...lookout for that "bob-war", folks.

Wow, another dozen posts.  I'm going to have to start a round-up post of round-up posts at this rate.

There are so many translations of THE ILIAD. Ambitious, reverent, respectable translations compiled by similarly-natured men and women.  Too bad. Because this translation has what most of those scholarly tomes lack: verve, pizazz, clarity, and bluntness.  To be fair, those traditional translations are by adults for adults.  The version I'm talking about here is for children. 

Nick McCarty's retelling of THE ILIAD is a bare bones story version.  Reading this version is like watching a soccer game -- non-stop action, reaction, blow-by-blow...he's calling the game!  Not a wasted word nor gratuitous comment anywhere.  And here's a word I rarely ever use -- GRIPPING!  The way he tells the story is gripping.  McCarty has distilled the story down to all the action bits.  THE ILIAD is about an interesting war to begin with, but that quality of bloodthirstiness is tamed and faded by the time the traditional scholars get through with it.  This version designed for children has all the imagery, action, power and range of emotion you might find in an oral telling in the original Greek.  Every word counts.  Every sentence paints a picture.  Every paragraph drives the action forward.  Nothing is wasted nor superfluous. 

"So they came -- swan-prowed, open boats crashing through the deep, green sea and over the sparkling dawn waves...They rode, like carrion birds swooping the swelling waters together, close by the black cliffs and foaming spray."

F**k, yeah!  Bring it on! 

I absolutely love how the story namedrops like crazy.  It's crazy with labels, too. 

• Agamemnon, King of Men, son of Atreus, High King
• Nestor the Wise
• Idomeneus the Cretan, the spearman
• Zeus, Lord of Lightning
• Poseidon, the Earthshaker
• Apollo, the Archer God
• Thetis, Goddess of The Silver Feet

It's not that this is new stuff, it's that this version has done a superior job of putting all the action at the forefront. It's all the best bits.  I'm surprised this is being marketed as a children's book.  I would put this up against anything Loeb or Penguin has to offer.  It's easy to follow the story.  The language is vivid to a high degree.  The qualities that make ILIAD a magnificent poem are here as well.  In several places during the story, the sentence structure or imagery closely echoes the original poem, such as the section of the thousand ships. An amazing feat of scholarship.  McCarty does that wherever he can.  He pulls the feel of the original poetic tale in, instead of dumbing it down as most children's versions of classic stories tend to do.

Another writer who has brought Greek mythology to children is Mary Pope Osborne.  She has done a respectable collection of Greek myths retold for children and I use them.  Very reader-friendly.  But this ILIAD far outshines her Odyssey stories.  It's the language.  The language is what makes all the difference.  Again, the vividness, the straighforward, no wasted words, picture-painting prose.  I'm excited about this book. Reading it gives me such a rush. It grips you from the beginning and hooks you from chapter to chapter.  It's a stimulating read that's great for reluctant readers.  You can read it aloud or let your students read it.  Your class can make skits from it.  This is a book that should be used in the classroom.

CH. VII:

Hector hurtled into the field in full battle armor.  His chariot had bronze rails and ivory fittings on the reins.  The reins were made of oxhide, strong enough to curb the wildest horses.  With his long spear in his left hand, Hector surged through the men fighting hand to hand, jsut as they were about to retreat.

"Stay!" he called.  "You won't fight for nothing.  Be real men, not cowards.  Don't give another step."

Oh yeah, it's ON!  One of the things that's so fun about this version is you can play with sports idioms.  I could go on about all the lessons that are possible with a story like this, but that's not exactly my point.  It's a fun book to read and it's a great story to teach. Go for it.

A caveat: the edition I got from www.scholastic.com has a different cover from the one shown here.

Other books in the Kingfisher Series:

Children's Greek mythology by Mary Pope Osborne:

Related posts:

Pen & Paper in Perfect Accord

IF CATS COULD READ...

I was introduced to this book back in 2003 by my then principal.  He used it as a guidebook to make sure students were getting their educational needs met.  I agree with a lot of the principals in it because they are sound devices for intellectual development.  It's not anti-modern, not anti-technology.  It's a theoretical foundation to guide parents.  I am going to defend this book.

It's a hefty hunk of idealism, not without its critics.  The author, William J. Bennet, is a former Secretary of Education. He was in the news some years back on account of his gambling addiction and other peccadilloes.  So he gambles. Does that mean he doesn't know anything about how to educate children? Michael Jackson is a child molester.  His concerts sell out even though he has not been musically viable for over a decade now.  You can be a snob and turn your nose up at this guy and his book, but that would be stupid and ignorant.  A reviewer on www.amazon.com called Bennet, et. als. views "elitist".  So it's elitist. So what?  It glorifies Western Civilization. er...that's where we live, isn't it?  It's not anti-universal.  It's pro-America and the literary culture that has brought us to where we are, for better or worse. 

One of the clear messages of this book is that parents should ask questions, be interested and active in their child's education: learn to discern good from mediocre teachers, make them read, and read with them.  It provides helpful lists -- not dogma -- ADVICE.  You're free to take it or not. You don't even have to read the whole book from cover to cover.  Take from it what you need.  It's a reference book, not a novel.  Parents should educate themselves in the education of their children.  As a parent, just like a classroom teacher, you can't teach what you don't know.  If you are afraid of mythology or philosophy, you might pass that fear on to your kids and that's just wrong.  TEC is not just about making sure your child is educated enough to hold their own intellectually, it's about active parenting. 

TEC provided me my professional mantra for teaching writing: Scribendo disces scribere: By writing, you learn to write. It underscores every lesson that I teach.  It has helped me be more conscientious about how and what I teach.  There is a problem with this philosophy, though.  It puts me completely and utterly at odds with the testing frenzy mentality that is strangling public school education.  TEC used to be what public school was like back before the data junkies took over everything.

When I finished reading the chapters on what 6th, 7th, and 8th graders should know, I felt a lot better about my ideas for teaching.  I'm an old-fashioned idealist where education is concerned, even though I love, love, love using technology.  This book validated many of my ideas.  Other books will come and go, glorifying, deifying, demonizing, and prophesy-ing, but this book is for educating human children. Not overstimulated, socially crippled, techno-fixated, test-taking trendoids.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE EDUCATED CHILD:

• "You are your child's most important teacher."
• "Early Moral Training"
• "Social Skills"
• "Ten Signs of A Good School"
• "How important is penmanship?"
• "What is the place of Western Literature in the classroom?"
• Questions to ask the teacher
• Teaching core subjects at home
• "Is memorization outdated?"

Children who are good readers in school tend to come from homes that are print-rich environments.  There's newspapers, magazines, kiddie books, whatever.  They are within reach and they get discussed.  Good readers tend to come from parents who are readers.  When children see parents reading, talking about reading, shopping for books and magazines, it shows the child that that is an acceptable way to live.  They see it as normal and accept it mostly unquestioningly.  They don't notice discrepancies until they come in contact with non-readers.  The reason for non-readers is the same, but in reverse.  Parents don't read or they read garbage.  They don't care about it, don't talk about it, or worse -- verbally nullify it. They might even ridicule the child if he/she shows an affinity towards reading.  (Those parents should be horsewhipped, btw.)

