I've been quietly reading this book for a few months now. It's excruciatingly boring while being completely gripping in a different way. It's an attempt to describe mediterranean society in the 1500s.
The author of this book is doing thing like counting the number of famines per century in venice, summing the total tonnage of metal currency in circulation in castille, counting the number of times bosnian mountain villagers converted between islam and christianity, finding the average number of days it took for an express letter to travel from constantinople to rome based on 25 examples, giving a summed timeline of every barbary pirate raid, and counting how many calories an ottoman galley slave was eating in their daily rations.
On one hand, I've literally fallen asleep reading this in the library several times. On the other hand, to paraphrase George Eliot, it's like tuning in to hear the grass grow, every squirrel heartbeat, and the roar on the other side of silence etc. etc.
Likely many more quiet evenings before I finish it, and it's only volume one of two lol.
The author of this book is doing thing like counting the number of famines per century in venice, summing the total tonnage of metal currency in circulation in castille, counting the number of times bosnian mountain villagers converted between islam and christianity, finding the average number of days it took for an express letter to travel from constantinople to rome based on 25 examples, giving a summed timeline of every barbary pirate raid, and counting how many calories an ottoman galley slave was eating in their daily rations.
On one hand, I've literally fallen asleep reading this in the library several times. On the other hand, to paraphrase George Eliot, it's like tuning in to hear the grass grow, every squirrel heartbeat, and the roar on the other side of silence etc. etc.
Likely many more quiet evenings before I finish it, and it's only volume one of two lol.