17th Century Pastoral Novel
Category: Books
"Stratonice" is a pastoral romance set in the age of Alexander the Great.
Posted by Martin R at 8:19 AM • 19 Comments •
Aardvarchaeology
Martin Rundkvist's blog. Archaeology, skepticism, Sweden. And books and music and stuff.
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Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
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Books:
Best Reads of 2011
Category: Books
Here are my best reads in English during 2011. I only read 38 books this year (blame the Internet), which is why the really good ones are fewer than usual.Bonk. The curious coupling of sex and science. Mary Roach 2008....
Posted by Martin R at 10:40 AM • 3 Comments •
My To-Read Pile
Category: Books
I'm spending this week in a semi-vegetative state: sleeping late, taking walks at noon with my wife & kids, eating chocolate, drinking tea, and reading. Here's my late-2011 selection of reading matter.Svavelvinter. Erik Granström 2004. Swedish fantasy. Proggiga barnböcker...
Posted by Martin R at 9:36 AM • 22 Comments •
Jane Austen LARP
Category: Books
I grew sideburns, brushed up on some country dances, learned to play whist, borrowed a Regency outfit and selected some Wordsworth and Coleridge poetry to perform.
Posted by Martin R at 4:01 PM • 18 Comments •
Gothenburg Book Fair
Category: Books
I visited the Gothenburg Book Fair for the first time because of my new book. The Academy of Letters needed people to put on the Researcher's Square stage, and conveniently one of their staff had just published a book...
Posted by Martin R at 4:15 PM • 13 Comments •
Order My Mead-Halls Book On-line
Category: Archaeology
Those who want hard copy or are unwilling to wait six months for the free PDF can now order my Mead-halls book on-line for SEK 180 / U$D 27 / €20 / £17 plus postage....
Posted by Martin R at 4:15 AM • 0 Comments •
Me and My New Book
Category: Archaeology
This book aims at beginning to remedy the regional absence of mead-halls, being an investigation of the internal political geography of Östergötland during the period AD 375-1000.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 23 Comments •
On My Mind, Sunday
Category: Archaeology
I'm a single dad now for two weeks while my wife's in China shooting interviews for a documentary series. Aard's been getting a lot of comment spam lately, and the filter isn't working properly, so I've turned on comment moderation....
Posted by Martin R at 3:54 AM • 5 Comments •
The Nightmare World of P.G. Wodehouse
Category: Books
Of late I have spent some time in the nightmare world of P.G. Wodehouse, reading his 1946 novel Joy in the Morning.* Written though it was after WW2, it is set in a timeless travesty of pre-WW1 England. Much...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 19 Comments •
Sacrificial Finds in the Late Bronze Age Local Landscape
Category: Archaeology
It really isn't good enough for archaeology to continue sitting around waiting for the public to locate Bronze Age sacrificial sites, then look at each one in isolation as an interesting anecdote.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 4 Comments •
Neal Stephenson's Subterranean Orgy Computer
Category: Books
"He could see the nanosites in his skin. But for all he knew, he might have a million more living in his brain now, piggybacking on axons and dendrites, sending data to one another in flashes of light. A second brain intermingled with his own."
Posted by Martin R at 7:41 AM • 6 Comments •
Charles Stross at EuroCon 2011
Category: Books
Spent four hours at the EuroCon 2011 science fiction convention Sunday afternoon. That's about enough for me. Though I love sf, and I've made a few appearances as speaker and panelist at cons, I've never really been part of...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 8 Comments •
The Cover of My Upcoming Book
Category: Archaeology
The title is Mead-halls of the Eastern Geats and the book will be published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 24 Comments •
Len Fisher, The Science of Everyday Life
Category: Books
Fisher calculates the time it would take a weightless astronaut to move from one end of a space station to the other exclusively on the reaction force of an ejaculation.
Posted by Martin R at 10:20 AM • 5 Comments •
What Makes High Elves High?
Category: Language
One of the stranger concepts in Tolkien's writings is that of "High Elves". Why are these elves high? It has nothing to do with drugs, though in the Tolkien Society we used to joke about them smoking lembas. And it...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 22 Comments •
The Perfection of the Hideous
Category: Books
In the car yesterday I listened to two excellent narrations of Lovecraft short stories. And I marvelled upon re-encountering the opening paragraph of "The Picture in the House" from 1919.Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 8 Comments •
Rob Thurman Gets Her Tenses Wrong
Category: Books
I'm a picky reader when it comes to entertainment, and if I don't like the first 50 pages of a novel I rarely continue. The most recent casualty of this policy is a book I was very kindly given by...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 12 Comments •
Earl Birger Rules
Category: Books
Birger Johansson is an awesome guy. We've never met, but he's one of Aard's most prolific and witty commenters. And then, out of the blue, he suddenly tells me that he's got some free shipping to spare on Amazon...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 2 Comments •
Should I Put Together an Aard E-Book?
