Dragon Actually / G.A. Aiken / 352 pages

A funny paranormal romance set in a fantasy medieval time period.  Annwyl the bloody, a nickname she got beheading the soldiers of her cruel brother’s army fighting as the leader of the rebellion, though she hates the nickname, tends to cause men to either cower in fear or salute. While fighting alone she gets injured and then saved by the Dragon Fearghus.  He takes her back to his cave to heal and recuperate.  , Fearghus arranges to have a warrior sword train her, the warrior causes her to feel and think of things she has never thought of with a man before, while Fearghus make her feel safe for the first time in her life. She’s falling in love with both of them and Fearghus is keeping a secret; he and all other dragons have the ability to shapeshift into human form.  Narrated by: Hollie Jackson 10h 24m.

Doomsday Book / Connie Willis / 592 pgs

Confession: My two favorite themes in literature are time travel and alternative histories. Somehow, this book has completely escaped my notice until now, despite the fact that it won the Best Novel Hugo Award back in 1993. The story is set in 2054 in Oxford, England. Time travel has been invented, but up until now, people were not allowed to go back to the 14th century because it was considered too dangerous for two reasons. First, it was the era of the Hundred Years' War, and second, it was the era of the Black Death that killed almost half of Europe. However, Kivrin Engle, a young post-grad historian, ends up going back to 1320 to study medieval Oxford for a three week period. Unbeknownst to her, a mistake actually sent her to 1348, the year that the Black Death struck Oxford and the surrounding villages. Meanwhile, the characters in 2054 Oxford find themselves also the victims of a mysterious influenza that strikes most of the people who are tasked with pulling Kivrin back into the present. 

The book is a bit long, but I enjoyed it anyways. Be warned, it does get very depressing and rife with gross details of what the Bubonic Plague does to a person before death. I would not recommend for the squeamish or those who are unable to read about death. For me, someone who is fascinated by history, I loved it! It took a while for the book to really get going, but once it did, I thought it was great. The parts that dragged were mostly those that occurred in 2054, and the side story of the American bell-tollers. Still, I'd recommend it to those who are not overly sensitive and like to learn more about medieval history

The Inferno / Dante Alighieri / 352 pgs

Since I read the Barnes and Nobles classic paperback version, I am putting the page count at 352. It seems that the hardcover versions on Goodreads often have over 400 pages, and I feel that must be because a lot of extra commentary and footnotes are present that were not on my version. So, Dante is just one of those classic authors I never got around to reading. I'm certain my literature textbooks had excerpts from The Divine Comedy, but his writings were never assigned to me, and I never had the interest to read him until now, despite the interest I've always had in religious ideas of the afterlife.

What can I say? It was VERY Italian. It seemed almost everyone Dante meets in Hell are Italians, including a couple of popes. Of the few names I knew, they mostly were other great writers whom Dante meets in the limbo on the very outskirts of the nine circles of hell - people who never knew God so never outright rejected him and never committed sins great enough to merit Hell. Dante liberally inserts people who likely never existed, mostly those fictional characters from the writings of Homer, and treats them as if they were real. Dante's guide is the poet Virgil. All in all, I'm very glad I read The Inferno. I now own it, since I picked it up from the Book Sale Ladder in the foyer of Spencer Road. I hope I'll get a chance to read Purgatorio and Paradiso at some point in the near future.