Elizabeth > Recent Status Updates

i need you guys to know that this guy is the biggest loz:ocarina of time fan and ties it to the subject of each of his books and i am so amused by it.

you know, i think i've found a subject i just cannot muster any interest in, and that's beer. BUT. i AM interested in ancient mesopotamia, so i'm going to learn lmao

was going to make a remark about how for every woman or POC villain we've got to hear about five white guys, but you know what, that tracks.

I'm having a great time and I'm learning lots, but I don't think anybody gave this poor narrator a pronunciation guide. Guy's out here fighting for his life. There's been three different pronunciations of "Tenochtitlan" in the last five minutes alone.

I thought maybe, because of the length, that this might be a comprehensive look at the 14th century across the globe, a la Valerie Hansen's '1000', but it's definitely, ah, focused on Western Europe. Which is fine; of all the possible people to cover it in microscopic detail, Barbara Tuchman is the author to do it. She has the same wry delivery I associate with Barbara Metz. I'm not bored at all.

filed under: books i wish i could share with my mother. did she know what a big role oaxaca played in cochineal red dye? what a genuinely delightful microhistory.

filed under: books i put down periodically so i could go give my dog some appreciative thumps on his side.

so what i'm picking up from this book is that the dark side of collecting is dark because Sigmund Freud got really into theorizing why collectors collect and ruined it for everyone else. got it.

at first, i was confused why the chapter on Eleanor of Aquitaine was titled with her name when the person making all the mistakes was her husband, but I know Eleanor's name and forgot Louis (Louie? Luis?)'s as soon as I heard it, so maybe that's my answer lmao

the CEO of the Israeli Bank calling up the author asking for bat carcasses to hang from his fruit trees to deter living bats is exactly the kind of thing I'd expect to read about the CEO of the Israeli Bank :/

oh my god, i love science, yes please tell me more about the scientist who devised a tiny t-shirt cannon to fire mealworms into the air at precise intervals so he could record bats swooping to catch them, this is delightful.

Me, always glad to be learning but also puzzled: how come this book keeps asserting we have alexandria to thank for everything?
You: because you're reading the "we have alexandria to thank for everything" book
Me: oh right

dunno what I expected (a sort of Best Of of scientific discoveries?) but this is very much a reaction to Covid. which is fine, of course, i trust al-khalili, it's just interesting!

a "special collection" means there's no new material; it's just a pick-n-mix from other lectures. some of which i've heard before! how lucky i am! what decadence!

but also: "schliemann was a treasure hunter. arguably the best thing he ever found was wilhelm dorpfeld, the actual archaeologist." sdfghjkl OKAY

The full majority of this book so far has been about Ghana and the Congo, which I was already familiar with, but it's good to recap and also I guess I'm glad the CIA hasn't fessed up to fucking with EVERY single African country. Yet, anyway.

You'd think I'd've learned my lesson about listening to a mary roach book over lunch, but here we are.

Library find! I know I said I didn't like travelogues, but there's a difference between travel books by writers and travel books by photographers, and "patterns through portugal" is such a feast for the eyes.

Modern travelogues mostly leave me cold, but tbh the fact that this one is set pre-2001 makes it feel like a historical artifact all on its own.

ah, yes. swooping is bad.

did you know that there's a luminescence test we can perform on sand particles that can determine the last time they were exposed to sunlight, thus dating them? i'm going to chew on my HAT, science is sO COOL

it's taking some time to work through this one. not the book's fault, it's tight and concise, i just ... shouldn't have started a book about lizzie borden around the anniversary of my own mother's death lol

Having a great time, but I did just have to physically stop and sit down after hearing the worst possible white-person-panicking way to pronounce "Liliuokalani". I didn't know you could get it that wrong. Guys.

genuinely laugh out loud funny in places, but the thing i appreciate the most is the author's commitment to assuming that anyone who leaves a 1-star review at a world heritage site has to be a dude.

The narrator is the same guy who read the Vorkosigan Saga audiobooks, so I keep nodding along like yes, yes, Hannibal, elephants, the Alps, and would probably keep nodding if spaceships appeared, no questions asked.

Library find! And obvs, first of all, we love a good botanical watercolor, but also: it's me, i'm the american fruit.

I am having a GRAND time. Each book I've read about the discovery of King Tut has had chunks of its assumptions AND assertions disqualified by the next. Net zero information gain. Well, no, MUCH information gain, net zero conclusions. isn't archaeology fun!

I was wondering if this would be a biology-focused history of papyrus sort of a la arathi prasad's 'silk,' but it's definitely more a wandering general history of literature lmao.

with a name like “seven rivers,” I kinda assumed it would be one important river per continent, with at least one doubling up bc, you know, antarctica. don’t know why I thought that lmao.

anyway, sad my girl the Amazon didn’t make the cut, but the Niger was an unexpected treat to learn about!

oh this is definitely ai generated. and I have a sinking suspicion the narrator is ai too; that was three different pronunciations of the same city name in the span of, like, ten minutes. which could still be a person, obvs, but if it is then the editing is VERY sloppy.

Mertz is always delightful to read, but I'm extra grateful for the addition to my lexicon of the word she's given those people who think the pyramids were built by mystics or aliens: pyramidiots.