Review: Medieval Literature Finds in the 21st Century

The Middle Ages took place all around the world, not just limited to Europe as often presented, from approximately the 5th to the 15th centuries CE. Naturally, a lot of books have been written over the years about this very vast and extensive time in history. I decided to explore two bookstores and two libraries to see what they carry on their shelves and if there is any common ground among the books shelved, to find if there was a common year the works that were published, to see the availability of these books, what reviewers say of the books, and how accessible each were to find, along with anything else worth noting. Think of this as a science experiment, but purely about written and published words. I was planning to check out one independent bookstore located in Nashua, New Hampshire (and also conveniently the place of my second job), a local to me Barnes and Noble (located in the next town over of Leominster, Massachusetts), my college library (Fitchburg State University), and the city local library (Fitchburg Public Library). I will start with general statistics about each book I find and then go into my assessment of my findings, bearing in mind that I have not read these books cover to cover so any review I give is purely on flipping through the pages and skimming.

Due to being placed in quarantine because of the infamous COVID-19, I was unable to go to my second job and the school library, but I at least remember one of the books I found at work, but better yet I can look up what books are available at my store to buy (there are three Toadstool Bookshops in Nashua, all with different inventories, but if you go on the Toadstool website in general you can search for titles and see what is available at each location). For convenience I will be referring to this store as if I do not work there and acting like I’m a regular patron. Another adaptation I made was to learn more about the availability of these kinds of books by searching the online database of my school. At a later point, I can update what I have found at those two locations, but for now I will provide any information I can from the comforts of my favorite chair in my apartment. I was able to go to the Fitchburg Public Library and Barnes and Noble before quarantine so any notes/pictures I have are based on those visits. 

What is worth noting is that this is an independent bookstore and that typically means is most books are on the shelves for a set limited time before they are pulled and sent back to the publisher, based on partly on sales. For example a book may be held longer or an older book may be found on the shelves, but it partly depends on subject, frequency of the book, basically a number of factors really, some of which I do not know. They do not carry used books – outside of New England titles and a small selection of classics. From a customer’s stand point, Toadstool Bookshop also offers that books can be ordered through distributers for customers if they are not available on their shelves so it’s possible to buy other books while in this store.

What separates The Toadstool Bookshop from other independent bookstores is that there are other branches (in Keene and Peterborough, New Hampshire respectively). Therefore some of these books (and ones I have not mentioned) are available in the other stores, but I will only be talking about the ones in Nashua. Another note is that because New Hampshire has no sales tax, the price I list is the price one would pay for it in said store. When I get to my findings from Barnes and Noble, there will be a tax added onto each price I list. I have also chosen to add some books that may not be historically accurate, but they are medieval related (or they claim to be) and were found during my search of “Medieval” in the provided area of the bookstore’s website. Since I have not seen most of these in person, I will not be adding my own “Reviews” in this section. All pictures of the books are courtesy of the bookstore’s website.

Day of most recent in person visit: 3/13/2020
Day of online catalogue check: 3/20/2020

Location #2 Barnes and Noble in Leominster, Massachusetts

Barnes and Noble differs from The Toadstool Bookshop in that it is a chain bookstore. I don’t know how they operate or manage what is on the shelves, but I would imagine it is fairly similar, but they of course have more room to shelve books and are considered a cooperation. Barnes and Noble also offers the ability to order books that they do not carry on their shelves to then be delivered to the customer, so this list is not about everything they offer a customer, but it is a list of what I found while I was there. I found all these books by walking to the History section myself and then scanned the shelves accordingly. Any pictures/information I tell about the books are from my own observations of the book itself and what I may find while scrolling through it, front to cover. I did not include children’s books/books outside of the History section because at the time I was visiting I did not think to make that a factor. I can add more to this list so it’s more comprehensive later on down the road.

Day of visit: 3/7/2020

Location #3 – The Fitchburg Public Library in Fitchburg, Massachusetts

This library is open to everyone in the community and beyond. One of the advantages of libraries is that ,with a card, a patron can take out books from their local option and surrounding towns, as long as they all use the same processing system (in this case, it is the C/W MARS libraries). Just looking at the books doesn’t require a card or any form of payment (but out of curiosity I’ll still mention the would-be price, if found) and anyone can go to the now digitalized card catalogue and look up books by author, subject, keyword, and a range of other possibilities. I started my search by just typing “Medieval” into the search bar, but I was starting to notice much of the books were in the same location, the 940s, so I ended up heading over there. 

Now this is not every single book the FPL has on the medieval era, but it does summarize a nice selection of what’s available. One of the things I discovered that is an advantage to libraries (besides having free access to an endless supply of books) is that you can find more specialized sub-topics about one main topic. A lot of the books I found in bookstores were more generalized medieval books, but here I will show some more detailed books about the Middle Ages. I did not include any specific children’s Books here either (i.e I did not go to the Children’s section of the library to look for titles), although some of these are considered for a younger audience, as seen above with Barnes and Noble because it was only farther along in working on this did I decide that would be an important factor to look into.  

Day of visit: 3/9/2020

Location #4 – Amelia V. Gallucci-Cirio Library at Fitchburg State University in Fitchburg, Massachusetts

I was unable to visit my school’s library at the time of writing this due to COVID-19. I was, however, able to look up books through the database on the school library’s website ,and again, while I have not included all of them, I picked out five (plus one surprise) that particularly grabbed my attention. To note though, in a regular scenario the library has an Interlibrary Loan system that allows people to take out books from other libraries. There are also online books available (although I’m only talking about ones found on the shelves) to read as well. These were found by searching “Medieval” in the Search bar of the website. Unfortunatly at this point I can’t provide as much information on these books, as there is limited information on the library website, so there is not much I can say outside of page numbers and a citation. All pictures of the books are courtesy of the library website.

Clearly, there are a wide amount of medieval books available, which I found interesting given how little time seemed to be dedicated to this time period in elementary school history classes. I enjoyed my “experiment” as I referred to this in the beginning and am still shocked that only one book was found at more than one location. A lot of the books I found were from 2014-2019, so it’s nice to see that in recent years people are still writing about this period of history. Most of the books were European-centered, which did not surprise me, so it was nice whenever I found ones that were not strictly limited to this geographical location. I was amused whenever I found books, such as the National Geographic Kids fill-in book or the Lego Medieval Castle book, that were not written by medieval or even any topic historian. Clearly some sources were used to help support their points and ideas, so it would be interesting to look at their own citation pages and see if any of these other books are sourced. Maybe that will be a further exploration of mine in the future post-COVID-19!