Latte, Life, and Lore

She/Her. ADHD-C 💙 Historian and marine biologist at heart. Currently 📖 How to be a Tudor by Ruth Goodman

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Finished Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder and I have complicated feelings about this one. I admire the ambition, but I didn't feel emotionally connected. Also, Sophie being 14 years old and casually meeting an older mysterious man alone in the woods with almost zero parental alarm bells? Absolutely not. #books #reviews #philosophy #life #humanbehaviour #opinions

Book Review: Jostein Gaarder Questions Reality in Sophie’s World

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On the surface, it's a memoir about preserving Judeo-Iraqi Arabic and cultural memory. But it also made me think about the private languages we carry inside ourselves — trauma, neurodivergence, emotional intensity, and the parts of us people often misread. #books #reviews #history #languages #mentalhealth #adhd #trauma

Book Review: Samantha Ellis Preserves the Ache in Always Carry Salt

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Finished Outlandish by Nick Hunt and it feels less like I read a book and more like I walked through one. Slow, immersive, and quietly magical—it makes the world feel softer, stranger, and a lot more worth noticing. Definitely one to read at your own pace. #books #reviews #worldhistory #travel #europe #life #people

Book Review: Nick Hunt Goes Gallivanting Around Europe

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Empires crossed oceans, faced mutiny, starvation, and death… all for nutmeg and cloves. Spice is basically the 16th-century version of a space race, except that it's messier, bloodier, and a lot more absurd. #books #reviews #colonisation #history #maritime #spain #portugal #spices

Book Review: Roger Crowley Recreates the High-Stakes Race in Spice

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This book made me realise that seahorses are basically tiny, dancing, colour-changing, baby-producing oddballs. Definitely one of the most fascinating creatures I’ve read about lately. #books #reviews #seahorses #marinebiology #oceanwildlife

Book Review: Till Hein Unpacks the Curious Life of Seahorses

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Just finished Fentanyl, Inc. by Ben Westhoff, and I don’t think I can look at the word “system” the same way again. This isn’t just about drugs. It’s about how everything is connected and how easily something dangerous can slip through the cracks of things we trust every day. No clear villains. No clean solutions. Just a reality that feels a little too close to home. #books #reviews #drugs #politics #fentanyl #opinions

Book Review: Ben Westhoff Goes Undercover in Fentanyl, Inc.

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Henry V follows the rise of a young king who transforms from an uncertain heir into a ruthless, strategic ruler, leading England through one of its most famous victories at Agincourt. It’s about triumph, the cost of ambition, the pressure to prove yourself, and how far someone is willing to go to secure their legacy. Was he a brilliant king or someone who pushed too far just to prove a point? #books #reviews #history #henryv #danjones

Book Review: Dan Jones Reimagines Power and Legacy in Henry V

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I picked this up for the question—who eats an oyster for the first time and thinks it’s a good idea? Somewhere along the way, it stopped being about oysters and became about curiosity, risk, and the quiet moments that shaped everything we know today. Not every chapter landed for me, but the idea stayed. Someone, at some point, simply decided to try. #books #reviews #history #anthropology #archaeology #humanity

Book Review: Cody Cassidy Explores the Curiosity Behind Humanity’s Firsts

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Not every book I start is one I finish, and that’s okay. This post breaks down how I choose what to read, what makes me put a book down, and why DNF-ing is sometimes the most honest decision a reader can make. Plus, a look at three books that didn’t make the cut for me. #didnotfinish #DNF #opinions #reviews #books

How I Choose My Books to Read and Why Some I Did Not Finish

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I didn’t pick this book up because I was dealing with a breakup. I picked it up because I felt disconnected from myself, and didn’t quite know how to come back. Single. On Purpose. turned out to be less about being single and more about learning how to be whole on your own. This one hit closer than expected.

