January 2011: What Are You Reading?

[Brenna]

[quote=""Misfit""]And that is always the downside of google

Careful if you are ever looking for the Smart Bitches Trashy Books blog. Do not, I repeat do not, just google Smart Bitches. Especially at work [/quote]

The thought wouldn't have occured to me! I just laughed out loud pretty loudly though and I think some people are work are now worried about my mental stability Oh well. Thanks for the laughs though!

[SonjaMarie]

I thought it meant "Darling Husband" lol.

SM

[rockygirl]

You're all doing better than me. I thought it meant designated hitter!

[Kasthu]

Reading some nonfiction: A Woman's Place, by Ruth Adam.

[emr]

[quote=""SonjaMarie""]I thought it meant "Darling Husband" lol.

SM[/quote]

In some context I've seen it used as Damn Husband

[Jack]

Just got Confessions of Catherine de Medici by Christopher Gortner. Starting it this weekend. Also reading The Moses Expedition by Juan Gomez-Jurado.

[Misfit]

The Fires of July by Sharon Salvato. American Revolution, set in South Carolina. I've already learned something new, about the War of Regulation. The cover screams romance, but I'll with hold judgment for a bit yet.

[Berengaria]

I am reading The Hammer of the Scots by Jean Plaidy. I'm finding it an enjoyable read and I'm adding to my very sparse knowledge of this time period. A question, though. Edward I expelled the Jews, and Italian bankers who had come to England, filled the financial positions. Now the Jews, being non-Christians, could use usary in their transactions, but how did the Italians, being Christian, make a profit from their loans?

[MLE (Emily Cotton)]

The Italians had different semantics. Instead of calling it usury, they had 'risk-sharing companies' with a special name which I used to know but have forgotten (anybody out there know?) where one person would do the traveling and another party or parties would bankroll them. Some early efforts at pooling capital, like Genoa, actually had citizens buying shares of stock in a sea venture, originating the phrase "when your ship comes in."

They adapted their semantics to English, and suddenly everything is okay, as far as the law is concerned.

I would also think that Christians could have gotten around the usury prohibition by dismissing it as Old Testament, and pointing to the Parable of the Talents, where the master (loan originator) suggests that if the money given for safekeeping was not invested in some business, it could at least have been placed with the money-lenders so that it would collect interest.

[Berengaria]

[quote=""MLE""]The Italians had different semantics. Instead of calling it usury, they had 'risk-sharing companies' with a special name which I used to know but have forgotten (anybody out there know?) where one person would do the traveling and another party or parties would bankroll them. Some early efforts at pooling capital, like Genoa, actually had citizens buying shares of stock in a sea venture, originating the phrase "when your ship comes in."[/quote]

Thanks so much for giving me this info!