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 How can one write a history of the entire world? It’s not an easy task, and could never be accomplished by a single being. Dr. Neil MacGregor has opted to take the approach of presenting 100 objects from the British Museum, in chronological order, which pick out some of the strands of civilization’s history and which attempt to show us how everything is related and interwoven.
This is a very intriguing book, although as you would expect, it really only scratches the surface and is very, very top-level. The 100 objects are grouped in five for each chapter and tend to come from all over the world. It’s rare for there to be two objects from similar European countries, for example; this does provide a really interesting view of history as we can see what’s happening around the world all at once, even if that is at a surface level.
The objects in the book spread from civilization’s earliest hours to the present day, including a credit card and a solar-powered lamp. Even the author comments on how our choices of what may reflect our society today will not necessarily be the choices made in 100 years, and perhaps the curator in 2112 will be as intrigued by those selections as any others. History, it is fascinating, even more so when you consider the fact that it is happening all around us all the time.
All of the objects included are at the British Museum in London; they’re marked in the museum itself, so you can follow through and try and find all 100. I’m not sure if they were all on display, but I did visit a few on a recent visit to London. For example, here are the Lewis chessmen:
Even though the book has a gorgeous, full colour image of each object, it was still exciting to see a few of them in person, although not exciting enough for me to trek around the entire museum for it.
The British Museum is also a perfect subject because, in many ways, it reflects the overarching theme of a dominant culture taking over smaller ones, something that keeps happening throughout the book with lost civilizations. Sometimes their voices are heard again, as in the case of the Rosetta stone, but sometimes they are truly lost, and we can only speculate. The museum itself is a remnant of Britain’s imperial past, and these treasures may have been contested; the simple fact that they’ve ended up in London from all parts of the globe is a tale worth telling, and which is told for quite a few of them.
I spent a considerable amount of time with A History of the World in 100 Objects and I found it to be a fascinating read, easily digestible in chunks given the nature of the chapters. Not for anyone looking for an indepth history, but for a thoughtful overview, this is perfect.
I purchased this book.
 February wasn’t a great month here at Medieval Bookworm. My reading slowed way down, and my blogging slowed down even more, neither of which spelled great things for you, faithful readers. The various distractions in my life are probably set to continue for the next month, too; but I’m hoping to squeeze out more time for reading and blogging somewhere in there, because I miss it a lot.
Overall, it was a good month for me, though; in particular there was a long weekend trip to London, in which I geeked out:
I visited the Royal Manuscripts exhibition at the British Library while I was there, and it was about as amazing as I’d expected. No pictures allowed inside, but the accompanying book above is gorgeous and full of photos of them. No trip to London is complete without visiting Forbidden Planet, and Ezio, from one of my most recent favourite game series, Assassin’s Creed, elected to come home to York with me. We also visited Fifteen London in advance for my husband’s birthday, which is actually today.
I’ve spent the time since we returned being ill, though still going to work; I’m improving now, though, and hopefully will continue to do so.
On to what I actually read this month!
- The Turning of Anne Merrick, Christine Blevins
- Where She Went, Gayle Forman
- A History of the World in 100 Objects, Dr Neil MacGregor
- Leviathan Wakes, James S.A. Corey
- And Then He Kissed Her, Laura Lee Guhrke
- The Glovemaker, Stacia M. Brown
- Dead Beat, Jim Butcher
There may only be a few books on that list, but I can safely say I enjoyed each and every one. I also read a bunch of short stories as I started digitally subscribing to Asimov’s, to satisfy the science fiction craving, though I reviewed just one. I find them actually easier to read on my iPhone, as I can absorb a short story while waiting somewhere very easily. And I’ve simply adored almost all of the stories, novellas, and novelettes, so I’ve been very happy with my subscription.
Ahead for March; as I said, time is short this month, but I’ve finished two books so far and I believe I am about to embark upon a third. I have a number of books I’m really excited about reading, and I have a lot of review copies for this month. So whatever I end up doing, I’m sure the books I read will be fantastic.
How was your February?