I was lucky. In my house, my parents had bookshelves in their closet. It was full of paperbacks, my dad's college books, a set of Collier's encyclopedias (remember those?) and mom's high school yearbooks.  Every room in the house had books in it -- bathroom and kitchen included.  And since our town was very boring and summers were long, guess what we did all day.  We sat looking at page after page of storybooks, dictionaries, the encyclopedias, comics, Readers' Digest, my mom's Harlequin romances and dad's car and gun magazines -- anything to pass the time.  When my siblings and I got to school, we could talk about anything you threw at us.  We were always in the highest reading level of our grade.  We lived "The Educated Child". My parents were on a first name basis with most of my teachers all during my school years.  They knew each other from high school.  I wasn't thrilled about it as a kid, but it made me check my behavior more often than not.

That's what this book is about.  Don't raise ignorant children.  You ruin the environment when you do.  The ignorant, uneducated, and anti-intellectual damage society as a whole by their barbarism.  Don't let "elitism" keep you from doing what's right.  Don't let the author's human failings keep you from seeing the truth of his words.  Harold Bloom writes in Where Shall Wisdom Be Found: "Societal pressures and journalistic fashions may obscure these standards for a time, but ...The mind always returns to its needs for beauty, truth, and insight."

Harold Bloom's lunch meat-thin book (that I picked up for a song at Half-Price Books) is like an eyedropper of nitroglycerine. This amalgamation of observations and elucidations booms and reverberates with intellectual stimulation. It’s better than the average graduate dissertation at one-tenth the size.  I don’t know that reading poetry is an “art”.  Understanding poetry may be. This book certainly makes a case for it being art. Bloom’s writing style is an art form in itself. He’s read so much and it shows. I sense that in his more convoluted sentences, the ones with dashes and semi-colons, clauses within clauses and all manner of noun phrases, he’s still holding back information. His dry prose bleeds intent.

AoRP succeeds in explaining the cavalcade of “tropes” and image architecture that is poetic language. Teaching English itself is an extraordinary experience because the language is so flexible, so multi-purpose…so maneuverable! Teaching English poetry is like showing students how to build a Rube Goldberg -- to create an elaborate simplicity.  It’s interesting that Bloom describes language as “concealed figuration”. I hear an echo of Orwell’s “Why I Write” when he explains how writing conceals intent and distorts the truth. In the case of poetry, language “exploits” using figures of speech. Take "exploit" how you will.

I feel sorry for people who live and think like cement wheels. Poetry is nothing to them. Not worth a second glance. A doorknob is more useful than an ode. People whose minds are like popcorn or flowers can be reached by poetry. This book, for all its good intentions, will probably not reach cement wheel people. Bloom’s sentences are too luxurious, his vocabulary too celestial. And….AND he does my absolute favorite Bloom-thing: he makes adjectives out of people’s names. Heehee! I love it! Blakeian, Yeatsian. Epic! Mozartean, Popean! Stop! You’re killing me!

One of the things I like best about the writing in this book is that in several instances, Bloom talks about poetry like it’s music. It’s an auditory treat. He uses the language of music to opine on Blake, Pope, and Milton. It's a real pleasure to read. Another reader-friendly trait is that it all sounds like a lecture – but a good lecture, with lots of examples. Too many examples, probably. It’s a really, really thin book. If it was any thinner, it would have only one side. It’s thinner than Funny Jokes to Make You Popular by Franz Kafka. Whole pages are given to long poems and index of poems.

If you are afraid of poetry, this is a decent book. It’s thin. It’s not intimidating – until you open it and start reading. Then watch out. You'll be blinded by the light (hey, that would make a great song title...).  If you are okay with poetry, beware of phrases like “a benign haunting in poetic tradition.” “Repressed reference is a defense against overinfluence.” Qoi? Then it’s so cute how he comes back down to earth: “I can chant Poe by the yard, from memory…”

“Arnoldian”! Woo-Hoo! THAT'S what I'm talkin' about!

The word “inevitability” shows up a lot. Since he paints poetry in musical terms, I take that to mean a “resolve” as in a musical resolve -- when a melody comes back to the note where it started. Every image or figure that comes next should strike the reader as natural, inevitable. Not jar as jazz might. Although, if you jar and make it work, that is good poetry too. Maneuverability.

From reading all the shameless name-dropping throughout the book, I get the impression that Bloom read Critical Theory Since Plato, or more likely, has read everyone in it. It feels good to think of Longinus and Wimsatt, and Pope being quoted by Bloom. I feel connected to good ideas. It gives me perspective and that great feeling you get from riding the same wavelength with another mind, a mind I greatly admire.

April is National Poetry Month.

Related posts:

• ROOTING OUT BLOOM'S WRITING ROOTS
• ROOTING OUT BLOOM 2: The Western Canon
• ROOTING OUT BLOOM 3: Where Shall Wisdom be Found?
• CHAUCER'S FAMOUS ROAD TRIP  
• CRITICAL THEORY SINCE PLATO

For a change, I'm just going to blog about one book, instead of my usual mass blogathon o'books.  This one book is, on its own, worthy of a blogathon.  It's critical theory since freakin' PLATO! Unfortunately, it's too big and heavy to carry around in my purse. I've been out of college a long time, but this was the one book I made sure survived all my life milestones.  I bought it for a special topics class "Literary Theory and Criticism" taught by a wonderful professor named Nancy Grayson. I wasn't too conscientious about getting my work done, but I loved reading the book and discussing it.

The TOC is like a timeline.  Check it:

Classics represented:

1. Plato (duh!)  (The Philosopher's Song, verse 2)
2. Aristotle (The Philosopher's Song, verse 2)
3. Horace
4. Longinus
5. Flavius Philostratus
6. Plotinus

Early Christian and Medieval:

1. Boethius
2. St. Thomas Aquinas

Renaissance:

1. Dante Alighieri
2. Giovanni Boccaccio
3. Julius Caesar Scaliger
4. Lodovico Castelvetro
5. Sir Phillip Sidney
6. Jacopo Mazzoni

1600s

1. Sir Francis Bacon
2. Henry Reynolds
3. Thomas Hobbes
4. Pierre Corneille

1700s

John Dryden; Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux; John Dennis; Alexander Pope (lovingly highlighted with pink highlighter); Joseph Addison; Giambattista Vico; Edmund Burke; David Hume (The Philosopher's Song, verse 1); Samuel Johnson; Edward Young; Gotthold Ephraim Lessing; Sir Joshua Reynolds; Immanuel Kant (The Philosopher's Song, verse 1);

1800s

William Blake; Friedrich von Schiller; William Wordsworth; Friedrich Wilhelm von Schelling; Samuel Taylor Coleridge; John Keats; Arthur Schopenhauer  (The Philosopher's Song, verse 1); Thomas Love Peacock;Percy Bysshe Shelley; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (The Philosopher's Song, verse 1); Thomas Carlyle; John Stuart Mill  (The Philosopher's Song, verse 2) ; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve; Edgar Allan Poe (really? seriously?); Matthew Arnold; Hippolyte Taine; John Ruskin; Charles Baudelaire; Karl Marx; Friedrich Nietzsche; Walter Pater; Emile Zola; Henry James; Anatole France; Oscar Wilde; Stephane Mallarme.