Book Review: John Kim Talks About Self-Connection and Finding Yourself

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Framing the History of Rome One Coin at a Time

Most authors use dates, dynasties, and military campaigns to retell history. Gareth Harney used coins. Those round metal things that passed through countless hands while quietly carrying messages of power, legitimacy, and identity.

And in many ways, the book is genuinely enjoyable.

I enjoyed learning about the different coins minted across Rome’s long timeline, from its early foundations through successive emperors to the empire’s eventual collapse.

Gareth Harney is a confident storyteller, and his descriptions are vivid and easy to follow. The prose flows smoothly, making a sprawling subject feel approachable rather than overwhelming. Even without prior knowledge of numismatics, the book never feels exclusionary.

That said, I found myself increasingly aware of a quiet imbalance. Despite the title and structure, the book felt more like a broad history of the Roman Empire than a deep exploration of how coins shaped, reflected, or influenced that history. The coins open each chapter, but once the narrative gets going, they recede into the background while the familiar sweep of Roman political and military history takes over.

This isn’t a flaw, but it did leave me wanting more sustained attention on the coins as objects. I’m not a historian or a numismatic expert, but if the book positions coins as storytellers, I expected them to stay closer to the centre of the story.

Still, the book remains an enjoyable read. Its accessibility is one of its strengths, and for readers interested in both Roman history and coins, it does feel like getting two books for the price of one. It may not fully commit to the analytical depth its premise suggests, but it succeeds as a readable, engaging entry point into Rome’s long and complicated past.

In the end, this is a book I appreciated but didn't fully love. It’s neither daring nor disappointing — simply a clear, well-written work that invites curiosity, even if it doesn’t always follow that curiosity as far as it could have.

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According to Junger, Humans Don’t Mind Hardship

But they mind not feeling necessary. Imagine being surrounded by people and still feeling lonely!

So, I picked up Tribe because people had good things to say about it — the kind that clarified something they’d been feeling for a while. I was already thinking about community and belonging when I started reading, which made the book feel uncomfortably timely.

Junger opens with a deceptively simple idea:

Humans don’t mind hardship; what they mind is not feeling necessary.

Modern society, he argues, has become very good at making people feel unnecessary. We are safer, more independent, more materially secure, and increasingly disconnected.

The appeal of tribal life isn’t nostalgia for suffering, but dissatisfaction with modern isolation. As societies grow more affluent, people gain autonomy but lose interdependence. Personal property and individual choice allow us to live without needing one another. You can be surrounded by people and still feel profoundly alone.

Junger links this to psychology and biology. Humans need to feel competent, authentic, and connected. Modern life supports the first two well enough. The third is where things thin out. Community shrinks as authority expands. Responsibility is replaced by rules. Moral decisions are absorbed by systems rather than lived through relationships.

Where Tribe is most persuasive is in its discussion of hardship and solidarity. Drawing from disaster psychology and war, Junger shows how shared adversity can dissolve hierarchy and create intense cohesion. Helping others is hormonally rewarding. In those moments, people feel purposeful, alive, necessary.

Junger is particularly strong when writing about trauma. One of the book’s most sobering insights is that lack of social support predicts PTSD more reliably than the severity of trauma itself. People don’t recover in isolation; they recover when they return to places where they are still needed. Modern societies tend to individualise suffering while stripping away the communal structures that once absorbed it.

Later, Tribe turns toward power and exclusion. Junger defines community simply: the people you would help feed and defend. Any group that doesn’t allow its members to act selflessly in these ways, he argues, isn’t a tribe in any meaningful sense. Contempt, rather than criticism, is what corrodes groups most, especially when directed at those already excluded. The ultimate betrayal of a tribe is using power to quietly excommunicate others.

Many modern communities operate on unspoken expectations — consistency, emotional regulation, social fluency — that are not neutral. Belonging becomes conditional. When performance drops, so does visibility. Junger captures the longing for tribe accurately; access to it is not evenly distributed.

