Reading List

Deborah Harkness posted a Back to School Reading List today on Facebook.  Anyone interested in another book for September or October?  (Just fyi - I am mostly kidding, since these are not the lightest of reads she is suggesting here.  But, if just one of you were interested...you know me, I am always game!)

Today's Discovery of Witches/Shadow of Night treat is a reading list. Can you hear me putting on my academic robes? I went back into the classroom on Monday, and it's my great joy this semester to teach an advanced undergraduate seminar on Magic, Alchemy, and Astrology in Early Modern Europe. If you're wishing you were going back to school, here's what we're reading and the order in which the books are assigned:

1. Richard Kieckhefer's Magic in the Middle Ages
2. Wayne Shumaker's The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance
3. Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the 15th Century, ed. Richard Kieckhefer
4. Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (c. 1588-1604)
5. Bruce Moran's Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution
6. John French's The Art of Distillation (1651) (online at http://www.levity.com/alchemy/jfren_ar.html)
7. Ben Jonson, The Alchemist (1610)
8. Anthony Grafton, Cardano's Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer
9. Marsilio Ficino, The Book of Life (1489)
10. William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1610)

Any one of these books will give you some insights into the world of SHADOW OF NIGHT, so if you're looking for something to read, why not pick up one of these titles and pretend you're going back to school? Remember my motto: why should the teenagers have ALL the fun?

Also, just a reminder: I'm in Brazil beginning Tuesday. I will TRY to post a Friday treat but no guarantees!