Turn of the century and 1900s

George Santayana; Leo Tolstoy; William Butler Yeats; Benedetto Croce; A. C. Bradley; Sigmund Freud; Edward Bullough; T. E. Hulme; T. S. Eliot; Irving Babbitt; Carl Jung; Leon Trotsky; Boris Eichenbaum; I. A. Richards; Samuel Alexander; John Crowe Ransom; R. P. Blackmur; Edmund Wilson; Paul Valery; Allen Tate; Kenneth Burke; Lionel Trilling; Wallace Stevens; Robert Penn Warren; Ernst Cassirer; W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley; Cleanth Brooks; Jan Mukarofsky; Jean-Paul Sartre; Eliseo Vivas, Ronald S. Crane; Philip Wheelwright; Roman Jakobson; Northrop Frye; Gaston Bachelard; Walter J. Ong, S.J.; E. H. Gombrich; E. D. Hirsch, Jr.; Roland Barthes; Sigurd Burckhardt; Georges Poulet; Murray Krieger.

Whew!

Even though the classical Greek and Roman are not well represented individually, there are numerous references to other writers of that period, as well as the Bible. Lessing's Laocoon (the second "o" should have an umlaut over it), for example, is an analysis of art that mines Chapman's Homer quite deeply to illustrate his ideas.  Luckily, Greek bits are translated in the annotations at the bottom of the page.  Unfortunately, the parenthetical expressions are not.  Hmmm...

Contributions from writers of the 1800s and 1900s outweigh the rest by far, but it evens out because most of them mention critics of previous centuries.  So you get more than you pay for.

This is not a book to be read from cover to cover.  You need time to digest and "recollect in tranquility".  Not every contributor is a philosopher, as such.  Most writing genres are represented.  Pope, Yeats, Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge, Eliot -- Poetry.  Frye, Barthes, Trilling, Richards, Krieger -- professional critics.  Von Schiller, Schopenhauer, Lessing, Goethe -- German literary royalty.  Painter Joshua Reynolds.  Essayist Emerson.  Psychologists Jung and Freud.  Political rhetoricists Marx, Trotsky, and Mill.  Journalist Joseph Addison.  Wits, novelists, social critics, even just plain ol' storytellers.  Finally, full-on, f***-off, hardcore philosophers -- Nietztsche, Sartre, and Kant.  It's a banquet!

And the jargon! OMG! Depending on how you feel about terms like aestheticism, phenomenological, structuralist, post-structuralist, deconstructionalist, contextualist, the overused and under-understood "existential", psychoanalytical, and trancendental, you'll end up with either a hard-on or an aneurysm.  One of the best things about the writers in this voluminous volume of ideas is that most of them are fluent in more than one language, and they use it.  They reference writings in German, Greek, Latin, Italian, and French.  Again -- a bargain!

I love Sir Kingsley Amis's gripe that being rich sucks because you're forced to hang around rich people.  The same goes with writing.  Being a writer sometimes sucks because you're forced to read a lot of writing, a lot of which you might not agree with.  Don't kid yourself.  If you put even five of these guys together in a room, it would be seafood forks at 10 paces.  Unless they are all too drunk.  (The Philosopher's Song).  It was a refreshing relief to see Thomas Carlyle use the expression "mumbo-jumbo" in his chapter "Symbols" from Sartor Resartus.  Sometimes they can surprise you and be down to earth.  You'd never see Alex Pope using an expression like that. 

It hasn't all been nose-in-the-air, ivory-towered intellectualism reading this book over the years.  I can't think of Jean-Paul Sartre without mentally quoting the Monty Python skit about him, his "wife" Betty-Muriel, and Beulah Premise.  I get an endorphin high every time I watch that sketch.  Then there's the epic classic Philosopher's Football (Soccer) Game where Confucius is the referee, and it's the Greeks vs. the Germans.   I think it was Euclid's idea to finally kick the ball.  Then the iconoclastic "World Forum" with Marx, Mao Zedong and Che Guevara answering questions about soccer.  It's because of "back-door" perspectives like that that I can understand what I'm reading in a book like this.

Take a look at your book shelf.  This one tome can replace a lot of what you might already have.  It's a book to pass down the generations.  As if this book didn't have enough information, there's a selected bibliography that spans genres.  There's also a painstaking index.  Aristotle alone is referenced from page 1 through page 1248.  That's some street cred!  The idea of beauty is discussed by 49 authors.  Even something as ordinary as pleasure is discussed by at least 29 authors.  There are so many reasons this book is a treasure.  Get one. Now. No, for reals. It's all good.  (I'm not going to link the names because you can pretty much Google any of the names and get hundreds of hits.)

Buy Critical Theory Since Plato -- My Amazon.com review of this book

Buy Critical Theory Since 1965

Recommendations

Loeb Classical Library

I Tatti Renaissance Library

Monty Python's Flying Circus (The 64-Ton Megaset at www.amazon.com )

Related Posts

THE PHILOSOPHER'S SONG, VERSE 1

THE PHILOSOPHER'S SONG, VERSE 2

ROOTING OUT BLOOM 3: Where Shall Wisdom be Found?

ROOTING OUT BLOOM 2: The Western Canon

ROOTING OUT BLOOM'S WRITING ROOTS

Teaching Core Writing Skills

Good Professional Books for English Teachers

WHY I WRITE -- BONDING WITH ORWELL

"Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!"

                                                                  Rosalind Russell as Mame Dennis

Such is the case when you walk into the hodge-podge pot pourri of books known as HALF-PRICE BOOKS.  HPB is an all-you-can-eat of ideas.  That's why I always walk out of there with a motley assortment of brain- ticklers.  Variety is the order of the day.  You're at once amazed at how much drek is published as well as how many jewels remain unmined.  I go in looking for polished gems, but most often come out with rough, semi-precious stones.  Turquoise instead of diamonds.   

The Greek phrase book I attacked right away.  Compact, sturdy and loaded with color illustrations.  Nice.

The Pater book is an edition from THE MODERN LIBRARY.  Originally published in 1873, it's a collection of essays and stories about a tiny coterie of artists spanning the French, Italian, and possibly Dutch Renaissance.  My ML edition was published in 1940.  It has the soft sepia tones of aged paper and the scent of your grandparents' closet.  That scent. That's what absolutely sends me.  Ever since I was a kid, I associate that scent of musty closet with hidden treasure.

The Writing Life is also a collection.  National Book Award authors such as Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx, John Updike, and Norman Rush write about writing and a writing life.  Just flipping through it, whole paragraphs of sane, erudite, blunt prose have hooked me.  This is going to be my next portable feast.  It even has a great, useful blurb.  The blurb on the back groups the authors in three and offers a brief description of their contributions. Excellent! Above that it says "America's most honored authors, National Book Award winners and finalists, reveal what it means to be a writer."  Okay. Nice. I can use that information.  William Zinsser, in ON WRITING WELL,  bravely addresses many of the themes covered by the dozen and a half writers in TWL all by himself.  Annie Dillard, in her own WRITING LIFE, beautifully and simply pulls us into the isolation that is so necessary for a writer. 

