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Tim Rayborn is a medievalist with a Ph.D. from Leeds University. He is also a professional musician devoted to early music, with a specialty in medieval repertoire. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Værker af Tim Rayborn

Lost: A History of Disappearances (2023) 5 eksemplarer

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I want to start by saying this is an absolutely beautiful book! I was drawn in by the cover art immediately. Upon receiving, it was even nicer than I expected....fully illustrated, full color, thick glossy pages. The pages are sewn in...I haven't seen that in a minute....there is glue in the spine for binding...but the pages themselves are sewn in.

Now the gripes...the pages are sewn in individual sets that do pull away from the glued spine when reading..not a huge deal...they aren't coming out because they're sewn..but they do pull out a bit.

This isn't actually short stories like I thought. Upon revisiting the Amazon product page and rereading the synopsis on the back cover....I realized that the description does not allude to that...so, I'll take blame for the misunderstanding.

This is a book of winter folk lore....which I was actually quite thrilled to learn...I love folk lore. The problem lies with the writing, and lack of any real information. Almost every legend is similarly written and almost replicas of one another.

By the end of this book I was struggling to finish.....it got very monotonous to read the same things repeatedly.

I would only recommend this book for those that appreciate esthetically pleasing books. This would be a nice coffee table book for the holidays. I wouldn't recommend it for those wanting an indepth look at cultural winter lore.
… (mere)
½
 
Markeret
Jfranklin592262 | Mar 3, 2024 |
Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss.
 
Markeret
fernandie | 3 andre anmeldelser | Sep 15, 2022 |
This felt like two separate books. The first half is a light introductory overview of the history of theater supplemented by selected short biographical sketches of major playwrights from the periods covered. As such it’s a good introduction to the development of drama’s place in society.

The second half is an odd assortment of quirky theater related facts and anecdotes that doesn’t really add anything to the earlier work - in fact it feels like it undermines the previous history with trivialities.… (mere)
 
Markeret
gothamajp | 3 andre anmeldelser | Sep 27, 2021 |
The book tries to connect Shakespeare’s works to masterpieces of Ancient Greek and Roman Theatre and to present the circumstances that became the influence and the context of his plays. Arguably, the research is there on the part of the author, but there is nothing new in this attempt. There is nothing we don’t know, nothing we haven’t read before in much better books through a vastly better writing.

The author’s sarcastic humor regarding certain ancient Greek tragedies is hardly appropriate. A lame attempt to sound ‘’smart’’, but all he succeeds in is to come across as disrespectful. At first, I thought this was some kind of aversion towards Classical Antiquity in general, but no. The same tone continues for the majority of the book and I felt as if I was reading an essay by a teenager under the influence of too much reprimanding talk who simply had had enough and decided to ditch everything, essays, projects and all.

There was nothing obscure, no dark secret, as the cover proclaims. Everybody knows the origin of phrases like ‘’The Scottish Play’’ or ‘’Break a leg’’. Everybody but the writer who needs to get his facts straight in one or two occasions...Even the supposedly haunting theaters that he mentions are far from ‘’obscure’’.

It is one thing to feel the need to create a text that will be approachable to young people and another to resort to crude jokes and completely silly, amateurish assumptions. A frightfully disappointing read that didn’t even worth the time...I finished it out of a sheer sadistic desire to see how far he would go to appear ‘’clever’’...

ARC from Edelweiss
… (mere)
 
Markeret
AmaliaGavea | 3 andre anmeldelser | Jul 15, 2018 |

Statistikker

Værker
26
Medlemmer
171
Popularitet
#124,899
Vurdering
½ 2.7
Anmeldelser
6
ISBN
34
Sprog
1

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