I've been absent for several months, and I'm sorry I didn't have anything to contribute.
A few years ago when I was traveling I picked up
The Archer's Tale by Bernard Cornwell. It's historical fiction set during the 100 Years War, and I liked it well enough that I read everything else by Cornwell outside of his series on Sharp's War. That's partly because I'm slightly less interested in the 19th century than the 1st-12th but mostly because there are a lot of Sharpe's novels and I didn't want to tackle a series that size. They've since made his
Saxon Tales into a Netflix series; I've seen a few episodes and they're pretty good, but I definitely recommend the books.
Outside of Thieves World, Robert Asprin is probably best known for the
Myth series. Although they're definitely LIGHT READING, the dimensional travel aspects actually make it one of the most true-to-life D&D series in some ways. I also enjoyed his Phule's series (similarly light sci-fi with a character that is probably most similar to the anime series
The Irresponsible Captain Tyler. His
Bug Wars is also really good (and short) and tells the story of a race of intelligent lizards getting involved in a war against giant intelligent insects. It's been a long time since I read it, but I also liked
Cold Cash Wars, which was depressing for him to write, but is basically a short story about what happens when companies start funding private armies and take over power from national governments. It's one of those things that you probably read when you you were quite a bit younger, but if you missed them, they're worth checking out again.
I just picked up
Conquest of the Normans which is a history of the Normans that tries to explain how they, in one form or another, became the dominant power in Germany and Sicily (as well as Northern France) and while that premise seemed interesting, I'm not sure that it really follows that any of those people that settled outside of Normans stayed 'Norman' for any length of time. It'd seem like the same argument could be made for how the Vikings dominate Europe today because they set up kingdoms in Normandy, greatly influenced England, set up a kingdom in Kievan Rus and apparently settled in Sicily and took over the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. That is to say - it's basically true, but they weren't really VIKINGS by that point.
In that vein, I had read
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, and I felt that did a better job of proving its premise - that many of the foundational attitudes among modern national governments are reflected (and possibly inspired) by Mongol policies - well, maybe I'll let the publisher say it:
The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in twenty-five years than the Romans did in four hundred. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization. Vastly more progressive than his European or Asian counterparts, Genghis Khan abolished torture, granted universal religious freedom, and smashed feudal systems of aristocratic privilege. From the story of his rise through the tribal culture to the explosion of civilization that the Mongol Empire unleashed, this brilliant work of revisionist history is nothing less than the epic story of how the modern world was made. “Reads like the Iliad…Part travelogue, part epic narrative.” — Washington Post “It’s hard to think of anyone else who rose from such inauspicious beginnings to something so awesome, except maybe Jesus.”
For me reading also tends to come in spurts. I probably have more time for reading than I've had in a while, but I've also been working on my Duolingo, so it can be easy to justify working on a foreign language rather than reading books, especially when I'm reading news in Le Monde or Spanish-language articles in the NY Times.