I don’t reject Junger’s argument. Tribe matters because it gives language to a quiet loss many people feel but can’t easily explain. It doesn’t offer solutions so much as clarity. The question it leaves behind isn’t whether we belong. It’s whether we are necessary to one another and what it means when we aren’t.

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Human Ingenuity and the Unsettling Realisation that War was Always Like This

War has a way of making us believe that cruelty evolves alongside technology. Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs by Adrienne Mayor quietly dismantles that illusion.

So I've been reading some really unusual stuff. By this book, I mean it's really unusual. The kind of weapons of mass destruction being used during ancient times made my eyebrows go up so high I thought I'd never be able to bring them back down.

According to Adrienne Mayor, ancient warfare was already inventive, pragmatic, and uncomfortably modern in spirit.

This is not a book about swords and shields. It’s about:

Flamethrowers powered by bellows

Ceramic bombs packed with burning pitch

Unmanned ships turned into floating fire weapons

Arrows dipped in venom

Food and drink were deliberately poisoned

Fear is used as a strategic tool. Ancient armies observed what terrified animals, what spread sickness, and what caused chaos, and they weaponised it. Even things like these:

Elephants terrified horses

Pigs terrified elephants

Beehives were dropped on enemies

Poisoned honey incapacitated soldiers long before anyone understood neurotoxins

The author's background as a folklorist shapes the book in noticeable ways. Mythology is treated not as fantasy to be dismissed, but as a possible echo of lived experience. Stories of poisoned arrows, plague-bearing objects, and divine punishment are examined as cultural memories that may have originated in real practices.

But here's where I get a little petty, if you don't mind. There is this phrase “in antiquity” that she uses so often throughout the book that it becomes distracting. It felt less like clarification and more like a habit I couldn’t unsee.

Still, the book succeeds where it matters most. It refuses to sanitise the past. It reminds us that ingenuity has always had a darker twin, and that war has never been bound by honour in the way we like to imagine.

This review reflects my own thoughts after finishing the book. My criticisms come from engagement, not dismissal. If anything, the discomfort the book creates is proof of its value.

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Today’s sea slug is Halgerda wasinensis, commonly known as the yellow blocked nudibranch.

Image source: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/108642324

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I Saved Lafayette for the Final Chapter of 2025

I’m ending 2025 with Hero of Two Worlds by Mike Duncan, a book that found its way to me through a neat convergence of voices I trust.

It was first recommended by the YouTube book reviewer KistReads, whose enthusiasm for historical biographies has been a reliable green flag for me. Then two friends separately nudged me toward it, both saying some version of: “You can’t really talk about the American Revolution without Lafayette.” That was enough to seal the deal.

I've only just started reading the book but so far, this doesn’t read like a dry march through dates and declarations.

Duncan portrays Lafayette as a young idealist caught between ambition, principle, and history, which is moving faster than anyone can control. What’s immediately compelling is the in-between-ness of it all — nations in upheaval, identities still forming, loyalties tested long before they’re fully understood.

What’s immediately compelling is the in-between-ness of it all:

Nations in upheaval.

Identities still forming.

Loyalties are tested long before they’re fully understood.

This feels like a book about becoming, rather than arriving.

And that idea has been quietly echoing through my life this year. Healing hasn’t been a finish line so much as a practice. Learning hasn’t resolved itself into certainty. Friendships, too, have remained in motion: some forming gently, while others end not with drama but with clarity. There haven’t been many neat conclusions, only ongoing shifts.

Like history itself, I seem to be living in the middle of things — shaping meaning before I know how the story will eventually be told.

So, it’s fitting, somehow, to end the year with a book about someone standing between two worlds. Not just geographically, but morally and historically.

I’m going into the rest of it with curiosity rather than expectation. And knowing myself, I’ll probably circle back here at some point to add more thoughts once I’ve lived with it a little longer. Which, honestly, feels like the right way to close out a reading year.

