"Great Books for the SCA Tradition"

Jeanne Stapleton jstaplet at adm.law.du.edu
Wed Jun 18 08:54:32 PDT 1997


Greetings from Berengaria, lifelong bibliophile!

> Well, since I started this thread, I guess I should post.  These are
> the general broad titles, useful for a good basic understanding of
> the period.
> 
> Non-period works:
> 
> The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey.  This book is a murder
> mystery, but is one of the best, least painful introductions to
> historical research there is.  Please, read this book.  A&S
> documentation will seem much less burdensome and perhaps even
> (gasp!) fun.
> 
This book is a must-read; it will totally change your thinking about 
sources and their acceptability.  It's *short*, which can be an 
incentive to waders in the pool of historical reading (those who 
discovered the delights of the SCA via gaming or an alternative 
fantasy group).  After all these years, it still grabs me on each 
re-read.

[many other excellent titles snipped for brevity]

I'd recommend one I read recently and just checked out for a re-read 
and for writing a review:

_Worldly Goods_, Lisa Jardine.  An excellent book about how values 
changed to the material during the Renaissance.  The author explores, 
in various chapters, themes such as the amount of intricate detail 
that went into representing material surroundings in Renaissance art; 
and what drove collectorship and patronage.


Countess Berengaria de Montfort de Carcassonne, OP
Barony of Caerthe
Kingdom of the Outlands



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