Susan Hated Literature

Gaelic Sport in Ireland
Author: Tom Humphries
ISBN: 0297835661
796.33

The waves are hissing the secrets of winter. They arrive here bearing a wind which has lost no sharpness since it left the west coast of Scotland. The roads are empty and frosted tonight. The moon is timid in a louring sky. The dressing room lights are off. The floodlights have yet to be cranked up. The pitch is fringed with frost. There is nobody here. Why would anyone come?

Tom Humphries is a sports writer here in Ireland, and a very good one at that. Always entertaining and readable every week in the Irish Times, but this book isn’t the greatest example of his writing.

Green Fields starts off with a training session in early February, the start of the GAA year when all teams are equal. When all have a chance to win the All-Ireland. When players are unfit after their winter off, and when the evenings after work seem to dark to head out training. GAA players are all amateurs you see, and this is a book that points out how important the Gaelic Athletic Association is in Irish life. And how unique.

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A history of power, love and greed in 11th-century England
Author Harriet O Brien
ISBN 0747574898
DDC: 942.018092
Read with Medieval Britain book group

She looks a little peevish, although this would not have been the intention of the artist

This is the story of Queen Emma, by birth a Norman, who married two kings of England. Her first marriage was as peacemaker between her family and England. Her second came about because Cnut defeated her first husband and came to power. She was, in effect, the spoils.

But Emma was not a woman to be taken lightly, nor was she one to sit back and let events unfold. This book attempts to show her as an active, manipulating Queen, one who held power in her own right.

The problem of course is that there really isn’t all that much evidence left to us today about the people of the 11th century. And what does remain may not be strictly true. Emma herself commissioned a book to be written about the times she lived through. But this cannot be believed as it is not merely a recording of events, but a piece of political propaganda. Despite the lack of evidence, O’Brien has created an interesting, readable book. I’m too sure if her method of interspersing speculation and motivation of character really ever worked for me. But overall it is an interesting account of a woman I’d never heard of before.