Soledad's Journal

...if you are interested in the Crusades. It's a reconstruction of the siege and destruction of the Templar fortress at Jacob's Ford in 1179. Here is the complete episode of 45 minutes.

Warning: some really brutal fighting scenes. Still, it's highly interesting how they reconstruct entire fights from the injuries of the skeleton 900 years later.

Warning: heavy sarcasm behind the tag. Read for your own peril!
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... because I'm a greedy, greedy person.

Today - oh wonder of wonders! - I actually managed to get away from school in time, and so I hit some bookshops again. Not the second-hand ones, tho, although those had been my primary targets. There was simply not enough time. For those, I'll need a full afternoon.

In any case, I purchased the following shinies:

1. The boxed edition of Primeval's first season. I love that series. I love British series in general - people in them look like, well, like people, not like a species unto itself specially bred for television like in American TV. Besides, Series 1 is cute.

2. "The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún" by Master Tolkien himself, yeah! I don't know that one, but tell me honestly, could I have seen something like that in paperback, for a price I could pay without serious pain and not buy it???

3. "Pilgrim" by James Jackson, a historic novel about the Children's Crusade, taking place in 1212, also slightly post-Cadfael and post-Kingdom of Heavens. Even if it's a little behind "my" time, I think crusading vocabulary would come in handy when I finally get around to write that long-planned story about Cadfael's crusader years.

3. "Lords of the Bow" by Conn Iggulden, which is said to be the epic story of Genghis Khan. Which is an era and a slice of history of particular interest for me, taking place shorty before the Mongols overrun Hungary. Also vocabulary may be useful when I get around to write my story taking place in Harad.

Erm... isn't it a sign of serious obsession when I choose the books I buy based on the fact whether they will prove useful for writing fanfic? *g*

Saw a highly interesting BBC documentation about them on German TV. Who'd have thought that the Celts had built roads through swamps waaaay before the Romans did? The one found in Kenagh (Ireland) could bear heavily loaden carts.

Also, Celtic Europe seems to have been technically at least as sophisticated as the Romans were. At least. And they had a huge waterway network of trade roads down to Africa and as far south as China. A flourishing culture - until Caesar decided that the Galls needed his "protection"... after which there were 2 million dead in Gallia and finally gold coin in Rome.

Civilization... isn't it a very complex thing?

And no end in sight for at least another week or two. :(
The only activity I'm voluntarily capabe of is the updating of otherworlds_lib. I've put up some of the fake Bajoran religious teachings yesterday and started to post "Birthright 2". Which is the last complete story, so from now on I'll have to work with the WIPs - which are numerous.

Haven't made much headway with the anniversary challenge story. It's simply too hot to try figuring out castle ground plans and stuff, and I'm unable to find anything useful on google. Ah, well, I still have time until October 23.

Other than that, I watch a lot of TV, because that doesn't require any working brain cells. Have laughed myself silly on the German-made old black&white Edgar Wallace crime films. Klaus Kinski is simply hilarious as the permanent bad guy, and the blonde bimbos can scream so wonderfully...

Saw an interesting documentary on Bayern Alpha yesterday, about Princess Therese von Bayern. She must have been an extraordinary woman indeed. The link goes to the German Wikipedia page, but if you google for her first, you can get the translated version.

Off to post some more stuff to otherworlds_lib.

... on sale at Amazon.com

Recently, Archet gifted the book “Life in a Medieval City” by Frances and Joseph Gies upon me. It’s an excellent amateur historian resource book, and I googled for other works of the same authors. They are numerous. And they are on sale at Amazon.com right now!

Hereby I present the results of my search, aka all books by the one or the other author (or written together) that might be of interest for fantasy writers. The prices start at $1.75 and go up to $14.95, with the exception of #6, which, for some unfathomable reason, seems to cost $300! Not that it’d count for me, as we won’t have the Euro until 2008 or so, and our money isn’t accepted by Amazon anyway. :(

Well, here is the list:

#1: Life in a Medieval Castle
#2: Life in a Medieval City
#3: Women in the Middle Ages
#4: Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel
#5: Leonard of Pisa and the New Mathematics of the Middle Ages
#6: Daily Life: A Vivid, Detailed Account of Birth, Marriage and Death; Foot, Clothing and
Housing; Love and Labor in the Middle Ages
#7: Life in a Medieval Village
#8: Marriage and Family in the Middle Ages
#9: A Medieval Family: The Pastons of Fifteenth-Century England
#10 Merchants and Moneymen: The commercial revolution, 1000-1500
#11 The Knight in History

They have other books as well, but these seemed the most interesting for people like us. Cross-posted to Edhellond and the Otherworlds board.