(no subject)

Died on this day in 1436 aged 58 Louis III , Elector Palatine (my toy,wikipedia). Married Blanche, daughter of Henry IV. This marriage brought the Palatine Crown into the hands of the Witelsbachs, the crown is the oldest crown known to have been in England, it was likely not made for Blanche but for Anne of Bohemia (wife of Richard II) in Bohemia or Venice or Paris... It is currently in Munich and I don't remember whether I've actually seen it or not (I remember reading about it in the museum near Neuschwanstein)

Born on this day in 1578 to King Frederick II of Denmark and Norway and Sophie of Mecklenburg-Gustrow, Ulrik of Denmark (my toy,wikipedia). Brother of Anne who married James VI & I. Ulrik was Prince-Bishop of Schwerin, and is buried in Roskilde, I definitely didn't see the Cathedral there, but it is a nice place.

Reading Wednesday

Read:

Sorcerer to the Crown; Zen Cho

This was tolerably interesting, I found the language somewhat stilted but less so than Strange and Norrel. Regency England but with MAGIC is I suppose a sub-genre quite firmly here to stay. Happily Napoleon does not feature. This is the author's first fantasy novel.

A Natural History of Dragons: a Memoir by Lady Trent; Marie Brennan

This is Industrial Revolution BUT WITH DRAGONS (what a nice change from the Regency), although the setting is a fantasy world (there a trains, that makes it Industrial Revolution, obviously). There are DRAGONS, and a young lady determined to pursue scholarship in the face of Patriarchy. Also there is intrigue and suspense &c &c I liked this so much I straight away bought the sequels when I had finished (there are currently three books in the series, I don't know if there will be more).

Reading:
A World of Ice and Fire
Wheel of Time Companion

Both of these are chock full of SPOILERS for their respective series and of interest only to the dedicated fan; WoIaF is more accessible being full of gorgeous pictures and written as history text; WoTC reads like a dictionary/encyclopedia and has hundreds of entries of the form "Jo Blogs; Rand met him once in Caemlyn" alongside the rather more interesting (and SPOILERIFIC) ones about Our Heroes/Villains/McGuffins/&c. Also I have both of these in paper form, so will be forever about reading them as they are heavy.

Reading Redux

All the books I finished this year...

I read 60 books this year, by a total of 35 authors of whole-books and a number of other authors of parts-of-books (mostly shorts in collections). 52 were some sort of SFF, and 1 a book of lit-crit *about* SFF books... (3 were history, 2 comics, 1 autobiography, and 1 a book about rock climbing safety). 36 were by individual authors who are women (Seanan McGuire features... heavily), and 18 by individual authors who are men (the others were by multiple authors), 7 were by authors I can identify as non-white from their wikipedia entries (not everyone puts their racial identity on their biography).