Heads-up

Lois McMaster Bujold's new Penric & Desdemona novella is up. Amazon. Her blog post, which links to B&N and other sites as it works its way through their systems.

Dream

Mostly to remind myself. The other night I had a dream in which I was in a rollaway bed in a rather long hotel room. Someone was in bed next to me, a young woman with Asian features. She got up, went over to stand facing the wall. I followed, asked how old she was. She turned to me and said "You should really go back to sleep." And in my dream I thought "Well, that's a part of my brain telling me something in my dreams."

Yeah, not creepy at all.

(no subject)

One of the best parts of working in an academic library is browsing the catalog, clicking trhough to see where things lead, and discovering subject headings like this:

Subject Lesbian nuns -- Italy -- Biography.

We only have one book about lesbian nuns in Italy, but we also have one about lesbian nuns in the US.

And because I know some of you are perking up right now, here's the answer to the question you were about to ask: Brown, Judith C. Immodest acts : the life of a lesbian nun in Renaissance Italy. New York : Oxford University Press, 1986.

(no subject)

And one more post: today's discovery, from a book about military nobility in Renaissance Italy, about a way I hadn't heard of for one to impugn another's honor (as honor was a huge thing):

A year later, an argument about a horse taken from an envoy Virginio had sent to the enemy commander, Roberto da Sanseverino, resulted in Roberto’s son, Antonio Maria, challenging Virginio, threatening that if he had not received a response within four days, he would have defamatory paintings of him displayed in the ‘shameful areas’ of his camp and in Rome.

From Barons and Castellans : The Military Nobility of Renaissance Italy by Christine Shaw, which I'd buy for myself in paper so I could mark up if it wasn't HUGELY EXPENSIVE and thus I must resort to merely reading the ebook in a browser window via my institution.