cottageCategory Archives

With more time to read, I’ve recently finished Ross King’s Mad Enchantment. It’s the story of Claude Monet and the painting of his water lilies. Obviously I’m a fan of Ross King having read five of his other art history books. I quite liked the style of this one but I can’t quite say the same for Monet. A person can love his art yet think he was a big whining old fart. At least in the later stage of his life, Monet was a disagreeable codger who got a lot of favours done for him during World War I. Otherwise, it’s an interesting portrait of Georges Clemenceau, a figure I knew little of.

I’m nearly done Jack Weatherford’s Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, a really intriguing book. To say that Temujin had a hard life is a gigantic understatement. But to say that he was smart is too. The author is fairly heavily biased toward the great khan, but he backs it up with a lot of details about how he unified the Mongols. Unfortunately not all of his children and grandchildren were so intellectually inclined. I’m just at the part now where Kublai Khan takes over China. It’s quite a different story than what we read in the textbooks. Where the truth lies, I’m not sure. I’ll have to research that more. One thing that has struck me is the religious openness of the Mongols – aside from their own form of spiritualism, there were also Mongol Christians, Buddhists and Muslims. In this book the Mongols are painted as early globalizers. Fascinating and timely.

I’m well into The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. However, I can’t seem to keep with it. I absolutely love the writing and am enamoured of the main character, Aminata; it’s just too sad. It’s rare for me to read fiction so I’m kind of daring myself to finish it despite the horrible subject matter.