Booknotes 5.20

Ethan of Athos, by Lois McMaster Bujold, published 1986, science fiction, 250 pages. Part of the Vorkosigan series. (I thought I was going in order, by the way, but apparently I somehow skipped this one and Falling Free. Whoops.) Enjoyed it, even if Miles isn’t actually in it. The Marne, by Edith Wharton, published 1918, fiction, 70 pages. World War I from an American perspective, and as part of that, a meditation on war. Quite liked it — one of my favorites of Wharton’s, I think. This part amused me: “Her studies had probably been curtailed by the task of preparing a repertory, for she appeared to think that Joan of Arc was a Revolutionary hero, who had been guillotined with Marie Antoinette for blowing up the Bastille; and her notions of French history did not extend beyond this striking episode.” The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, published c. 1400 (translation by Nevill Coghill published 1951), poetry, 520 pages. I didn’t love it, for the same reasons I didn’t really like…