Book Review

Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours
by Frederic L. Cheyette

This is one of the best non-fiction books I have ever read. It took me a very long time to read it (I've been reading it in parallel with fiction over the last several months), but it was worth every minute. I got so into it, I even read all the endnotes.
The book is not so much a biography of Ermengard herself as it is a detailed and exacting portrait of the political and social world of 12th century Occitania (southwestern France) and its ultimate destruction at the hands of the Albigensian Crusade, with Ermengard as a focal point. Cheyette does an extremely good job of bringing that distant time and place back to life for the reader. The way he organizes the material is also very effective: the order and development of topics is put together such that concepts build on and relate to each other in ways that help the reader understand everything. I certainly feel as if his book has given me a much fuller understanding of this particular piece of the middle ages. In fact, because of this book, when I was watching Kingdom of Heaven (whose events occur towards the end of the period that Ermengard covers), I found myself interpreting the scene where Sybilla escorts Balian to Baudouin in completely political, rather than romantic, terms.
I would particularly recommend this book to ladybird97 and woodwindy. And anyone else with an interest in the middle ages.

The Outdoors and Sunlight

It was beautiful out today, the weather we've been waiting for all month. Sunny, hot, but neither scorching nor stickily humid. And sunny, dazzlingly so.
So Other Kenjari and I got out of the house and took a two-hour walk. We started by heading out through Allston-Brighton to the banks of the Charles. We walked by the Publick Theater, but they didn't have their season schedule posted yet. Luckily, there is the internet. It appears that they will be doing Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors and Stoppard's Arcadia on numerous dates from June through September. We will have to try to go - perhaps we will try to get a small group together. Then we continued along the river towards Cambridge. Lots of people were out both on the land and the water. It was perfect walking weather, so we decided to head over the river and into Harvard Square to see if Toscannini's had any coconut sorbet. Alas, they had none, so I had to get lemon instead, but it was still very good, just like frozen fresh lemonade.
It's raining now, but I don't mind so much. First of all, the rain held off until dark. Second, it was lead in by some thunder and lightning. I love thunder and lightning storms. And it's nothing like the stormy, gloomy rain we've had all week - it's that refreshing rain that comes in the summer, accompanied by the smell of wet sidewalk pavement.