The 100 Operas book is NOT written by the composer of "Fingal's Cave".  It's another Felix M.  One "S", not two.  This most portable of portables is the size of a large pack of cigarettes.  The slip cover is long gone; all that's left is the red hard cover with gold lettering.  It was copyrighted in 1913, then published by Grosset and Dunlap in 1940.  In the foreward, the publishers explain how the book was compiled to bring the wonder of opera to the masses.  Hey, it worked for me.  I went to see a Met production of "La Sonnambula" last week, and if I had not read the story of the sleepwalking lady, I would have come away with less -- not unenthusiastic -- but less appreciation of the drama.  In fact, I was a bit thrown by the fact that there's not much to the story.  It's short, not even particularly interesting, and the characters are a bit thick.  But when you see it in live HD with glorious voices and gorgeous costumes...wow!  They make you care!

I updated my SHELFARI site today.

RELATED POSTS:

ODD BITS ON A TRIP TO BARNES & NOBLE

HEAPIN' HELPIN' OF OLDIES BUT GOODIES

OLDIES BUT GOODIES, PARTE THE SECONDE

OLDIES BUT GOODIES 3: HORS D'OEUVRES OF FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS, APPETIZERS OF A. CONAN DOYLE

I totally adore Borders at Huebner Oaks!  Great service: I didn't have my discount card so they looked it up by my phone number.  Sweet!  And...AND! They had several Loeb Classics Library editions. Say what?! Oh yeah, bay-bee! I bought 4 -- because I felt guilty about buying 6.  They were located in the miniscule Philosophy section. South Texas.  Go figure.  I put F&D aside for the 18th time to start reading Thucydides.  (T-Diddy!)  It's the history of a war, but the beginning explains the settlement of Greece  before it was even called Greece.  I love that angle of history.  It reminded me of this other cool book I have about the barbarians vs. the Romans in Europe and Northern Africa.  And that stuff I like because it reminds me of Conan comics.  For more detailed information about this book series, visit my blog post ONLY ANTICIPATION REMAINED THERE IN ITS UNBREAKABLE HOME

Then there's this book, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE -- AND ZOMBIES.  I do not kid.  It's exactly what it sounds like! I'm pissing myself laughing already -- just from the premise.  Haven't even started reading the book yet.  You HAVE to see the cover: George Romero undoes a Regency Lady.  Oddly, my dad found a paperback of P&P that the library was getting rid of so he got it for me.  He told me about it when he saw the Zombies version.  The fickle finger of fate gave me a bit of a tickle.  There's just something about seeing the two versions side by side.

The wonderfully portable volume by Roman speech-meister Cicero has useful marginalia (not as icky as it sounds).  He lived in an exciting, turbulent time that makes for great History Channel documentaries.  The book is a collection of speeches and letters to and from him.  What makes this book stand out among the crowds on my shelves is that is has an interesting introduction.  Cicero lead a dramatic life that makes even dry, scholarly prose vibrate with vivacity.

For some reason, I was in the mood to re-read Nauti Dreams and Nauti Nights.  I like Dreams better.  Nights is too much like a 1970s romance where the guy is horrible to the woman and she falls in love with him while he's being horrible. WTF! In that sense, I am modern. A woman who falls in love with a man who treats her like crap is so wrong in so many ways. It reminds me of the Harlequins I used to read back in the day.  The man treated the woman badly because he hated himself for being weak and loving her. WTF, like, to the 10th power!  But I bought it.  And I accepted.  Because I didn't know any better.  Nowadays, not so willing to be a good little enabler and accept.

In the romance vein, Maverick is the new Elite Ops book from Lora Leigh.  The first book was about Nathan Malone and his new nom de guerre.  This one is about "Michah Sloane", former Mossad agent, and "Risa Clay", the daughter of "Jansen Clay" from "Hidden Agendas" (Keil and Emily's story).  It's pretty good, but like Wild Card, it shows signs of getting a tad stale.  I think I'm growing impatient with certain strains of character -- emotionally tortured ones, it seems like.  I guess I just no longer care to read pages and pages of unrelieved emotional turmoil.  I find such emotionally unbalanced stories irritating.  All the angst must be balanced out with moments of levity or simple sanity. Still love Leigh, though.

F&D is like an old Harold Robbins novel from the 1960s. Except without the glamour.  Without the money, sex and drugs.  Without attractive people.  Ha!  I know it won a Nobel Prize for literature, but that doesn't mean it's easy to read. Right now, I'm about 6 chapters in and it still sounds like a freakin' soap opera about men.  I'm sure it will get better as it goes along.  For the love of God, it has to.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

Other posts that mention Loeb Classics:

ONLY ANTICIPATION REMAINED THERE IN ITS UNBREAKABLE HOME

ODD BITS ON A TRIP TO BARNES & NOBLE

Other posts that mention Lora Leigh novels:

AN ELITE OPS TITILLATING TIDBIT COMPLIMENTS OF LORA LEIGH

2009 PRE-ORDERS: FANNING THE FIRE OF DESIRE

NEW SERIES BY LORA LEIGH -- ELITE OPS (UNDER DEEP COVERS)

Wow! Ancient people are just like us!  They make mistakes; they wonder why the younger generation is so different from theirs.  They fight.  They make crude jokes.  Mothers and fathers complain about their kids.  Wives and husbands -- Oh my God!  Traveling through snippet after snippet, one tenet keeps making its presence felt:

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

A couple of the funnier (as in funny-ha-ha) bits are Lucian's dialogue between Pan and Hermes, entitled "Don't call me Daddy", and a raunchy scene from Aristophanes's Lysistrata. Pan and Hermes sound like Lex and Lionel Luthor having one of their heartless-to-heartless talks about their love lives and "why don't you love me, daddy?"  The original "desperate housewives" are Lysistrata and her married friends deciding to cut their husbands off from sex unless they end the war with Sparta.  And that's the polite explanation.  They are incredibly crude -- like trailer-park-trash crude.  Pan, as well.  I was shocked.  Was the original Greek really that earthy? (again -- polite euphemism)

The high road of ancient Greek writing is Hesiod's "Works and Days" and Pindar's "Olympian Odes". There's the Greek literature you learn in college.  High-minded, poetic, grand.  Pieces of key moments in Greek history are also included and make for exciting reading: the Peloponnesian War, the bit from Phaedo where Socrates is talking to his friends on the day of his execution, and, in a supremely ironic word-portrait -- the nobility of Brutus.  Yeah, THAT Brutus!

The Greek writings included in this vade mecum lean towards poetry, plays, and mythology.  Half of the book, however, is dedicated to pieces from the Latin/Roman writers such as Seneca, the 2 Plinys, and Petronius.  When you reach the Latin writing portion of the book, the subject matter takes a distinctive turn.  More story-telling, letter-writing, natural science, and one of my favorites -- a wonderful explanation of the zodiac by Manilius.  Ovid's Dido's letter to Aneas is also a favorite.  Considering when it was written, it has a modern feel to it.

What the Greek and Latin writings have in common is a penchant for recording history.  Cesear's The Gallic War, Josephus's the Jewish War, Herodotus's The Persian Wars, and  Livy's History of Rome.  On the lighter side, the Greeks have Aristophanes with his desperate Athenian housewives.  The Latin contingent has Petronius with his forays into the seedy party life of Rome.  They both also tell tall tales of temperamental gods and goddesses.  What's not to love!

This book should be a lot bigger than it is.  Really, it's ridiculous to take a tweezer's worth of these writings and consider that satisfying.  Either use longer sections of the selections or put more selections. It's like a dish of fussy little canapes where you have to eat about 47 of them to equal one good bite. But if you need a vade mecum, this is a really good one. 