Category: Books
Here's an idea that I'd like some reader feedback on. Would it be worthwhile to put together an EPUB e-book, about as long as a 200-page paperback, of selected blog entries of mine? I'm thinking I'd organise it in thematic...
Posted by Martin R at 8:03 AM • 7 Comments •
Best Reads of 2009 and 2010
Category: Books
Looking for a good book? Here are my best reads in English of the past two years. 2009The Colour of Magic. Terry Pratchett 1983. Lavishly ornate humorous fantasy. Dancing with strangers. Inga Clendinnen 2003. On contacts between the first English...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 13 Comments •
Eager For Better E-Book Deals
Category: Books
I want to buy unprotected e-books from on-line book stores for about half of what a paperback copy costs on-line. I don't want to "borrow" the files, and I don't want to pirate them. But nor do I want to get ripped off.
Posted by Martin R at 2:44 PM • 12 Comments •
What Makes Civilization? Sid Meier?
Category: Archaeology
My main impression of the book is that in writing it, Wengrow was motivated more by a need to produce a book-length piece of text than by any ambition to tackle well-defined questions in a structured way.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 10 Comments •
New Guide Book to Medieval Södermanland
Category: Archaeology
The book offers many cool sites to visit and lots of high-quality supplementary information on the period c. 1100-1550. I read it from one end to the other and enjoyed it greatly.
Posted by Martin R at 2:16 PM • 6 Comments •
Dorrik Stow's Vanished Ocean
Category: Biology
I found Vanished Ocean to be a lively, engaging and solidly informative read, which even manages to make deep-ocean sedimentology look pretty exciting.
Posted by Martin R at 3:08 PM • 0 Comments •
The Glossies Tell Me I'm Not A Man
Category: Books
I've felt largely like an outsider since I was a kid, but these days I rarely experience the full force of it except when I visit a news agent's and confront the glossy magazines. They carry hundreds of titles....
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 40 Comments •
Hobbit Continuity Error
Category: Books
J.R.R. Tolkien wrote his three main books in the order their contents happen in his fantasy world. But they weren't published in that order. Young Tolkien writes the various component works of The Silmarillion, middle-aged Tolkien writes and publishes The...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 29 Comments •
A Hungry Grave
Category: Books
For everybody who's in a Lovecraftian mood after that podcast, here's a ghoulish news item. Reports Emma Persson Hennig in Sydsvenskan, and I translate:Staffanstorp municipality. A woman placing flowers on a grave at Brågarp churchyard suddenly sunk into it when...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 6 Comments •
Drabblecast Offers Lovecraft's "Outsider"
Category: Books
When was the last time you read H.P. Lovecraft's 1921 story "The Outsider"? Have you ever? Let me tell you, it's a rare dark pleasure. Written when Lovecraft was 31, the story is one of the high points of his...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 6 Comments •
Free Books in My Phone
Category: Books
Whenever I like I can get books for free over the net from within the e-reader: either old ones whose copyright has expired, or newly written ones with a Creative Commons licence.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 5 Comments •
Bronze Age Book Review
Category: Bronze Age
I had two pages in the May issue of Sweden's equivalent av Scientific American about recent books on the Scandinavian Bronze Age. I was happy to publish there, but not very happy with the rushed chop job the contribution went through.
Posted by Martin R at 12:39 PM • 2 Comments •
The Earth After Us
Category: Environment
To future geology, the heyday of Homo sapiens will just be one of several instantaneous mass extinction events in the planet's history.
Posted by Martin R at 4:14 AM • 15 Comments •
Three New Halls at Jelling
Category: Archaeology
Something really cool has once more been unearthed at Jelling: the foundations of three large buildings of the Trelleborg type, dating from the reign of Harold Bluetooth or his son, Sven Forkbeard.
Posted by Martin R at 4:08 PM • 7 Comments •
Becoming Lord of the Afterlife
Category: Books
I'm reading a collection of my favourite music critic's journalism, Strage Text. Fredrik Strage and I were born the same year and both grew up loving Depeche Mode and Swedish role-playing games. He has a hilarious way of taking things...
