What are you reading?

[Disir]

Completed: Women in Greek Myth by Mary Lefkowitz. This came out in the '80s. It's right after a bunch of books came out in the decade before incorporating feminist theories into the subject. At first it was fun because she is going through pointing out what information is available and what isn't and calling out other interpretations.

Unfortunately, at the end she cites Edward Gibbons as a source for something. He's not a legit source. I get this is an old book. I don't understand how anyone could be so detail oriented and still consider him to be a source at any time.

 

[hjmick]

Anthrax Island by D.L. Marshall

FACT: In 1942, in growing desperation at the progress of the war and fearing invasion by the s, the UK government approved biological weapons tests on British soil. Their aim: to perfect an anthrax weapon destined for Germany. They succeeded.

FACT: Though the attack was never launched, the testing ground, Gruinard Island, was left lethally contaminated. It became known as Anthrax Island.

Now government scientists have returned to the island. They become stranded by an equipment failure and so John Tyler is flown in to fix the problem. He quickly discovers there's more than research going on. When one of the scientists is found impossibly murdered inside a sealed room, Tyler realizes he's trapped with a killer...

Anthrax Island


Good read so far...

 

[Disir]

I finished Trying Neaira: the true story of a courtesan's scandalous life in ancient Greece by Debra Hamel. It was a trial with limited information and zero information on the outcome. I learned more about the legal system in Athens than anywhere else. I didn't care for the way it was written.

I'm starting on Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry by Emily Vermeule.

 

[Disir]

I started Charles Freeman's Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How Relics shaped the History of Medieval Europe. It went out of print and the price skyrocketed. There were no available copies and myself and 9 others were "watching" for it. I snagged one when it did become available for a whopping $10. I'm pretty sure that the key to obtaining some of these books is to stay alive longer than everyone else.

 

[g5000]

I'm currently reading The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914.

Amazon product

784 pages.

The synopsis on Amazon:

The War That Ended Peace brings vividly to life the military leaders, politicians, diplomats, bankers, and the extended, interrelated family of crowned headsacross Europe who failed to stop the descent into war: in Germany, the mercurial Kaiser Wilhelm II and the chief of the German general staff, Von Moltke the Younger; in Austria-Hungary, Emperor Franz Joseph, a man who tried, through sheer hard work, to stave off the coming chaos in his empire; in Russia, Tsar Nicholas II and his wife; in Britain, King Edward VII, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, and British admiral Jacky Fisher, the fierce advocate of naval reform who entered into the arms race with Germany that pushed the continent toward confrontation on land and sea.

There are the would-be peacemakers as well, among them prophets of the horrors of future wars whose warnings went unheeded: Alfred Nobel, who donated his fortune to the cause of international understanding, and Bertha von Suttner, a writer and activist who was the first woman awarded Nobel’s new Peace Prize. Here too we meet the urbane and cosmopolitan Count Harry Kessler, who noticed many of the early signs that something was stirring in Europe; the young Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty and a rising figure in British politics; Madame Caillaux, who shot a man who might have been a force for peace; and more. With indelible portraits, MacMillan shows how the fateful decisions of a few powerful people changed the course of history.

Taut, suspenseful, and impossible to put down, The War That Ended Peace is also a wise cautionary reminder of how wars happen in spite of the near-universal desire to keep the peace. Destined to become a classic in the tradition of Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August, The War That Ended Peace enriches our understanding of one of the defining periods and events of the twentieth century.

 

[Disir]

I am starting The Return of the Dead: Ghosts, Ancestors, and the Transparent Veil of the Pagan Mind by Claude Lecouteux. He was a professor of medieval literature and civilizations in France. I had never heard of him until recently.

 

[Disir]

Anthrax Island by D.L. Marshall

FACT: In 1942, in growing desperation at the progress of the war and fearing invasion by the s, the UK government approved biological weapons tests on British soil. Their aim: to perfect an anthrax weapon destined for Germany. They succeeded.

FACT: Though the attack was never launched, the testing ground, Gruinard Island, was left lethally contaminated. It became known as Anthrax Island.

Now government scientists have returned to the island. They become stranded by an equipment failure and so John Tyler is flown in to fix the problem. He quickly discovers there's more than research going on. When one of the scientists is found impossibly murdered inside a sealed room, Tyler realizes he's trapped with a killer...

View attachment 655082


Anthrax Island


Good read so far...

I came real close to purchasing that book based on what you wrote. It's been several years since I have had any interest in fiction.

 

[hjmick]

I came real close to purchasing that book based on what you wrote. It's been several years since I have had any interest in fiction.