 Michael, the Marquess of Bourne, lost his ancestral lands at an ill-fated card game when he was just 21. Ten years later, he sees an opportunity to regain them – by marrying his childhood friend, Lady Penelope Marbury. Penelope has accepted her place on the spinster’s shelf; after the Duke of Leighton broke their engagement, her name has carried the faint whiff of scandal, until now, when her father endows her with Michael’s former ancestral homes. Bourne quickly sweeps her off her feet and weds her, but somehow it’s just not the marriage she expected it to be. But as Bourne grows to know her, he begins to realize that she deserves something better than a marriage of convenience – nothing less than her whole heart will do.
Sarah MacLean stole my heart (and everyone else’s) with Nine Rules to Break when Romancing a Rake and she hasn’t lost her touch. A Rogue by Any Other Name is an exceptionally sweet, well-written romance that will tug at your heartstrings and have you rooting for this star couple from the minute you start reading. Yes, it does make use of the stereotype of the harsh hero who just has to come around for the heroine – but in this case, we know that Bourne used to be a good guy.
The letters interspersed between the chapters of the book are so sweet and heartbreaking, from when Michael left Penelope the first time for school and the second time when he lost his lands. They’re a brilliant way of getting us close to the couple without actually shoving their past in our faces; we know what happened, but it makes that older relationship so much more real, and their present-day relationship that much more poignant.
I also loved that MacLean chose to write about Leighton’s jilted fiancee from Eleven Scandals – giving fans a perfect opening to the series, but at the same time giving us an opposite perspective. You see, in Eleven Scandals, I was 100% behind Leighton’s romance with Julia, which was fantastic. Now we’ve seen that life hasn’t been so fantastic for Penelope, but at least she has her happy ending. And it is a very, very good one.
Well worth the read for historical romance fans, Sarah MacLean’s latest is as wonderful as all her books are turning out to be.
I received this book for free from Netgalley. All external book links are affiliate links.
 In the seventeenth century, after the Puritans have taken over England, life is very difficult for women, especially those without a husband’s protection. When Rachel Lockyer gets pregnant and her married lover William Walwyn is in the Tower, she has no recourse to defend herself. She instead hides her pregnancy from her employer and, when the baby is born, she conceals its death and buries it in the woods. But she’s suspected, spotted, and brought to trial; her own personal tragedy overshadowed by the law’s complete inconsideration for women.
The Glovemaker was a clever, thoughtful work of historical fiction that I really enjoyed. We don’t really get much set in Puritan England; I think I’ve read one other book set in this period recently that I loved, which was Lady of the Butterflies, and is slightly later. This is after the Civil War, when rule has become really strict, and of course, it’s targeted against our main character, Rachel.
Even though Rachel is sleeping with a married man, which leads to all of her woes, it’s still impossible not to feel for her as she slowly unravels her story. Her love affair with Walwyn manages to be so real and so genuine that I wasn’t sure I liked his wife, even though I could see her point of view, too; it’s a brief book but it packs a massive punch. There are more twists than you’d expect from the description and it’s worth experiencing them for yourself. Rachel was, for me, a great character, with a surprising amount of depth and a woman who could invoke sympathy in me, too.
It’s kind of a shame this book probably won’t be read by many men, because I think it’s actually a very valuable, heartbreaking story about life and women’s rights. It’s partly about the impact that laws can have when they are written by men with no consideration for the women they’re hurting and what that can do. A stillborn or miscarried child is a heartbreaking event in a woman’s life – but these laws were designed to ignore what a woman had to say, to ignore her pain and punish her for circumstances beyond her control. It’s an unfair burden to women, and stories that are about the seventeenth century have plenty of validity for our current lives as well. Shouldn’t women’s voices be heard in issues that are about their lives and bodies?
A worthy read – for those who like historical fiction, for those who like a plot that slowly unravels, for those who are concerned about women’s rights. Recommended.
On a related note, this book is known as Accidents of Providence in the United States.
All external book links are product links. I received this book for free for review from the publisher.
