1 post tagged “books”

Another fascinating non-fiction book. I had no idea how important salt was historically. Before refrigeration, salt was the main thing available to preserve food. You couldn't raise an army without tons of salt; in fact, the world soldier has it's genesis in the Latin word for salt.

Interesting read, recommended.

Illium by Dan Simmons - science fiction, I really enjoyed this one.  Simmons is one of the more ambitious science fiction writers out there; he wrote the Hugo award winning Hyperion a few years back, and this one is similarly ambitious. While Hyperion was modeled on Canterbury Tales (a group of pilgrims tell each other their stories while on a journey, and the stories converge with the current journey, leading to a rich, deep and satisfying experience), Illium is based on the Illiad and Shakespeare's The Tempest, with a long discussion of Proust's Remembrence of Things Past thrown in for good measure. If you're going to mine literature for models, ideas, and topics, it's hard to beat the sources Simmons uses. A rollicking adventure in an odd future Earth, where the nearest things to humans are decadent and perhaps on the verge of dying out, and robots in the outer solar system have kept the tradition of reading the classics of literature alive, things aren't quite what they seem. Enjoyable space and time romp, leaves things somewhat hanging; hopefully the sequel Olympus will resolve things.