Gorgeous

The weather, I mean. It was beautiful today. 25 degrees, sunny, but with a nice breeze. Perfect for DD's playday at school. DH is on afternoons, so he, DS and I walked to the local library branch. It's not a far walk, maybe 15 minutes.

I wonder how they decide what books go to what library branch. I also wonder what percentage of the new books our branch gets to keep. If the whole library system gets 100 books a year, do we get 2? I recently read a very thick biography of Henry VIII's wives. So now I'm on a bit of a history kick. This is great, because I don't learn very much anymore, and I wish I did. So I'm treating this like one of those cleaning fits that takes me from time to time and I'm going to try to learn as much history and read as many "classics" as I can while I'm still in the mood. I've gotten 4 stories into the Cantebury Tales. (The Miller's Tale has *poot*ing in it. Who knew? Great literature, that.)

Anyway, my point is that our branch doesn't have many newer history books. Now, I'll grant you that a case could certainly be made that nothing new has happened in the Middle Ages lately and that a book from 50 years ago will contain the same information, more or less, as one written last year. However, new documents may have been discovered. Also, people write with their own bias, which is sometimes a product of the time they live in. For example, from "Mythology" by Edith Hamilton, published 1940:

Of course the Greeks too had their roots in the primeval slime. Of course they too once lived a savage life, ugly and brutal. But what the myths show is how high they had risen above the ancient filth and fierceness by the time we have any knowledge of them.

On the other hand, reading what an author 50 years ago thought about a subject and comparing it to a more recent author's work would be another kind of learning, too, wouldn't it?

I guess I just don't trust past authors to have gotten it right, as if somehow, the more recently the book was written, the more accurate it should be. Which makes me a bit prejudiced. Which is the very trait I was trying to avoid in an author.

Impossible, I'm sure. I've read a few Tudor biographies, including one that was quite sympathetic to Anne Boleyn and another sympathetic to Mary Tudor (Bloody Mary) and thus, not so nice to Anne. Being an amateur, it's difficult to know who really knows their stuff and who's just spinning history to make their favourite character look good.

In any event, I should know more stuff by the end of the summer. Woo! Knowledge!