 I’ve decided to subscribe to Asimov’s on my Kindle and decided to write very brief thoughts on the stories in this and any other magazines I might choose to read in the future. I think “Short Story Saturday” is probably owned by someone but no one I follow; please let me know if I’m stealing your feature so I can give you credit!
My very first short story – or “novelette” as the magazine calls it – in years was The Way of the Needle by Derek Künsken. Both a thriller and a contemplative story about loyalty and friendship, the beings in this novelette have developed under the heat of microwaves. They’re made out of needles and feed one another in a relatively strict hierarchy. Mok, a Follower of the Needle, an order of martial priests, has a reputation to make and an assassination to carry out. On his way, he meets a slave, who he must befriend to make his way to the upper echelons of the palace and his assassination target …
I absolutely surprised myself by how much I delighted in this story. I loved every bit of it, from the weird world to awkward, half-arrogant Mok, to the actual ending of it. It felt quiet, just the way I like, but so powerful – and you’d never really imagine that spiky metal creatures soaking up microwaves could really do that, but these did. Brilliant – this story had me absolutely eager to read the rest of the magazine and reinforced my feelings that science fiction is still my current obsession.
 This is the sequel to If I Stay. The review will contain spoilers for that book.
Mia may have stayed in her life after she lost her whole family, but that didn’t mean she was going to keep everything in her life the same. In fact, she left her native hometown almost as soon as she could, when she was accepted into Juilliard. Her boyfriend, Adam, was left behind, and even three years later, he’s never quite gotten over the blow. His new rock star reputation hasn’t helped at all; in fact, he usually just wants to be left alone, not interrupted on the street. But when Adam and Mia’s paths cross in New York City, he is forced to face where she went, and where he wants to go himself.
Like most others, I found If I Stay to be an incredibly powerful book that had me eager to read the sequel. While that book was really self-contained, I was entranced by the concept of the other side of the story, Adam’s story. I didn’t know how much I would like him, but I loved him in this book. He was tormented, but justly so, I think; I actually found myself wondering if he’d have been so tormented if he hadn’t become famous. Certainly part of his need for Mia seemed driven from his need for a life as it was before stardom and groupies, although not all of it.
Other than the star main character, I found myself really enjoying the rest of the novel as I went through it. Adam was tortured, yes, but in a way that I could almost understand, and sympathise with; the writing is smooth and the plot is easily sped through, not that there is much of one. A lot of the book is Adam mulling over the last three years and, finally, exploring New York City and feelings past with Mia – both of them catching up and trying to understand where to go next.
Ultimately, however, the ending wasn’t really what I’d hoped for. Well, it was, but it somehow didn’t fulfill the promise of the rest of the book. I was looking for something that was, I think, more powerful, and we didn’t get that here. I wanted to whole-heartedly love every piece of this book, believe me, but I also wanted something *more*.
Regardless, Where She Went is a very good read, emotionally wrenching in parts, worth trying if you do wonder where Mia went after the ending of If I Stay.
All external book links are referral links. I received this book for free from Amazon Vine.
One of my first iPhone pictures – a crochet spider I made for my husband. He lives on the piano!
 Tom Stein is finally achieving some success for his superstar client, Michelle, in between teasing his stern assistant, Miranda, and bowing down to his boss, Carl. He’s not expecting what Carl lands him with next; no less than the position as agent to the world’s first alien contact. The Yherajk are blobby, morphable aliens with personality, and the one that has come down for exposure to the masses is Joshua. Tom is charged with representing Joshua and somehow earning him a place in pop culture, facing the biggest and most potentially rewarding challenge of his career – and for humanity.
I’ve felt very much into science fiction lately, but because this is all fairly new, I don’t actually have very many books in my TBR bookcase that actually fit the bill. Years of historical fiction isn’t cutting it for me right now. So the book sitting by John Scalzi on my shelf – even if humorous rather than the sort of epic I was craving – was the best possible option.
In the introduction, Scalzi writes that this was his first book, his attempt to find out if he could actually write a novel before he tried to get published. Once his books took off, it made sense to dust it off and actually publish it, and that’s roughly how it landed in my hands. The book is full of trademark Scalzi wit, and it’s really obvious as a reader of his blog that it’s his voice coming out through the characters. I find this with almost all of his books these days, and I can’t say I really mind. I’m used to his voice, and I find him very amusing.