The Harvard University Press has a web site where you can see all the books they offer in the Loeb Classical Series.  They even have a series for Renaissance classics called I Tatti Renaissance Classics.  Greeks are green covers; Latin writers are red covers; I Tatti is in azure blue and written in Latin and Italian, depending on the author. VIVA AZZURI !!  I get mine through www.amazon.com because my local seller probably doesn't even know these exist.  They're not cheap, but you can't call yourself educated unless you have experienced these writings.  There's a lot of them, so pick a topic you like, such as mythology or poetry or military history and read those.  Enjoy the visual treat of the original language and the translation on facing pages!

OTHER POST WHERE I MENTION THIS SERIES:

ODD BITS ON A TRIP TO BARNES & NOBLE

MY COLLECTION SO FAR: (I'm not broke enough yet.)

I Tatti Renaissance Classics

• Humanist Comedies
• Short Epics compiled by Maffeo Vegio

Greeks

• The Learned Banqueters by Athenaeus
• Aristophanes collection: Birds, Lysistrata, Women at The Thesmophoria

Latin

• The Art of Love and Other Poems by Ovid
• Agricola, Germania by Tacitus
• Satires, Epistles, Ars Poetica by Horace

These are best stored with their own color because the red, especially, comes off on the other colors.  So I have a blue with red smudges on it and a green with red smudges.  I'm not so anal that I lose sleep over it, but someone out there will be and I live but to serve.  They run on average about $24.00, but some of the Latin and Greeks get marked down to about $19 sometimes. 

books

My collection at SHELFARI

Here's a book that actually has a good blurb.  It sounds like a trailer for an action movie:

Lone Wolves of the Battlefield!  They track the enemy over land and lie in wait for a target to appear. Then they shoot to kill.  Armed with an unerring eye, infinite patience and a mastery of concealment, combat snipers stalk the enemy like a hunter after big game, with one deadly goal...ONE SHOT -- ONE KILL.

THE BOOK

Damn, that's heavy.  But this isn't a movie.  It's not a Tom Clancy novel. It's for reals, y'all.  It's not glamorous, fun, or hip.  It's damned dirty work. Soul-sucking, back-breaking, lonely work.  After reading this book, it's my considered opinion that, while all the armed forces have their "special" teams, sharpshooters/snipers are the most special.  For the simple reason that they have to do their job alone or with 1 spotter. Lonely.  They get dropped in dangerously close to the enemy. Suicidal.  They have to keep still for hours and hours and hours.  Torturous. 

You have to be the sort of man (as far as I know, there are no women snipers) who is okay being alone with only your thoughts for company.  You also have to be really good at math and physics.  I really liked how the men's stories included details about how they measure wind speed, barometric pressure, angles of the sun, and most impressive of all, their intimacy with their rifle and scope.  An experienced sharpshooter could tell you how much a bullet from his rifle will veer off-course depending on the slightest breeze and terrain.  All this from the book.  This was the pleasant part!

THE MEN

These stories of real-life missions are unapologetically un-PC. Vietnamese, Koreans, and Japanese are referred to in derogatory terms. Blunt, earthy, even salty, language – exactly what you’d expect from career military. The authors Charles W. Sasser and Craig Roberts collected stories from

• Roberts himself – A Marine Lance Corporal, Vietnam 1965
• The legendary Marine Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, Vietnam 1967, including the story of his famous signature – a white feather
• Army Sergeant William E. Jones, Normandy 1944
• Army Sergeant John Fulcher, Italy 1943-44
• Army Corporal Chet Hamilton, Korea 1952
• Marine Captain Jim Land, Vietnam 1966
• Marine Corporal Tom Rutter, Beirut 1983
• Marine Corporal Ernest R. Fish, Korea 1951
• Marine Corporal Ron Szpond, Vietnam 1966
• Marine Lance Corporal Jim Miller, Vietnam 1968
• Marine Private Daniel Webster Cass, Jr.; Okinawa 1945

THE RIFLES

If you’re into military history or history of weaponry, you will love Ch. 23. It doesn’t have a title, but reading this little chunk is a blast! Throughout the whole book, the men talk about their weapons. And they name names: M-1 Garand, Winchester Model 70, .45, .38, M-14, 106-millimeter recoilless anti-tank, Remington 700, M-79 grenade launcher, German Jaeger.  Pages 246-7 are peppered with letters and numbers designating different types of rifles and scopes -- it's enough to make you high if you're an afficianado of military weaponry.  There's a paragraph in the middle of p. 158 that details how intimate the relationship is between a sniper and his rifle. 

THE TRAINING

P. 171 pretty much sums up what it takes to be a successful sniper.  That comes straight from the mouth of Major R. O. "Dick" Culver, one of the men, along with Jim Land who started the first sniper school at Quantico.  Training is brutal.  Again -- you have only yourself.  At least in BUDs Training, you have a team to help you.  In sniper school, you learn to be a one-man lawn-mower.  You learn the mechanics AND psychology of being a sniper.  Ch. 23 gives a potted history of European sharpshooting since about the 1600s.  Now THAT'S cool!

Amazingly, as snipers are extremely, almost robotically disciplined, they are writers.  They journal every kill they make. They include details such as the rifle, scope, and bullet they used, terrain, weather, target data, success or failure. Painstakingly handwritten.  I found that particularly fascinating.

Again, this book does not glamorize the job of military sharpshooter.  It's honest, often sad, a little funny, dead serious when they discuss their weapons, and gruesomely detailed about missions.  This is a great little book about a painful, uncomfortable job.

View my collection at SHELFARI 

books

"Hell in a handbasket."  Who uses handbaskets anymore?  Hell if I know...

Matt Groening knows hell.  He shows us hell.  He gives us hell -- from the POV a long-eared white rabbit (Contest: how many philosphical/psychological wisecracks can you make from the image of "long-eared white rabbit") suffering from weltschmertz.  From the sturm of school to the drang of love, Groening's message seems to be "vae victis" -- woe to the vanquished.  And even when it goes right, it's freaky and wrong! Two words: Akabar, Jeff.  In their little Freudian bubble.  Ick!  LOVE IS HELL is brilliant. The section titles are disarmingly blunt. Funny -- yet not.  True -- in a "trying to make it sound like a joke, but it's actually real" kind of way.

1. LOVE IS HELL
2. SCHOOL IS HELL
3. WORK IS HELL
4. HOW TO GO TO HELL

There are more, but those are the ones I have.

LIH and SIH pretty much remind you of stuff you already know: what types of boy/girl-friends to avoid, which types have "been hunted to extinction".  H2G2H is a conspiracy-theorists dream.  Simply stated -- distilled, concentrated anti-establishment rhetoric.  This book, in Mexico/Central/South America, Eastern Europe, or the Middle East would get your testicles electrocuted.  If you were a woman, they would sew some on you just to rip them off.

LIH is super hilarious. It has a lot of cool charts such as "9 Secret Love Techniques That Could Possibly Turn Men Into Putty in Your Hands" (some potential for feasibility but you wouldn't even want the type of man who would fall for these) and "9 Secret Love Techniques Women Find Well-Nigh Irresistible"  (Which they don't!).  The truth about fine art.  And my favorite: "Your Guide to Modern Creative Artistic Types -- The Writer". 

