Member: cemanuel

CollectionsResearch (6), Your library (565), Wishlist (560), Fiction (170), Currently reading (1), All collections (1,299)

Reviews22 reviews

TagsMedieval History (844), Late Antiquity (390), Religion (193), Christianity (180), Ancient History (175), Byzantine (65), Ancient Rome (64), Medieval Warfare (63), Germanic (59), Medieval England (54) — see all tags

Cloudstag cloud, author cloud

GroupsAmateur Historians, Ancient History, Byzantinistik, Medieval Europe

Favorite bookstoresMason's Rare and Used Books

About meI enjoy ancient and medieval history with emphasis on Late Antiquity, Merovingian, Carolingian, and heresy. I do a little trail riding and work in agriculture. I'm happily single and live alone; just me, a nag and a mutt. The mutt owns my house - she just lets me live there. (If I'm reincarnated I want to come back as one of my horses or one of my dogs) I'm not a total antisocial hermit but I do usually read rather than go out when I have spare time - probably like a lot of folks here.

About my libraryExcept for the wishlist, these books are on my shelves (for the most part I've even read them) - or on my PC if they're downloads. Another exception - (How many exceptions before the initial statement becomes useless?) if you see something listed under my "research" collection, I've needed it for something I'm working on and either checked it out from a library or got it via Interlibrary Loan. It also probably means it was pretty high priced.

Now that we have collections, I'm adding my fiction which has been severely reduced from its peak. I really enjoy the features of LT that let me find other people with similar interests and "raid" their libraries. For the most part, my interests don't include fiction any more so I won't include those in my connection info. Seems strange - I didn't start reading history until 1996 and now that's all I ever open.

My background, education and career are in agriculture so I've added my textbooks. I haven't added what's in my office, just what I personally own.

My reviews tend to be a little wordy - hopefully folks will bear with me. Generally I feel like reviewing either a book I'm very impressed with or one that sparks one of my pet peeves so sometimes I do go on. And some of those are fairly academic which takes a bit more anyway. If you prefer something shorter I've included brief comments on quite a few of the books in my library.

For me, the Medieval period begins with Constantine's official recognition of Christianity and ends with Luther in 1517 and I've used tags accordingly.

Someone asked me about my ratings. Like everyone else, my time is limited so I try not to waste my time reading bad books. Generally, when it comes to history, I read books that I've seen recommended (usually by academics) or when I see an interesting title/summary I search the web for a good review. I've been fairly successful with that so most of my books receive pretty decent ratings. Also, if I was going to give a book a "1" it would have to pretty much lack any redeeming qualities (since there isn't a zero). A 2 is pretty bad. I generally don't rate primary/contemporary source material because different people use those in different ways - if you use Froissart for historical accuracy it would rate pretty bad but if you use him to examine historiography of the later medieval period it rates pretty high.

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Real nameCurt Emanuel

LocationFrankfort, Indiana

Favorite authorsNone

Account typepublic, lifetime

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URLs http://www.librarything.com/profile/cemanuel (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/cemanuel (library)

Common KnowledgeSeries (112), Awards (120), Characters (2437), Places (496)

Member sinceSep 9, 2008

Currently readingBarbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376 - 568 (Cambridge Medieval Textbooks) by Guy Halsall