That said, this was different regardless as it’s set in the present day, amongst superstars and ordinary working folk alike. I actually liked the setting and the concept, and I found the book to be a fantastic ride. It’s not particularly deep, and it’s relatively predictable, but I think the fun factor is probably precisely what Scalzi was going for here. How much more ridiculous can you make the first alien encounter? I loved the Yherajk, they were truly a great concept for a race of aliens, and I think the book really shows off how Scalzi’s wild mind works.
It’s also a very speedy read – it’s only a short book – and works well as the standalone it is. I often feel there isn’t enough standalone fiction like this – there is the compulsion to turn everything into a series now. While I love series, I also love a book that resolves itself at the end like this one.
I can tell you that I’m now definitely looking forward to reading more of Scalzi’s humorous books as well as his deeper Old Man’s War style reads, but I’d easily recommend both. Agent to the Stars is also not what I’d imagine as a science fiction novel, so it’s a great taster for those who aren’t sure if they’d like the genre or not.
All external book links are affiliate links. I purchased this book.
It’s a bit late on a Sunday after another busy week, so I’m going to keep this quick with something I found particularly exciting about blogging this week – my authorship snippet has started to show up in Google!
Whether you like Google or not, I still think it’s great to see my name and face next to my review. It adds an extra level of accountability for bloggers, too, I think.
I noticed that particular review was referring me a ton of visits this month, so lo and behold I am the first review ranking and have that great little snippet there! It ties into my Google+ profile, which admittedly I barely use, but it’s nice to see my name next to my review and makes the result stand out. I suspect it’s resulting in the extra traffic, which is also nice. I hope I’ve inspired more than one purchase, as I love Bernard Cornwell.
If you’d like to do the same, there are instructions here and in many other places online.
 By no fault of his own, twelve-year-old Jack is one of the most ostracized boys in town, and all because of his last name. The Witcher family are considered white trash, and even though Jack is smart, fair, and honest, he is tarred by the same brush that affects all his family. It’s harder for sensitive Jack, who has to deal with all of the follies of adolescent life at the same time he’s shunned by the people who he longs to be friends with. The fact that his brother is suspected of murder doesn’t help. How can Jack reconcile his feelings for his family with his longing to be accepted for once in his short life?
If Jack’s in Love may be the first Amy Einhorn book that I didn’t outright fall in love with myself. Not that it’s a bad book, really; it was fine, and I enjoyed reading it, but it wasn’t that compelling or earth-shaking for me. I was easily able to put it down and come back to it later, and as I read it a while before I wrote this review, parts of it have faded quickly from my mind, so I’m afraid I didn’t find it all that memorable, either.
But there were certainly parts that I did enjoy – for instance, I liked Jack’s character, although the rest of them I was happy to take or leave, and I found the perspective of his struggle to be really interesting. He’s on the inside of a classic “white trash” family, but he sympathizes with both them, especially his mother, and the family whose son has disappeared. It’s seeing two halves of the coin which draws me in to books like this, and which also makes me a little more disappointed that I didn’t find myself loving it.
The book is set in the American south in the 60’s and 70’s, so there are also hints of the racial divide; for instance, Jack’s father is friends with a black man who lives in a certain district, and Jack’s older Jewish friend Gladstein lives in the same place. But that’s about the extent of these tensions; Jack’s love for Myra, the murdered boy’s younger sister, dominates most of the book. This is the part where the book really fell down for me; I didn’t like their romance much at all, and I didn’t believe in them as a couple no matter how young. There were too many barriers, and while a good book would be all about knocking those down, I wasn’t feeling it here.
Anyway, many others have enjoyed this book considerably more than I have; visit the Book Blogger Search Engine for many more reviews. While If Jack’s in Love had its moments, I ultimately found it to be disappointing; regardless, I’ll be looking out for Wetta’s further work as he has a lot of potential.
I purchased this book.
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