Let's have a salon

[jenett]

Several years ago, I ran a series of weekly salon posts, where I'd post a topic to get us started, people would show up in the comments, and conversation would ensue. Now seems a good time to try them again!

(You should not feel restrained to keep on this topic! Start other topics! Encourage topic drift! That's part of the point. Feel free to ask random questions, there's a chance someone might know about the thing.)

This week's question

What are you learning right now that you're really interested by? (That might be a project for work, for personal stuff, a gaming geekery thing, a book you're reading, a podcast you're listening to, the fact you're learning a lot about Dreamwidth and how it works this week, or anything else.)

What do you like about it? What are you finding more challenging?

Things currently contemplating

I'm currently reading Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones, which is well-researched and has a really interesting structure where he's looking at different pieces of it through small slices (individual people, towns, situations) and tracing back to the origins as much as possible. I really like books where the information part is well done, but the structure creates connections between pieces of information in helpful and new ways.

Notes:

* Consider this a conversation in my living room, only with a lot more seating. I reserve the right to redirect, screen, and otherwise moderate stuff, but would vastly prefer not to have to.
* If this works this week, I'll do an updated FAQ and continue.
* If you don't have a DW account or want to post anonymously, please include a name we can call you in this particular post. (You can say AnonymousOne or your favourite colour or whatever. Just something to help keep conversations clear.)
* If you've got a question or concern, feel free to PM me.

Comments

[dejla]

There are amazing things in that time period. Have you heard of Mary Anning, who found the first full plesiosaurus skeleton? She lived in Lyme Regis and was a superb fossil hunter.

[jenett]

There are amazing things in all time periods!

Um. Useful calibration for me: my 'I have been sort of ignoring' is more like 'I read stuff if it comes across my notice in other ways, but have not been going out and searching for it and/or actively reading deeply in that area', which means I still probably read a couple of dozen articles/blog posts/shorter stuff a year relating to it, and maybe a book or two. Not including the stuff that's related to work.

But I am, in comparison, vastly better read, including a bunch of the primary sources, on ancient Greece and Rome, or medieval England and France, or Renaissance Italy, and chunks of other history. I've been working on broadening out my background in non-Europe rather than diving into the 18th/19th century stuff mostly, when I've been deliberately pushing at new content.

(And a lot of my 18th/19th century deliberate deeper reading has been specific to esoteric interests, now I think about it, the stuff that lead into the modern Pagan cultural movement.)

But yes, Mary Anning is awesome. I first dug into her history when Tracy Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures came out, since I was working in a high school library, and made a point of reading a couple of new titles we got in most months.

(It is a good thing I read fast when my brain is cooperating.)

[dejla]

This will sound a little silly in that context, but there was a British writer of Regency and sometimes earlier romances, and three or four of them are set in Russia during the Regency/Napoleonic Wars period. Her name was Dinah Dean, and you can only find those used -- I usually go to Bookfinder and see which booksellers have them.

And Renaissance Italy is a wonderful time to research!