Continue reading →

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A book uniting two passions: fairy tales and knitting

Posted on January 30, 2019 by forstegrupp

Yesterday on the new non-fiction shelf of our local public library, I found a book with a pebbled blue cover and gold gilded lettering and design. It was clearly a knitting book as you can see from the front cover … Continue reading →

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Sometimes you forgot you already read a particular book

Posted on January 28, 2019 by forstegrupp

Leigh Bardugo‘s book The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic (2017) contains her six modern fairy tales with twists on old storylines to shake up the staid perspectives and assumptions of traditional fairy tales. I read this book on … Continue reading →

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Women are allowed to want.

Posted on January 18, 2019 by forstegrupp

Recently I just finished the third book in Katherine Arden’s Winternight trilogy about a woman in medieval Russia who takes on the responsibility of trying to save her people of Rus from human depredations and supernatural threats and negotiate a … Continue reading →

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Annotations Galore!

Posted on January 14, 2019 by forstegrupp

Once upon a time, I took so many notes and underlined so much in my textbooks that when I got done, the books looked like a very neat second-grader had been let loose with colored pencils. My old college edition … Continue reading →

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The Girl in the Tower

Posted on September 20, 2018 by forstegrupp

Last week I finished the second book in Katherine Arden’s series about Vasilisa and her quest for freedom from medieval Russian norms for girls. The second book picks up exactly where the first book ends. But for those wanting to … Continue reading →

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Finished 4 more books

Posted on August 14, 2018 by forstegrupp

While I was in England, I finished Orson Scott Card’s novel Enchantment which has time-bending, a sleeping princess, linguistics, Baba Yaga, Russian politics, Jewish identity, and lost medieval kingdoms. Card certainly did he research into Proppian structural analysis of Russian … Continue reading →

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Reading Harry Potter — again

Posted on August 9, 2018 by forstegrupp

Recently SH bought the complete Harry Potter series for the kindle. He has been reading it steadily and is far far far ahead of me. I just downloaded the series to my phone a few days ago as a diversion … Continue reading →

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What does the Groundskeeper read at Oxford?

Posted on August 1, 2018 by forstegrupp

Yesterday morning I headed to the Ashmolean Museum for an appointment to see Pre-Raphelite drawings in the print room. The museum opened at 10 am so I had about 15 minutes to wait and I went and sat down on … Continue reading →

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What is the Night Porter reading?

Posted on July 30, 2018 by forstegrupp

Yesterday evening after a Chopin and Beethoven concert at the Sheldonian Theatre, we walked back to Worcester College. Every college in Oxford (and Cambridge for that matter) has a single entrance for scholars, students and other folks staying at that … Continue reading →

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