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So I'm reading the newest Lady Trent book
Aug. 20th, 2019 03:49 pmwhich of course is not about her but her granddaughter, and not in the form of memoirs but in various people's letters and journal entries and receipts and oh yes, lots of translation of ancient myth. With footnotes. I think close to 50% of this book might be translation, with an additional 5% being footnotes of said translation.
This is 100% my jam, and I could read a thousand more books like this. I WANT MORE.
If, however, you like a little more action in your plots, pass this by. Yak herding was more exciting.
One thing in which I want to defend the ancients, both in the real world and not. Early in the translation one character complains that the Draconeans had an unnecessarily convoluted writing system, and our main character points out that it appears to be the first writing system so it's not that surprising that they didn't get it wholly right on the first try.
That's a fair point, however, it skips an important consideration.
To people who have seen the advantages of widespread literacy, and especially the advent of print, it's self-evident that you want a writing system to be simple and transparent. But is this obvious to scribes and rulers who haven't seen such a society?
Scribes might complain to themselves about the difficulty, but changing the writing system to make it easier would only serve to put themselves out of business, going in one generation from valued scholars to... nothing, really. I suppose they might put themselves to inventing and learning a simpler system if the ruling class told them "Do it or else", but is the ruling class going to do that? Sure, the peasants might like to write sales receipts and love letters, but what else are they going to write? Pornography? Heresy? Treason?
Writing is risky. Better keep it prestigious and difficult and elite.
This is 100% my jam, and I could read a thousand more books like this. I WANT MORE.
If, however, you like a little more action in your plots, pass this by. Yak herding was more exciting.
One thing in which I want to defend the ancients, both in the real world and not. Early in the translation one character complains that the Draconeans had an unnecessarily convoluted writing system, and our main character points out that it appears to be the first writing system so it's not that surprising that they didn't get it wholly right on the first try.
That's a fair point, however, it skips an important consideration.
To people who have seen the advantages of widespread literacy, and especially the advent of print, it's self-evident that you want a writing system to be simple and transparent. But is this obvious to scribes and rulers who haven't seen such a society?
Scribes might complain to themselves about the difficulty, but changing the writing system to make it easier would only serve to put themselves out of business, going in one generation from valued scholars to... nothing, really. I suppose they might put themselves to inventing and learning a simpler system if the ruling class told them "Do it or else", but is the ruling class going to do that? Sure, the peasants might like to write sales receipts and love letters, but what else are they going to write? Pornography? Heresy? Treason?
Writing is risky. Better keep it prestigious and difficult and elite.
