Thursday, June 18, 2009

A Road Paved with Books

New books!!!! Yay! I made a trip to the book store today and got a stack of new books to read. For the last several months I've been stuck on pretty low quality fiction, but last night I finally snapped out of it. I've got a road trip coming up in a couple of weeks and I realized I needed to find a good book to take with me. I certainly don't want to squander this occasion on some crap novel and so have set out to pick the perfect read. Last night I placed an order with Amazon but I don't know what will arrive in time, and thus I went to Barnes and Noble today. As a former owner of a small independent book store this was its own special form of torture, but they have the best selection of the stores in my area, especially if one is looking for history.

Despite my online search the evening before and a thorough exploration of the mega-store this afternoon, I couldn't find anything concerning the Hundred Years War that interested me. So I then was mainly looking for books related to the history of any of the armies I want to paint in the near future, although I also ended up picking out a number of science books as well. I couldn't find anything on Andalusia in particular but I did get a biography of Charlemagne which should be quite useful. I would however prefer to save such reading for a time closer to when I'd actually be painting the related miniature forces. Last summer when I first started my current project I was reading everything I could find on the Hundred Years War, but now I'm in the position of running out of source material and inspiration. Therefore, as I am not ready to jump into any of these histories, I have chosen to begin with something quite a bit different. I am starting with a natural history of dirt, appropriately titled "Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth," by William Bryant Logan. A book about dirt, now that's interesting.

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