Booknotes 5.26

A Gambling Man: Charles II’s Restoration Game, by Jenny Uglow, published 2010, biography, 645 pages. Quite liked it, which is no surprise because (as I believe I’ve mentioned) 1600s England is my new objet de fascination. There’s Samuel Pepys, John Evelyn, John Aubrey taking Charles to see Avebury, the birth of the Royal Society, the East India Company, the plague, the Great Fire, Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, and more. I also like Uglow’s writing and have started collecting all of the biographies she’s written.

Extreme Economies: What Life at the World’s Margins Can Teach Us About Our Own Future, by Richard Davies, published 2019, nonfiction, 430 pages. An interesting look at economies in different edge-condition parts of the world — refugee camps, prisons, failed states, demographic ageing changes, tsunamis, etc. Learned a lot.

The Tomb of Dragons, by Katherine Addison, published 2025, fantasy, 410 pages. Third main book in the Cemeteries of Amalo series. Enjoyed it as usual, perhaps a bit more than The Grief of Stones. Also, I like that in these books Celehar (the main character) often reads novels, something that I don’t see crop up very much in fiction. Maybe I’m just not reading the right books for that, though.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, anonymous, published 1300s (translation by J. R. R. Tolkien published 1975), poetry, 230 pages. Very alliterative. Great translation (though I was predisposed to like it because Tolkien), and I enjoyed the tale, too. The book also included “The Pearl” (okay) and “Sir Orfeo” (better). Reading this has nudged me into thinking it’s time for a reread of Lord of the Rings, which I did read long ago, but at the time I think I was too young to appreciate it properly.