I read both non-fiction and fiction. A lot of the fiction is either historical or it has the roots of the plot in historical fact. Of course, some of the fiction is just good old who-done-its... Connelly, Sandford, Grisham and the like.

Right now I'm working through John Sandford's Ocean Prey so my wife can take it to Turks and Caicos with her.

Up next is either Tombstone by Tom Clavin:

Tombstone

The true story of the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, and the famous Battle at the OK Corral, by the New York Times bestselling author of Do...

www.goodreads.com

Or Indianapolis by Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic:

Indianapolis: The True Story of the Worst Sea Disaster …

A human drama unlike any other—the riveting and definit…

www.goodreads.com

 

[Disir]

I read both non-fiction and fiction. A lot of the fiction is either historical or it has the roots of the plot in historical fact. Of course, some of the fiction is just good old who-done-its... Connelly, Sandford, Grisham and the like.

Right now I'm working through John Sandford's Ocean Prey so my wife can take it to Turks and Caicos with her.

Up next is either Tombstone by Tom Clavin:

Tombstone

The true story of the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, and the famous Battle at the OK Corral, by the New York Times bestselling author of Do...

www.goodreads.com

Or Indianapolis by Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic:

Indianapolis: The True Story of the Worst Sea Disaster …

A human drama unlike any other—the riveting and definit…

www.goodreads.com

I love almost everything about Tombstone. Please post what you think about that one when you are done!

 

[hjmick]

I love almost everything about Tombstone. Please post what you think about that one when you are done!

Will do. You just picked my next book...

 

[mosser]

Currently reading Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. Despite the constant undercurrent of wistfulness about the book, it is funny at times. Even the humor simmers, as opposed to jumping out at readers. So far I like it, though I don't think this is a non-linear work, though publishers and smitten critics keep insisting that is. If it is, it is barely so.

I was reading some of Margaret Atwood's short fiction last month and was deeply struck by the ways in which she brings together the literary and ecological, like Peter Matthiessen. I've been doing some ecology-related readings since. Now reading up about climax communities.

 

[Disir]

I finished Savage Energies: Lessons of Myth and Ritual in Ancient Greece by Walter Burkert translated by Peter Bing. He was a professor of classics at the University of Zurich. It's more like 5 essays with about 10 pages of sources. I love that. He does his own translations. I love that too. It sure was short and I wish it had been longer.

I'm going to start Working IX to V: Orgy planners, funeral clowns and other prized professions of the ancient world by Vicki Leon. I have a few books that I am not looking forward to reading and this is one of them. The material is interesting but I'm not sure about her writing style.

 

[Blues Man]

The Myth of Sisyphus

 

[Disir]

I'm starting Pagan Holiday: On the trail of ancient Roman tourists.

 

[Disir]

I am almost finished with The Home of the Heroes: The Aegean before the Greeks by Sinclair Hood and will start Pomeroy's Spartan Women and then her Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity.

 

[hjmick]

I love almost everything about Tombstone. Please post what you think about that one when you are done!

About at the halfway point. It is well written, not a slog to get through like some nonfiction I've picked up in the past. Very interesting, I've learned a few things I didn't know, some of the things I thought I knew have been corrected. I've been reading it for about an hour a day at the office, that will change, as it always does, when I slip past the halfway point. But it did pass my 100 page threshold, if I don't get past the first 100 pages in the first day, maybe the second, it doesn't bode well for the book...

 

[Disir]

About at the halfway point. It is well written, not a slog to get through like some nonfiction I've picked up in the past. Very interesting, I've learned a few things I didn't know, some of the things I thought I knew have been corrected. I've been reading it for about an hour a day at the office, that will change, as it always does, when I slip past the halfway point. But it did pass my 100 page threshold, if I don't get past the first 100 pages in the first day, maybe the second, it doesn't bode well for the book...

Well, that's good.

 

[hjmick]

Well, that's good.

Indeed... maybe I'll have you pick my next book as well.

 

[Disir]

I started Hermes: Guide of Souls by Karl Kerenyi. It was first published in 1944 from a lecture that he gave in 1943. He is really interesting all by himself. He did some work with Joseph Campbell. He was born in Hungary and had fled the Nazi academic machine to Switzerland and provided the lecture hoping they would keep him in.

Károly Kerényi - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

This won't take too long to finish probably tonight. I'm going to start The First Clash: The miraculous Greek victory at Marathon and its impact on Western Civilization by James Lacey.

 

[lg325]

Now reading The Believers Hope by Oliver B. Greene It is a collection of his sermons. He was a Baptist preacher and one of the best at explaining scripture without compromising.