THE WRITER:

• Dominant Personality Trait -- self-absorption (what are blogs for, after all?)
• Secondary Personality Traits -- pomposity, irritability, whining (just the tip of the iceberg, really.)
• Distinguishing Features -- nervous twitching, bad posture (Please, you're too kind...)
• Haunting Question -- "Am I just a hack?" (2 true 2 B funny)
• How to Annoy Them -- "But how do you make a living?" (Also works for English majors, dance majors, philosophy majors, poets, artists)

If you like jugular humor, this is great stuff.  If you like THE SIMPSONS, this guy is why.  If you like to be cynical, bitter, and/or supercilious, these are your textbooks.  If you want a career in politics, read ANIMAL FARM, read H2G2H AND WIH -- then choose a career that will enable you to keep your soul.

 View my book collection at SHELFARI

books

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convincing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

It's no accident that I call this category GAMES.

Back in the 80s, there was a wonderful magazine called EUROPEAN TRAVEL & LIFE.  I still have about 5 years worth. I can't bear to throw them away. It was a real reader's magazine -- long, beautifully written, interesting articles, useful information about local life in the "A" list and "B" list cities, recipes, fashion. Wonderful!  I miss it.  It was in one of those issues that a writer referred to England as "Israel for white people".  Completely, unashamedly, brazenly elitist. Those were the years of obsession with Princess Diana and the "Treasure Houses of Britain".  However, I'm sure if you asked the average East Londoner about England being for white people, he would have pissed himself laughing.  For better or worse, England belongs to its immigrants -- just like the U.S. 

Yet...for all that modern England belongs to its Caribbeans, East Indians, North Africans, Central Africans -- and maybe even some Americans, the origins of English belong to its tribes.  Before English was "english", there were the territorial languages of the Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Picts, Frisians, Celts, Scandinavians, Romans from Rome, and Romans who had assimilated into the local population.  Over the generations, they battled, traded, moved, and married.  And as the different tribes began to blend as a drop of water picks up other drops on the way down the glass to form a puddle at the base, legends were born.  Legends of high kings, forest warriors, and conquests.  To tell those stories, a language was needed -- a language to reach as many people as possible.  As stories were passed from generation to generation, a fragile nationalism was born.  English became the language of the people, the bottom of the pyramid that made the top possible.

Therefore, it's no surprise that I have a lot of books about England and the history of English. History of The English Language was a required course for me in college, but that's okay.  It was one of my favorite classes. History and literature make a fantastic combination, just like history and art, or history and music.  One is not possible without the other.  Life is full of those kinds of dualities.  So here's my collection. I'm sure I have more, but this is a good chunk. I still even have the college book I used, but it's in exile in a box somewhere. 

1. ORIGINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: A Social & Linguistic History 1986; Joseph M. Williams
2. THE EARLY YEARS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 1964; Barrows, Bletter, & Sullivan
3. WORDS FROM HISTORY 1968; Isaac Asimov
4. THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 1993; Pyles & Algeo
5. THE KINGDOM BY THE SEA 1983; Paul Theroux
6. ENGLISH PLACE NAMES 1997; Kenneth Cameron
7. THE FAMILIES OF WORDS 1972; Mario Pei

2 and 4 are textbooks.  The rest are popular releases.  5 is a wonderful travel book about how Theroux traveled around England -- literally.  He circumnavigated England's coast, observing and interacting with coastal communities, hence the title.  1 was used as the preferred text for the PBS series Origins of The English Language -- a wonderful program that I desperately wish they would pull out of the vault, remaster and transfer to DVD.  Oh, the things I could teach my young'uns with a program like that.  They wouldn't have to suffer my off-key accents and no-key impressions. 6 I have blogged before.  7 reads like a dissertation -- all research and documentation; no personality.

4 has way cool end papers that show linguistic symbols. The language of linguistics, to my ears, kinda funny. Alveolo-palatal fricatives.  hih hih hih hih.  Voiceless epiglottal fricative.  Voiceless?  C'mon, you're pulling my leg.  Bilabial click.  Not as much fun as it sounds. Voiced labial-velar approximant.  What is that? A pick-up line?  Advanced tongue root.  Again -- not fun.  Palatoalveolar click.  Stop!  You're killing me! Some of these words sound more like dentistry than language. 

Asimov's book (3) is wonderful.  He tells stories about the origins of expressions like "Dutch treat", "gentleman", "rigamarole", and Iron Curtain.  I was lucky to find this book in a random box of books being withdrawn from the San Antonio Library.  I used to love their book sales.  It was like grocery shopping -- except with better prices.  I lived for those sales.  A lot of what I have came from those sales. That was the B.A. period.  (Before Amazon.com).

2 is a standard college reader. No illustrations. Every page groans with the weight of text.  The discussion questions at the end of each chapter are more like oral exam questions.  I don't have a problem with any of that.  A good professor knows how to use the information from a book like this, not just regurgitate the information contained within.

A book I want to add to my collection (like I don't have enough??) is Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, a.k.a. Ecclesiastical History of The English People by the Venerable Bede.  An interesting twist in the Latin title, I think, is the word "ecclesiastica" -- a Greek word. 

My collection at SHELFARI

books

THE ART OF CLEAR THINKING by Rudolf Flesch

I absolutely cannot get enough of this book!  I carried it in my purse for 2 years, reading it whenever I was at a stoplight, at the drive-thru of junk food palace, in line at the post office, etc. Every chapter had nuggets of solid gold sanity and common sense, divested of junk psychology or trendy rationalizations. First published by Collier Books in 1951, this edition was from 1965 -- the 3rd printing.  I also found a hardcover edition on eBay since my little paperback is coming undone from all the handling it got.  This edition cost 95 cents. I found it in my parents' closet and took it. I asked them about it, but since they hadn't read it since they bought it, they couldn't tell me much about it.  I was hooked from about the 3rd chapter.  Sure, some of the examples Flesch uses are outdated, but the reasoning is not.

It doesn't provide convenient answers. It doesn't wow you with graphs and charts and medical research or psychological data.  It stays close to the human being. Getting to clear thinking is a bit like filling in a map as you go along.  Everyone seems to get to the same destination via their own route -- some arrow-straight, some circuitous.

Another thing I learned from reading this book is that if you think you know what "clear" thinking is, you don't.  You can only command it so far. You might know some of the stops on the way to clear thinking, but there's a whole lot of gray area where things like intuition, muscle memory and synapse sparking take over and you can't control that. You can't be inspired on demand. So of course, one of the main ideas mentioned is that there's still so much we don't know about how the brain works. So much that, even 57 years after this book was published, there's still so much unexplored territory.

The discourse is a bit dry throughout the book, but Flesch does have a Bob Newhart-ish "button-down mind" sense of humor.  The title of Chapter 1 is "Robots, Apes, and You".  Wow, that's quite a spectrum.  And he scores points with me by quoting one of my favorite authors, E. M. Forster: "Unless we remember, we cannot understand."  For me, the most edifying chapter is Chapter 6, The Pursuit of Translation.  It has me chasing down translations of Schopenhauer.  I got so much out that chapter! Translating languages is like Total Gym for the mind, basically because you don't just translate words, you translate ideas and experiences.  So simply put, and it felt like a splash of champagne in my brain.