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Managed to Finish Reading Ian Mortimer's Guide to Medieval England

It’s not the woman-erasing disaster Goodreads made it out to be. Here are my thoughts about the book:

1. It’s not nearly as male-focused as people claimed.

Once you get past the introduction and into the chapters, Mortimer does talk about women quite a bit, actually. Clothing, laws, social expectations, health, hygiene, and personal conduct… all covered for both men and women.

A few examples:

Chapter 5 (on clothing) has pages devoted to what women should and shouldn’t wear — pages 128, 132, 138.

Chapter 6 touches on how women travelled in the 14th century (page 159).

Later chapters discuss medicine, cleanliness, religious roles, and legal rights for both genders. He even includes royal women when relevant.

2. But yes, Mortimer can be… long-winded.

At some point, I found myself thinking, “Sir, I didn’t ask for the entire inventory of a medieval butcher’s stall.” He listed everything. Gemstones, meat cuts, fabric types, market stalls! It’s like the medieval IKEA catalogue. Very detailed but also pretty exhausting.

3. Mortimer vs Goodman — the perspective gap is real.

Ruth Goodman has lived the Tudor life. She’s scrubbed the floors, worn the wool, cooked the meals, slept in the straw, and probably questioned her life choices while churning butter at 5 AM. So when she writes, she writes from inside the experience. Mortimer, meanwhile, has not:

not lived as a 14th-century traveller

not worn medieval fabric

not walked medieval roads on medieval horses

Hence, his writing combined evidence-backed statements with educated guesses. And he leaned into doom-and-gloom quite a fair bit — plagues, bad omens, discomfort, terrible food, worse hygiene. Overall, the vibe was: “Medieval England was amazing, if you ignore the part where you might die horribly.”

4. The last two chapters were a bit of a drag.

His wit becomes very dry, very sarcastic, and very “professor who’s been lecturing for two hours without water.” It's neither academic nor groundbreaking. But surprisingly enjoyable once you tune into Mortimer’s wavelength. I’m still glad I read it. It was fun if you treated it exactly as what it was meant to be — a detailed, slightly overexcited guidebook to a world none of us can visit. It was exciting while it lasted.

And now, I shall jump into Scotland's Merlin: A Medieval Legend and its Dark Age Origins by T. J. Clarkson.

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A Preview of Managing One's Expectations

Apparently, he writes more about males than females in his book. “Sir… did you just erase women from history?”

Image source: Simon & Schuster

I've just picked up Ian Mortimer’s The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England, but before I started it, here’s what I learned after seeing reviews about his book:

Many readers were upset as the book felt very male-focused, as if women only existed when the narrative couldn’t avoid them. I'm pretty sure the author isn’t sitting around thinking, “How do I erase all women today?” This is likely a by-product of the angle he chose when writing his book.

Mortimer writes the whole thing as a medieval Lonely Planet. You, the “visitor,” arrive in the 14th century and walk through the public world — the streets, the markets, the guildhalls, the law courts, the plague carts, the inns with questionable stew.

And guess who dominated that world? Men. Documents from that era were also created by men about men, so the source material already has a built-in bias. If you’ve read Ruth Goodman (which I have, and I thoroughly enjoyed the book), the difference is massive:

Ruth Goodman writes from inside the house. She practically LIVED in Tudor laundry, telling you how people washed, cooked, stitched, slept, and cursed their way through life. She gives you the smells, the textures, and the quiet frustrations. Her angle included both men and women during that era.

Ian Mortimer writes from outside the house. His “traveller” is walking the streets and taking a look around. It’s not warm and cosy; it’s structural. It’s informative but not intimate. We won’t get the emotional or domestic life here; we’ll get the public eye of medieval England instead.

But if you take it for what it is (a tour-guide stroll through a very male-documented public sphere), it becomes much easier to digest. I’ve only just started reading it, so I can't say much about it yet. But now that I know his angle, I can read it with an open mind.