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Recent Posts
- A Kinrowan Estate story: A Most Beguiling Cookbook
- What’s New for the 13th of April: Anthony Bourdain in print and video; Calexico, Giant Sand and related music; new recordings of ragas, Nordic songs, and vocal jazz, ‘The Night They Drive Old Dixie Down’ performed by The Band
- A Kinrowan Story: We Lost The Cheshire Cat
- What’s New for the 30th of March: Space Opera by Niven & Pournell, Arkady Martine, C. J. Cherryh, Elizabeth Bear, Simon Jimenez and more; Kage reads for us ‘The Empress of Mars’, a novella she wrote; a grab bag of music including new Buryat folk music; The Ukrainians; live music from the Scottish band Iron Horse; Gail Simone graphic novels; Farscape; and of course chocolate
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Our Rooms
- What’s New of 16th of March: A variety of mysteries; some new Scottish music by an old band, new jazz, and splendid archival reviews; ballads in graphic novel form; and chocolate in Paris
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Pub Ghoulies
- What’s New of 2nd of March: Kibbles and Bits including ghostly stories, the Hotel California, music picked by Gary of course
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Quotes that aren’t
- What’s New for the 16th of February: Books by and about Bob Dylan, and music by Dylan and others; plus some new world music and jazz
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Unreliable Narrators
- What’s New for the 2nd of February: All about the Oz books, green man lore, and gargoyles; Baltic polyphony, East-West ambient psychedelia, and a grab bag of other music
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Knit One, Purl Two
- What’s New for the 19th of January: Go Ahead, Be Pleasantly Surprised At What’s Here
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Ancients and Venerables of Guild of St. Nicholas
- What’s New for the 5th of January: A look back at books Gary reviewed in 2024; some seasonally appropriate Nordic music and a little new jazz
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Biscuits
- What’s New for the 22nd of December: A Solstice Story, Crow Girls, Scrooge, Marley, Elizabeth I, Revels and more festive holiday reading; The Lion in Winter on stage and screen; Jethro Tull, Steeleye Span, Christine Lavin, swinging jazz and more holiday sounds
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Fireplaces
- What’s New for the 8th of December: Elizabeth Bear fiction; some holiday related offerings including new music from The Unthanks, Americana tinged jazz, Polar Express, and more
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Eggnog
- What’s New for the 24th of November: Norwegian winter holiday music, archival jazz, new roots music from around Europe, and more; books and what not about things fictional & medæival
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Pudding
- What’s New for the 10th of November: a grab bag of books from our favorite authors; Richard Thompson and Stephane Grappelli on film; music from all over; and comfort food
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Brandy (A Letter to Tessa)
- What’s New for the 27th of October: The Byrds Live, Trader Joe’s Organic Hot Cocoa Mix, Some Excellent Music Reviews, Folkmanis Puppets of an Autumnal Nature, The Mouse Guard begins…
- A Kinrowan Estate story: All The World’s A Stage
- What’s New for the 13th of October: Elizabeth Bear tends a pot of turkey stock, Groot and Rocket Raccoon, A Video and Fiction set in India, Tasty music reviews, and music from Irish trad band Clannad
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Autumn is Here (A Letter to Anna)
- What’s New for the 29th of September: Louisiana’s Lost Bayou Ramblers, live music by Kathryn Tickell, Ottawa based urban fantasies by Charles de Lint, Norwegian saxophonist Karl Seglem, Gus on the Estate Kitchen garden and other Autumnal matters
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Tag Archives: history
Joseph Campbell’s The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension
The Flight of the Wild Gander is a series of essays produced betwen 1944 and 1968 in which Campbell was, he says, “circling, and from many quarters striving to interpret, the mystery of mythology.” The “mystery,” as comes clear as … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged history, myth, mythography
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Avram Davidson’s Adventures in Unhistory: Conjectures on the Factual Foundations of Several Ancient Legends
I have had the distinct pleasure through the years of being in line for a number of reissues and new editions of works by some of the great writers of the Golden Age of science fiction and fantasy. Maybe it’s … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged folklore, history, nonfiction
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Toby Faber’s Stradivari’s Genius: Five Violins, One Cello, and Three Centuries of Enduring Perfection
One of the most shamefully puzzling phenomena in the history of our continual technological “progress” is the simple fact that a violin maker of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries manufactured instruments that no one has since been able … Continue reading
Colin Symes’ Setting the Record Straight: A Material History of Classical Recording
One of the fundamental concepts of contemporary critical theory, whether it be post-modern, feminist, post-colonial, queer theory, or whatever subset one has chosen, is “discourse.” Discourse in this sense is not to be taken as mere converse employing words as … Continue reading
Robert Sandall’s The Penguin Café Orchestra: A History
The Penguin Café Orchestra: A History is just that (although arguably it is as much a history of Simon Jeffes, but Jeffes and the Orchestra are so inextricably intertwined that I’m not prepared to argue the matter). The meat of … Continue reading
Posted in Music
Tagged contemporary music, history
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Piers Vitebsky’s The Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia
Siberia, that vast tract that covers the Russian North from the Urals to the Pacific, is one of the most inhospitable places that humanity has found to live, equaled only by its American counterpart (although Siberia does hold the record … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged history, nonfiction
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Richard A. Straw and H. Tyler Blethen, eds., High Mountains Rising: Appalachia in Time and Place
“Perhaps all the stereotypes of Appalachian folklife ought to be discarded. The culture of Appalachia is neither unqiue nor monolithic.” Thus Michael Ann Williams summarizes her chapter on Appalachian folklore in High Mountains Rising, a broad, even panoramic study of … Continue reading
Jean-Marie Déguignet’s Memoirs of a Breton Peasant [ed. Bernez Rouz; English trans. Linda Asher]
It is not often that one gets to read the memoirs of a peasant, because it’s not often that a peasant writes a memoir. This particular peasant was Breton, which is, for those fascinated by a part of the world … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged autobiography, biography, history
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Suraiya Faroqhi: Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire
We tend to think of the Ottoman Empire as monolithic: a unitary state ruled from Istanbul and subject to a uniform system of laws. A moment’s reflection will lead to the inescapable conclusion that this couldn’t possibly be true: at … Continue reading
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Tagged history, nonfiction
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Suraiya Faroqhi: The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It; Handan Nezir Akmeşe: The Birth of Modern Turkey: The Ottoman Military and the March to World War I
The Ottoman Empire and its successor, modern Turkey, have time and again played an important role in European politics, and yet there are vanishingly few sources in English to bring us the viewpoint of the Turks themselves, or, indeed, to … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged history, nonfiction
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