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#Scarathlon tbr list. #TEAMBooklovers

Can't wait to get stuck into this tbr selection from my shelf.

@Bookwormjillk @Clwojick @StayCurious

Fascinating history of witches, or rather, one case where a couple who fell out with each other and their New England community, and were accused of being witches. I could have done with a bit less "imagined" feelings.

But he does acknowledge this in the afterword as a deliberate narrative device, and the depth of historical detail here is fascinating.

Early that morning, Pynchon guided Jonathan Taylor, Mercy Marshfield and the others through the already busy streets into the square between Treamont Street and Cornhill. Boston awed them as a metropolis of confidence and grandeur - and of varied sounds and smells and colours - compared to the more roughly hewn environment of Springfield. Nervous now, they passed the hulking prison...

Did they? ? I'd have liked a few more "may haves" I think.

Glad not to be around in 17c New England, where spending time by yourself was apparently a suspicious behaviour!

New word (to me).

Early book burning

...he was tasked with sweeping away Pynchon's dead, tangled arguments, much as the Indians opened forest trails with brush fires, leaving only the healthy trees. This analogy was to be taken literally. The court ordered that a copy of The Meritorious Price be handed to the city hangman. Four days later, on the Sabbath after the lecture, a crowd assembled in the market place to watch the hangman put Pynchon's words on a bonfire.

An interesting and well researched look at witchcraft in 1651, Springfield Massachusetts in a remote community. This gives a real sense of time and place as well as what daily life was like in those times with the fear of witches being interwoven. It mainly follows one young couple and reads so well that it almost feels like nonfiction which makes it really immersive

Body and spirit were understood to be a unified conception that linked sickness to sin and found cures in abstinence and repentance. John Winthrop speculated that the wife of the governor of Connecticut had lost her 'understanding and reason...by occasion of her giving herself wholly to reading and writing.'

This is a lesser known witch story from Springfield, MA, that occurred before Salem. Well researched and really interesting, though the audio isn‘t great, so stick with print. This definitely gives a feel for that era.

Marriages were like flawed bricks that exploded during firing, or which looked sturdy but cracked and crumbled under pressure: often, things like a forthcoming harvest or the arrival of a child in a couple's lives. ... It may have felt like some malign intervention.... one reliable proof for witchcraft, scholars taught, was 'when married people formerly loving very well, hate one another without any evident cause'.

Truly excellent history of early colonial American life! The events and persons related occurred nearly 50 years before the Salem witch trials. This book focuses on a much smaller frontier community and a broken marriage. The author explored untapped documents to weave this fantastic history! 🧙 🧹 🐈‍⬛

Not just a map, but many maps. That‘s the sure sign of a good book. This is all things I love, so I have much hope for a good afternoon. I‘m going in!
#NovelNovember @Andrew65

Three wildly different books - but it always fascinates me the ‘trends‘ book covers go through …..