Posted by Martin R at 4:15 PM • 4 Comments •
The Future is Written in Fat-Bellied Red Across Every Morning Sky
Category: Books
Escape Pod episode #235 has been sitting on my smartphone since January because of its beautiful writing and archaeological theme. Jay Lake's 2009 story "On the Human Plan" is told in a gentleman-rogue style reminiscent of Leiber and Vance, and...
Posted by Martin R at 9:45 AM • 0 Comments •
Clifford Simak and the Interstellar Matter Fax
Category: Books
A good way to travel between the stars would be if you had a matter scanner at one end, an instant information transmitter, and a matter assembler at the other end.
Posted by Martin R at 4:20 PM • 13 Comments •
Banal Sex
Category: Film
Screen writer Peter Moffat clearly expected a strong sodomy taboo among the viewers. In 2009.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 13 Comments •
The Art of Deflowering a Book
Category: Books
I treat all new books this way to keep their spines from cracking. And they just can't have enough of me.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 10 Comments •
Page 17 Stamp
Category: Books
Anyone who uses the Library of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters more than briefly will soon discover that its staff has a thing for page 17. Every book in that excellent library carries a stamp of ownership on that page.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 17 Comments •
Weekend Fun: Books and Games
Category: Books
Weatherwise, last weekend was thawing and misty and overcast, so I didn't feel like doing much outdoors. I finished reading Daryl Gregory's new novel (didn't do much for me) and started Douglas Adams's fifth Hitch-hiker book. When it appeared in...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 5 Comments •
Hot New Science Blogging Anthology
Category: Blogging
The Open Lab 2009 science blogging anthology has been published and is available as a paperback book and a PDF file. There's a piece of Aard in there among many fine contributions. Tell me what you think and what...
Posted by Martin R at 2:59 PM • 0 Comments •
Mistitled Book on Graveyard Folklore
Category: Archaeology
Vampire Forensics is mainly a collection of weakly interconnected but titillating tales of death and burial. Under this rubric the author zig-zags all over the place.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 5 Comments •
Futile Land Reclamation
Category: Archaeology
It's tragicomical reading, really. Because regardless of whether people were trying to drain and cultivate bogs, or if they were digging for peat and trying to process and sell it, there was a huge disconnect between their high hopes and the actual outcome.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 8 Comments •
Reading in French
Category: Books
I hardly ever read books in French and I hardly ever read books by Nobel laureates. In the first case, my grasp of the language is shaky and I have no good entry point into French literature: I don't know...
Posted by Martin R at 10:48 AM • 16 Comments •
Dan Simmons's Scientific Let-Down
Category: Books
Dan Simmons published a wonderful, galaxy-spanning, mind-blowing sf novel in 1989: Hyperion. Then he followed it up with three more novels of which I have read two. They're OK, but not as good as the first book. Science fiction is...
Posted by Martin R at 8:21 AM • 23 Comments •
See You at ImagiCon 2
Category: Books
I'll be at the ImagiCon 2 speculative fiction convention in the burbs of Stockholm on Saturday the 17th. I'm chairing a panel discussion on time travel and paradoxes at 15:00, and I'm on a panel about interstellar law at 21:00....
Posted by Martin R at 5:08 PM • 7 Comments •
Geekdom Mainstreamed
Category: Books
On the commuter train the other day I suddenly realised that I was seeing three rather prim middle-aged middle-class people reading novels, and that all three were genre fiction.The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Douglas Adams 1980. (science...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 5 Comments •
A Tale of Demonic Possession
Category: Books
Daryl Gregory has published a number of very good short stories over the past few years, notably a few science fiction pieces based on neuropsychiatry. So I was very keen to read his first novel, Pandemonium (Ballantine/Del Ray 2008). Genrewise...
Posted by Martin R at 4:10 PM • 4 Comments •
My Libraries
Category: Books
I'm fortunate in that I have always been able to take libraries for granted. I feel at home in them.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 7 Comments •
The Knowledge of the Ancients
Category: Books
Ancient texts were preserved and copied largely because they were believed to contain valuable timeless knowledge about the world.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 6 Comments •
Bookshelves
Category: Books
I'm now in that state of summer leisure mixed with the responsibility of providing entertainment for the kids that causes a man to forget what day it is of the week. And so a week's fun is no longer...
Posted by Friendly Scibling at 4:26 PM • 9 Comments •
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