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32 Days : Traces of Trieste

32 Days until I experience L-Space when reading Terry Pratchett, and not because I can't find a book in the Reid Library.

Today I was read a historical monograph of the benandanti of the Fruili region of Italy in the 16th Century. The epically named The Night Battles is a fabulous read, mostly for the extraordinary images of the male witches of the region fighting with fennel and sorghum stalks to determine the fertility of the land and the nefarious Inquisition transforming their agrarian Holy Legions to Demonic Legions by sheer bloody-mindedness.



Aquileia Basilica

Fruili is the only region of Italy I have actually visited, and the towns of Trieste, Montefalcone and Aquileia mentioned in the text are the towns I know from my few days there with Kim. While reading The Night Battles I could picture the region as I remember it, although my visit in 2003 is separated by oceans of time and context from my reading today.

Today I am looking forward to the end of my year of study so I can read more monographs of places I have visited, bringing them to life again in my mind, my memories of them having become a little threadbare from repeated handling in the last few years.

NOTE: Google Books only gives you the first four pages of each chapter to read. If you search for a key word that will be on the majority of pages in the chapter it will bring up enough pages for you to construct the rest of the chapter. That is how I get around books that are not in the library ... L-Space in truth!

Trieste

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