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The Art of Dying

Peter Fenwick and Elizabeth Fenwick

8.0 (2 Ratings) Rate It

Book

The Art of Dying is a contemporary version of the medieval Ars Moriendi--a manual on how to achieve...

Death paranormal

Hannah (22 KP) rated The Witches: Salem, 1692 in Books

Sep 12, 2017

The Witches: Salem, 1692

Stacy Schiff | 2015 | History & Politics

7.8

(5 Ratings)

Book Rating

Well researched (0 more)

No map of the village (1 more)

The footnotes, so many footnotes

Some interesting points made, but...

Narrative history that sometimes misses deeper analysis of why it happened. It seems well researched, using the accounts of the period. I don't generally have an issue with footnotes, but I think the author overuses them sometimes, and many of the footnotes could be incorporated into the text or dropped entirely as they sometimes go off at a tanget. Not always a fan of her writing, it's quite wandering and tries to mix an accesible history style with more of an academic writing style. It doesn't really give the reader a great sense of the period atmosphere and concentrates very heavily on what happened at the trials. She was apparently deliberately avoiding explainations, however she attempts to explain the instigators' "hysteria" that originally prompted the accusations of witchcraft; that the symptoms occured in the parsonage, the most repressive environment. The accusations gained the "victims" attention and a respite from chores. I was surprised that there was no map of the village.

Kudos

Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2460 KP) rated The Art of Vanishing in Books

May 4, 2018

Someone is Out to Destroy Arts Week

Every spring semester, Stonedale University puts on an arts festival, and Lila has been roped into serving on the committee. The big name for the week is author Damon Von Tussel, who has just released his second book decades after his critically acclaimed debut. Lila is sent to interview him before the big event to gain some publicity, but before she can talk to him, he disappears. Then everyone on the committee starts to get threatening e-mails. What is going on?

I don’t read too many mysteries set in the academic world, so I enjoyed changing that with this book. The internal politics of the college and Lila’s worries since this is her first-year teaching there overshadowed the mystery at times. The mystery itself is a little different than many of the books I read, and I found it a refreshing break. The characters are fun, especially Lila’s mother, and I am curious how some of these relationships will develop in the future.