A book about thinking would be feeble without a discussion of logic and arguing.  Flesch handles it in such an earthy, humanistic manner.  I won't tell you his bottom line, but I will leave you with some "fightin' words": "When you argue with someone, you pit your organization of nerve patterns against his."

____________________________________________________________________________________

http://www.shelfari.com/o1518324450/shelf

books

George Orwell has done for modern English what Geoffrey Chaucer did for Middle English. He has wielded it like Hatori Hanzo wields a sword. From his pen, it's been flowcharted, coded, DE-coded, and programmed like a Microsoft applet.  In exposing its quirks and the ill-use people make of it, he also glorifies it.  It is a marvelous instrument indeed, to be so sought after and exploited.

I tip my hat mime-style to Russell Brand for the title idea. Not sure he'll thank me for the nod, but that's okay. (I'm here for you, Russ. Call me...)

So this bookie-wook I'm referring to is ANIMAL FARM. One of the most wonderful novels ever to be tagged "classic literature".  It's actually one of the more interesting classics.  The version I have is this fantastically illustrated 50th anniversary version. It's a lovely, large hardcover with a slipcover illustrated by Ralph Steadman -- all ink splotches and crudely inked animals.  I bet he was one of those kids in school who couldn't have a pen in his hand without ink all over his fingers and clothes.  Everywhere but on his paper.

Animals. heeheehee. They kick the farmer off his farm because he drinks like a pissed fish and forgets to feed them. Bwahahahahahaha. The animals take over the farm. chucklechucklechuckle. Phf phf phf phf... The PIGS take charge of the farm! AAAAAAHHH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  Stop! I'm dyin' here!  Sniff, sniff.  Animals? Running a farm?  And they have a flag????  PMSL ROFL.  Damn. That's some funny stuff right there.

That's a kids' story right there -- a fable. But it gets real grown-up real fast. All those nasty, evil things that people do in the name of power and greed. The violence! The lies! By the end of the book, I was Benjamin. Nothing changed except for the worse. All the workers' sacrifices were for nowt. For the sake of your emotional equilibrium, read it when you are feeling pretty good. The worst time to read it is when your life is in turmoil or you're tired after a long day of being overworked and underappreciated.

If you like to linger over linguistics-laced literature, lift the lid on POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE and WHY I WRITE.

PS: There are no good movie or animated versions of this novel. There's an animated movie from 1950-something that's serviceable, but nothing really good. The TNT version from 2002 doesn't count. It's like a CliffNotes version. Bleh!

books

Oops, I haven't done a roundup post in a while. Typical. Going strong one minute, absent the next. OCD, ADD --probably.  Therefore, OTD and ASAP, I'm OTJ.  LOL!

My visual bookshelf on Shelfari

books

Recently, I had made up my mind to be a better person, but then I realized I had just taken a B-12 tablet.

Life is more interesting when you have things to do.  That's why procrastination is such a satisfying habit.

Hmmm...according to Amazon.com, this version is already off the charts.  Not unavailable, maybe just out of print and you can only get it through non-commercial sellers. But that's just Amazon. I haven't checked B&N or Borders or any other commercial retailers.

Reading this has helped to better understand the literary tradition of the Bible. This is, not in a Biblical sense, but in a literary sense, a book of proverbs, epigrams, advice, observations, all proffering an uncomplicated wisdom. It is very like the Bible in that M.A. has a lot of ideas that also show up in the Bible. 

• Do right by people. 
• Don't be pretentious. 
• Expect people to be difficult, and put yourself above it. 
• Follow the example of the wise and shun the fool.

Comparing Meditations to the Bible is a college course in itself, so I will just give you some of my favorite meds...um...meditations:

Book II, #1: Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness -- all of them due to the offenders' ignorance of what is good or evil...none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading.

Book III, #7:  Never value the advantages derived from anything involving breach of faith, loss of self-respect, hatred, suspicion, or execration of others, or the desire for something which has to be veiled...

Book III, #9: Treat with respect the power you have to form an opinion.

Book VI, #14: The vulgar confine their admiration chiefly to things of an elementary order,...But the man who values a soul that is rational and universal and social no longer cares for anything else...

You get the idea.  Good stuff.  And it's portable, roughly the same size as WHY I WRITE, but a bit thicker.  II/1 and III/7 I re-read quite often since my life as a teacher and caregiver-in-training is chaotic at times.

I actually have 2 editions of Meditations.  This one and an old Harvard Classics version that's an imprint of a 1909 edition.  It's combined with 3 works by Plato -- Apology, Phaedo, and Crito, as well as The Golden Sayings of Epictetus.

Golden Sayings is pretty cool. That one's organized in chunks with roman numerals, whereas Meditations was by Books. The translation of GS, by Hastings Crossley (ooooh, pompous much?), sounds like a cross between Alexander Pope and John Milton.  It requires significant concentration to keep up with the syntax if you're not used to it.

If you're ever feeling intellectually stunted, Meditations is a good way to kick-start your right brain instant messaging your left brain.

  A year ago: Barnes&Noble After-Christmas Mini-Spree

books

My Shelfari bookshelf

*****BIG, MAJOR, TELL-ALL SPOILERS*****

Have you ever read a book that just exhausted you mentally?  The scope and breadth of the story filled every part of your mind, swept you up into a maelstrom, and ran your emotions ragged? 

Well, this isn’t that book…

***** SPOILERS*****

Just kidding.  Holy Mother of Almighty Jesus Christ, the book wasn’t just big and heavy, the story was BIG!  And HEAVY!!!  I was repulsed, disgusted, angry, frustrated, incredulous, and many other adjectives as well – and that was just the first 10 chapters!  It was so spirit-crushingly spirit-crushing, it will crush your spirit!!! 

Acheron’s human life was emotionally squalid.  Squalid, I tell you!  If you hadn’t learned to love him so much in the other Dark-Hunter books, you would never have stuck with it to see him to godhood.  And his human life showed me something I’ve strongly felt for a long time – people are shite.  They can’t help it.  They are feeble-minded and at the mercy of their worst compulsions.  More than anything, people love to enjoy the fact that others are suffering and not them. 

By the time you get to the second part of the book, where’s he’s coming into his godhood and becomes a trainer for the Dark-Hunters, your body is so relieved to have a reprieve from beatings and scalding verbal abuse and outright torture.  You start to breath a little easier as the pages go by and he’s talking with whoever and not being hit.  Even just arguing is a relief. 

The best part of the story for me was the last 3 or so chapters.  Those were the most fun.  He and Tory are a lot of fun together.  I don’t agree with a lot of the plot development as far as their relationship, but the overall logic is sound.  She appears to be the reincarnation (the book never says that, but it should) of the “Librarian/Historian/Guardian of The Gods” of Atlantis.  And his mother likes her!  Talk about “monster-in-law”!!!  I was just as confused as Ash as to why he was attracted to her.  I thought he couldn’t get attracted to human women.  A lot of threads got unwound that I thought were knotted tightly. If you ask me, Artemis let him off really easy.  Maybe she realized that she could no longer subjugate Acheron – not with his girlfriend and mother protecting him.  Also, it was too easy how he mustered up the gumption to tell Artie to naff off.  I think it was all in the focus.  He doesn’t have backbone problems when it comes to protecting others, and apparently Tory was enough of an issue to where he could get the “heifer-goddess” of his back.

