My office was part of the library for a while, and I’d walk by the new releases shelves twice a day, minimum. Very dangerous for my TBR pile. Plus, as university staff we can keep books through the end of the school year, even if we check them out in July. And with COVID, they suspended all due dates to keep people from coming to the library for anything minor, so I’ve had some books out for a year and a half now. If someone else asks for the book we do have to get it back within a week or pay a hefty fine, but that’s fair. They probably need it for a paper or something, and I just have it because it caught my eye.

I had a friend in high school who talked nostalgically about living in past eras. I pointed out that a) without modern antibiotics I wouldn’t have lived past four years and b) we had about 95% odds of being a peasant or slave in any of the time periods she mentioned, which did not sound great. But if I had to live in the past, Crete before the volcano turned Thera into Santorini could be interesting.

There's a section in Lois McMaster Bujold's ... Komarr, I think it is ... where Ekaterin is talking to her aunt, a history professor, who comments that young girls often romanticize the past. And she points out that they'd be doing "women's work" such as weaving until they went blind or dying from dysentery or childbirth at a young age, which she doesn't find romantic at all.

I had a friend in high school who talked nostalgically about living in past eras. I pointed out that a) without modern antibiotics I wouldn’t have lived past four years and b) we had about 95% odds of being a peasant or slave in any of the time periods she mentioned, which did not sound great.

Yeah, I wouldn't have had to worry about living as a starving peasant because even if I'd been born into royalty I would have been taken out by a kidney infection before I turned 10.

I had a friend in high school who talked nostalgically about living in past eras. I pointed out that a) without modern antibiotics I wouldn’t have lived past four years and b) we had about 95% odds of being a peasant or slave in any of the time periods she mentioned, which did not sound great.

Being born with SB, I likely would have died in the first week without spine surgery.

I had a friend in high school who talked nostalgically about living in past eras. I pointed out that a) without modern antibiotics I wouldn’t have lived past four years and b) we had about 95% odds of being a peasant or slave in any of the time periods she mentioned, which did not sound great.

I think about how both my mother and I would probably have died at my birth and don't romanticize much before the 20th century.

My grandmother had a difficult birth with my mother in 1925 and, in the past, it's quite possible that they both would have died. I'd possibly have died of measles at three ... came close, but a nurse friend of my mother's helped save me. They were worried I'd be either blind or deaf (extremely nearsighted doesn't count, does it?).

I think about how both my mother and I would probably have died at my birth and don't romanticize much before the 20th century.

Epic, same. I have to take long breaks from working on genealogy; the context for a lot of family history is invaluable, but sweet shambling Cthulhu I am grateful to live in the future.

I would read a book's worth of conversations between Professora Vorthys, Lady Alys and Cordelia.

As a fan of wandering older cemeteries it is disheartening to see how many stones are young women and infants. Yeah, give me modern day science. My mother was born in 1921 at a 12 pound birth weight (at home, no drugs) with a diabetic mother. Her mom died at 28.

My maternal grandmother died in childbirth (conjoined stillborn twins - which would have been #9 and #10).

My paternal great-grandmother got kicked in the head by a mule and lived in a sanitarium for the rest of her life because they didn't know how to rehab a traumatic head injury.

My entire family line going back to the first Johan Smay in 1727 begins with him fathering 9 children with his first wife, who died in childbirth, then 8 more with his second wife.

My Aunt Geneva almost died during the Depression because she had tonsillitis and a quack doctor ripped them out with a pair of pliers.

My mother couldn't believe I'd really had my appendix removed, since I was only in the hospital ~36 hours; when she'd had hers removed in 1937 or so, she was in the hospital for two weeks.