114 Followers
119 Following
tannat

Tannat

Not so much a blog; just lots of books

Currently reading

The Grace Year
Kim Liggett
The New Voices of Science Fiction
Jamie Wahls, Sarah Pinkser, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Rebecca Roanhorse, S. Qiouyi Lu, Darcie Little Badger, Kelly Robson, Nino Cipri, Amal El-Mohtar, Sam J. Miller, E. Lily Yu, Alice Sola Kim, Suzanne Palmer, Alexander Weinstein, Rich Larson
Progress: 13%
Engineering Animals: How Life Works
Alan Mcfadzean, Mark Denny
Progress: 125/314pages
The Rise of Yeast: How the Sugar Fungus Shaped Civilization
Nicholas P. Money
Conservation of Shadows
Yoon Ha Lee
Progress: 22%
Le premier jour
Marc Levy
Progress: 180/496pages
Moby-Dick: or, The Whale (Penguin Classics)
Herman Melville
Manifold: Time
Stephen Baxter, Chris Schluep
Progress: 99/480pages
The Long War
Stephen Baxter, Terry Pratchett
Progress: 68/501pages

Reading progress update: I've listened 624 out of 1718 minutes.

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman, Nadia May

I don't normally have a very ribald sense of humour, but this made me chuckle:

Isabella* could well have listened to the tales of Jean de Condé, poet in her in her lifetime at her mother's native court in Hainault. His style is illustrated by a story about a game of truth-telling played at court before a tournament. A knight asked by the queen if he has fathered any children is forced to admit he has not. And indeed he did not have the look of a man who could please his mistress when he held her naked in his arms for his beard was little more than the kind of fuzz that ladies have in certain places. The queen tells him she does not doubt his word for it is easy to judge from the state of the hay whether the pitchfork is any good.

 

In his turn the knight asks, "Lady answer me without deceit, is there hair between your legs?" When she replies, "None at all," he comments, "Indeed I do believe you for grass does not grow on a well-beaten path."

 

*Isabella: eldest daughter of King Edward III and Queen Philippa

 

Also, so far I kind of love Isabella. She was spurned at the altar, then jilted a fiancé in her turn while keeping the money awarded to her as income by her father the king.