elzbethmrgn's Reviews (667)

I wanted to highlight so much of this book I would have ruined it with pages full of yellow ink.

Part of me wishes I'd first read this alongside the other classic dystopias as a teenager, but I think it has more horrific impact for me now.

And now finally I can social media without spoilers for/from the tv adaptation.

A behind-the-scenes look at personal and official documents of the Cooper family and the related Shadow Service. Obviously, full of spoilers from the rest of the Tortall series, and clearly for diehard fans.

If you’re interested in how books came to be book-shaped, this is for you. A readable and humorous, but academically referenced, tale of how we got the ink, printing, paper, covers, sizes, and shapes in the way books currently are produced.

This one was of particular interest to me as both a book nerd and a medievalist, and I was pleased to see the topics I was already familiar with covered in an accurate way - this bodes well for the rest of the story, always a concern when you’ve picked up a book in the popular and cheaply-priced end of the spectrum.

If you are going to pick this up, I definitely recommend getting a Dead Tree version, simply because the author so often refers to the object you’re holding as a demonstration of the ideas he talks about.

And also it’s very sexy.

So.. I didn't hate this one. But I didn't love it. Everything that made [b:The Bear and the Nightingale|25489134|The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy, #1)|Katherine Arden|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1470731420s/25489134.jpg|45268929] amazing for me was stripped out of the second in the trilogy. Which doesn't meant to say Vasya's story doesn't follow the natural progression, in the way that fairy tales do, but there was not enough of my particular boat-floating, and I probably won't be picking up the final (although, if it goes where I think it will/should, it will be a great finish to Vasya's character arc).

Katherine Arden does provide a reading list for Medieval Russia at the end, though, which has definitely been added to my wishlist.

This is a beautiful coffee table book. The essays are short (10-minute) reads, delving into how to investigate an unreadable medieval manuscript. The background on Voynich was new, and therefore particularly interesting, to me. All in all, I do recommend having a flick through this if you come across it.

If you’re interested in medieval manuscripts (as a student or layperson), I definitely recommend picking this up and having a proper look. The reproduction of the MS is amazingly detailed, and is an excellent example of what a MS looks like, for those not fortunate enough to get near one in the flesh (pun completely unintended but I am still proud of it), especially if you’ve done some research into codicology and would like to see it in action.