Sigfrid Steinberg: “Only Teach Such People To Read Who Will Like Good Books”
I’ve been reading a 1974 edition of Sigfrid Steinberg’s 1955 classic Five Hundred Years Of Printing. Overall I’ve found it interesting and instructive, with a fine touch of sarcastic humour. But I came...
View ArticleStockholm Archaeology Library Opens Up Further
The library of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters is (one of?) Scandinavia’s biggest research library (ies) for archaeology, the history of art and allied disciplines. Since it’s co-located with the...
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Shades of Dr. Jones
I’ve read Marilyn Johnson’s forthcoming book Lives in Ruins. Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble. It’s a collection of lively and enthusiastic portraits of contemporary archaeologists...
View ArticleRocky Horror References John Carter
“He was a splendid specimen of manhood, standing a good two inches over six feet, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, with the carriage of the trained fighting man. His features were regular and clear...
View ArticleNew Popular Book On The Viking Period
Anders Winroth (born in 1965) is a Swedish historian who received his PhD from Columbia in 1996 and now holds an endowed professorship in history at Yale. He has written several books on the Viking...
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Best Reads of 2014
Jon Peterson: Playing at the World. Highly recommended to gamers!Here are my best reads in English during 2014. My total was 49 books and 14 of them were e-books. Find me at Goodreads! In the Land of...
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Help Me Proofread My Book
Bitte Granlund of Happy Book has sent me PDF proofs for my forthcoming Bronze Age book, looking bee-you-tiful! If you’d like to help me proofread it, please email me. Everyone who finds ten errors gets...
View ArticleCover Decided For My Upcoming Book
I’ve finalised the cover of my upcoming book with designer Bitte Granlund! Cover image: detail of a rock-art panel at Hemsta in Boglösa, Uppland. An axe with its characteristic s-shaped haft, an...
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Prequel to Pickwick
Stephen Jarvis’s upcoming novel Death and Mr Pickwick is a sprawling book, in terms both of its 800-page girth and of its structure. I’ve read the first third and decided to write about it now before I...
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Childhood Horrors
Ken & Robin have an interesting discussion in the most recent episode of their podcast, on childhood fears. Specifically, they talk about childhood responses to horror stories and movies. I was...
View ArticleMy Bronze Age Book Is Out
Dear Reader, it is with great pleasure that I announce the PDF publication of my fifth monograph,* In the Landscape and Between Worlds. The paper version will appear in April or May. Here’s the...
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“Matilda”: Class Perspective
In Roald Dahl’s last book, Matilda (1988), we are invited to laugh at the main character’s parents. They hate books, love TV, dress tastelessly and subsist on microwave TV dinners. Yet only when I saw...
View ArticleGoogle Play Books Ate My Apostrophes
I usually shop around for a good price when I buy e-books, and lately Google’s bookstore has received my custom. It’s not a very high-profile store – you see, this isn’t the well-known Google Books,...
View ArticleSketches of Boz
In the second novel-length third of Stephen Jarvis’s hefty Death and Mr Pickwick, artist and caricaturist Robert Seymour starts in earnest to put ideas together for the Pickwick Papers. Yes, that’s...
View ArticlePickwick Afterlife
The final third of Stephen Jarvis’s upcoming novel Death and Mr Pickwick continues in the same rather kaleidoscopic fashion as before. The asides and Chinese boxes are innumerable. We never do get an...
View ArticlePoet and Spy
Reading a good book, Charles’ Nicholl’s The Reckoning. The Murder of Christopher Marlowe (1992, 2nd expanded ed. 2002), about the 16th century playwright. It’s a bit overloaded with asides and covers...
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Toby Martin: The Cruciform Brooch and Anglo-Saxon England (part 1)
Toby Martin 2015, The Cruciform Brooch and Anglo-Saxon England This is the definitive study of English cruciform brooches. Now and then a study comes along that is so comprehensive, and so well argued,...
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Best Reads Of 2015
Andy Weir’s The Martian. My single best read this year!Here are my best reads in English during 2015. My total was 55 books and 16 of them were e-books. Find me at Goodreads! The Summing Up. W....
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Machen’s Impostors
Arthur Machen (1863-1947) Arthur Machen’s 1895 book The Three Impostors, or The Transmutations, is a delightfully strange read. It consists of a short frame narrative interspersed with six standalone...
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Skeptical Sir Richard
Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-90) Yesterday I finished reading the first volume of Sir Richard Burton’s 1855 Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah (in the public domain). Here...
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