251
Followers
4
Following
Manny Rayner's book reviews
I love reviewing books - have been doing it at Goodreads, but considering moving here.
Currently reading
The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution
R in Action
Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies
McGee on Food and Cooking: An Encyclopedia of Kitchen Science, History and Culture
Epistemic Dimensions of Personhood
Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning (Information Science and Statistics)
Relativity, Thermodynamics and Cosmology
The Cambridge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition
Slavar För Särkland: En Berättelse Om östvikingar
Quite good historical novel set in Viking times. The main character takes part in a typical trading expedition; they raid a settlement on the other side of the Baltic, capture a number of women, and then sell them to slave traders from Byzantium. The hero, however, suddenly realizes he has fallen in love with one of the women. At the last minute, he says he wants to keep her, and will give up his share of the profits. His comrades think he's crazy, but agree. On the way back, they are ambushed (there is a strong suggestion that the slave-traders double-crossed them), and all their gold is lost. But the hero still has his girl.
It's told in a straightforward way, with no attempt to judge the Vikings morally. This was normal business. The hero is just relieved that he turned out to have made the right choice, putting love, or at least sex, ahead of money.
