Gah.

I'm writing a history textbook and I'm editing another one so I'm happily immersed in various epochs finding out random interesting things. Too bad that I'm getting oxhide ingots, Standard of Ur, Piero della Francesca and John of Luxembourg mixed together into some sort of history pizza.

I have my little obsessions and quirks so just now I'm planning to insert something on Manuel Chrysoloras into the book I'm editoring and embellishing but the editor-in-chief doesn't know who this guy was so it might be a bit of challenge. I can be pushy, though, and I have a weak spot Early Renaissance and consequently, all things Florentine. Manuel Chrysoloras was invited by Coluccio Salutati, chancellor of Florence , to reside at Santa Maria degli Angeli (where the Arts Faculty of said university is now) (gah, I should finish my thesis, or, well, start the bulk of the work, for that matter) and to teach Greek, to anyone interested, I hear, and if I remember well, he was paid by the city council (gah, I should've bought the catalog of the Salutati exhibition that happened at Biblioteca di San Lorenzo a few years ago, now I'd know).
And this should be translated into Humanist Latin, incised in stone and used to hit the world leaders on their precious little heads because education is the bestest thing in the world. Well, along with knitting, indoor plumbing and sliced bread.

...

A friend works in a bookstore. BIG bookstore. She has an employee discount and an ability to search databases and stock of the actual stone stores for things. It has already proven useful when I found a rather obscure book that has been out of print for five years and she has it on her table now, waiting for the right time when we meet for a coffee.
Today I was browsing through Hartt, that big book on Italian Renaissance art where Frederick Hartt was one of the authors when said friend messaged me that today she had folks from Thames & Hudson there and that they'll be ordering books from them from time to time and that she can get them for bulk price. I eyed my well-worn beloved copy of Hartt, published by said Thames and Hudson, for which I had paid arm and leg a few years ago and just now I'm perusing their online catalog.
A thing struck me recently. There seems to be a general lack of books on Japanese art but for those damn woodprints. I care a damn about woodprints, I mean, they're pretty but there's moar. I must be doing something wrong because I doubt I'm the only person who speaks English but not Japanese but is interested in said matter.

I'd probably better be knitting.

Upon digging in the internetz, I discovered that part of what Leonard Woolley dug up in Ur ended up in Penn Museum and that there are actual books with coloured pictures of Sumerian (?) thingies. Darn, how am I supposed to write something sane about Mesopotamia when I can't get sane literature in this country? In the National Library, they have an issue of something like Acta Sumerologica. Published in Tokyo. Some of the Mesopotamian stuff is inherited in our culture, not theirs, but they do have some research and publications going on. Alright, someone gets a point for bringing said journal to the library but...

Erm, I need a new bookshelf anyway and I might get a book on Sumer, too. Just because. And the stuff is pretty.

Now I'm going to knit. For real.