All the Frills: Old Timey Books

My area of focus as a historian is early modern England, and early modern Europe more broadly. As you can probably imagine, this was a pretty religiously-minded society – both pre- and post-Reformation (don’t even get me started talking about the Reformation in England, or Reformations more accurately…I’ll seriously go on for like a week). References to scripture and other religious texts appear with great frequency in documents from the period and so I have several bibles and collections of psalms kicking around my home library for use in my research. But my favourite editions are these reproductions of a late medieval illuminated Bible and Book of Psalms. I love me a good timey book, and these ones were gifts from my parents from many, many years ago (both bear dated inscriptions, which I love), so they’re doubly special.

Moving on, here are a few odds and ends that caught my attention this week:

• Edmonton's stylin' librarians (I worked for the Edmonton Public Library system for 5 years so really enjoy this one).
  
• Mean tweets music edition – cannot stop giggling at these.
  
• Putin on the Ritz!!!!! This has been around for a while but I am easily amused and every time I see this I just lose it.
  
• The ‘Diamonds are Forever’ ad campaign is, actually, eternal.
  
• This article on homophobia in Russia is really interesting.
  
• Any Jeopardy fans? This kid’s got a system that inspires both rage and admiration. People who are inspired to rage and admiration by Jeopardy are my favourite kind of people.
  
• This might be the height of irony. Tragic and sad as well, but deeply, deeply ironic.
  
• Anyone love Settlers of Catan as much as I do? This profile of its creator is pretty interesting.
  
• I’ve got some problem with Lego’s “girls” building sets. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one.