Artemis got off lightly considering Acheron has Savitar, Sin, his mother, and Katra at his back.  Katra can absorb the powers of gods.  She’s like the “Sham-Wow” of Atlantis. 

I would have loved to read about a Dark-Hunter bachelor party, but you know they can’t get together without their powers waning in each others’ presence.  Which is one of the off-kilter details about Acheron and Tory’s wedding.  Several DHs were in attendance.  But really, you couldn’t have Acheron get married and NOT have the DHs there.  Like he said – the shock value alone is probably worth losing your powers for a couple of hours.  Besides, Savitar is there to pick up the slack should any demon or Daimon have a death-wish.  He has a Best Man and everything.  Dark-Hunter theorists will no doubt go nuts trying to figure out which Bridesmaid/Groomsman will end up a couple.  Some are obviously out of it: Simi – duh; Vane, Kyrian, Aimee.  But Katherine, a priestess, and Styxx – why not.  Urian and Cyn, Tori’s nymphet cousin who looks like Artemis.  Pam and Savitar.  Now remember – this is just conjecture on my part.  There’s nothing in the book to suggest that any of these characters are going to get together.

What Kenyon has done with Greek mythology is frikkin’ amazing.  What she’s done with Atlantis and their gods is one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever read – in any genre.  As soon as I finished ACHERON, within the minute, I had picked up ONE SILENT NIGHT – the book of Strykerius, a.k.a. “loser”, according to Xirena, Simi’s sister.  Kenyon really wove a web of demon/Daimon action which was difficult to keep up with. I don’t mind.  Nick was prominent in this book. He’s got an extremely cool story arc.  There were no less than 4 pantheons featured in this book: Atlantean, Greek, Egyptian, Sumerian.  Does “Apollite” count?  The only bunch who didn’t show up were the Weres.  But word down the pipeline is that Aimee and Fang are going to get their own story. 

Another interesting development is that the bloodlines are mixing.  Charonte and gallu demon.  Atlantean and human.  Dark-Hunter and daimon.  It’s putting the pantheons at odds with each other.  Oh, and one of the other cool things about the DH world – Nick stuck it to Satara, Stryker’s evil sister.  I’d been dying for someone to bitch-slap her through time and space to where she’d become her own ancestor.  Way-to-go Nick!!  Stabbed her in the gut and made it hurt.  He killed her real dead-like.

So Ash’s household now consists of him and Tory, Simi, Xirena, Alexion and Danger, and Urian.  He may or may not have replaced the pet dragons.  God or not, there’s nothing sexier than a tall man with an never-ending supply of no-limit credit cards.  In the pro/con ledger of life, ACHERON – man, god, boyfriend, husband – is definitely in the pro column. 

ACHERON: HALF-MAN, HALF-GOD, TWICE-BORN, ALL-CURSED

• Acheron
• sherrilyn kenyon
• read in 2008
• series

PENGUIN BOOKS GREAT IDEAS SERIES

$8.95 SRP

Welcome to the first installment of "Portable Feasts", a category highlighting purse-friendly books.  The idea is almost too simple -- I keep books in my purse so I tend to look for small, thin tomes that give bang for the buck.  Penguin Books, bless their hearts, have come out with a series of ...well...small, thin tomes that are stimulating, yet discreet.  The 2 books from the series that I have are 18 cm. x 11 cm. x1 cm.  Here's a bit of blurb from the back of my Orwell book:

Now PENGUIN brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization...

Sounds good to me! 

The paperback series has a different design for each book but uses the same colors to identify it as a series -- brownish-red, white, black. Very elegant.  There's 12 books in the series.

Any-hoo, An excellent collection is WHY I WRITE, a collection of essays by George Orwell.  George Orwell would have made a great drinking buddy.  He's such a keen observer of communication patterns between people and institutions.  Reading his essay "Why I Write" is like looking into a pond of crystal clear, mirror-smooth water. Not only does he see things clearly, but his writing style is blunt and passionate.  Being English, he can't help a bit of long-windedness, but he maneuvers jargon and vernacular quite deftly.  He's also a very self-aware writer.  He knows his strengths and weaknesses.  When I read WHY I WRITE, I feel like he's talking to me person-to-person.  I can picture him throwing up his arms and tearing out his hair, flicking a cigarette away. 

The book also contains the amazing POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE -- one of the most straight-shooting essays ever written about how crap political jargon is.  Every person considering going for public office should read P&TEL and ANIMAL FARM.  If that doesn't put you off running for office, you can see how you're going to end up. 

The book is like a shot of vitamin B-12 to the brain.  You can feel blood flowing through your brain.  Realization sparks and bounces.  Ideas like popcorn popping in your head.  Great ideas!

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Massive books in my living room that could pass for furniture:

CHURCHES AND CATHEDRALS OF LONDON by Stephen Humphrey & James Morris (Foreword by Andrew Lloyd Webber)

MILTON'S PARADISE LOST/Illus. by Gustave Dore

THE MUSEE D'ORSAY by Alexandra Bonfante-Warren

Sadly, these books are out of print (at least by Amazon.com's reckoning), but they are probably available through eBay. 

The first two I found on the sale display at our local bookstore.  Churches&Cathedrals I got for my birthday from a dear friend.  C&CoL has very good quality color photos.  There's plenty of wide shots and close-ups of details. Good, tight writing.  Even the table of contents is full of photos.  I like the page design.  Several of the pages have the left edge run in 2-color (cyan, black) and contain extra interesting bits of information.  Every photo has something wonderful in it: art, architecture, craftsmanship. I've been to Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, so the pictures pulled memories out of me.  I could feel the memories being drawn out of me. I desperately want to go back to England.

PARADISE LOST -- first of all, gorgeous cover.  Then there's the words! So perfectly crafted. Such magnificent verbal architecture. The illustrations are by Gustave Dore, one of the most acclaimed and in-demand illustrators of books in the 1800s. I love all the place names Milton mentions. Cronian Sea, Delos, Petsora, Cathaian Sea -- names so ancient that they resonate to the vibration of passing time. He even mentions astronomy, describing the alignment of the earth to set up seasons.  Mythology, astronomy, geography, the origins of Biblical history -- all conjoined to map the spiritual history of man on earth.  Is there a combination of words more woebegotten than "paradise lost"?  "Paradise": the best of all possible worlds. The zenith of contentment.  "Lost": sunken into despair, heartbroken, wretched from knowing what we had and the pain of realizing our own foolishness cost us that zenith. One of the best titles ever.

MUSEE D'ORSAY: Truthfully, I'm indifferent to the Impressionists.  I can admire and appreciate the talent and creativity and all that, but at the end of the day, I'd rather hang with the German Romantics and the Northern Europeans.  The closest I've come to "liking" Impressionist-type art is El Greco.  He's not an Impressionist, but you must admit, some of his work, like View of Toledo, has a lot in common with Turner, Monet, or Renoir, even Gaugin.  The book itself is grand. Big. Heavy. It's a serving tray.  The best way to display this book is laid open on a sturdy music stand.  All color plates. This book, as well as the museum it honors, is an impressive catalogue of Impressionist art, early photography and reader-friendly design.  Most paintings have easy-to-read captions. Caveat: captions tend to be loaded down with jargon.  Personally, I don't mind. I keep a dictionary handy.

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