Anyhow, I've hit a cold spot in the good book stream that I'm postponing by reading Tom Clancy's Patriot Games. In an act of desperation, I appealed to the classics (which I have a slowly growing reserve of, and that only get read when I have nothing else) and found a copy of Robert Fitzgerald's translation of The Iliad that I got at Value Village for 99 cents. It feels just dandy to go to a second-hand store and find books like Don Quixote for a toonie (that happened). Now, I haven't started reading this particular translation of The Iliad, but as I said before, I've already been hooked from reading the first page before I bought it. I wish I could be more eloquent about this, but here it is: Robert Fitzgerald spells Greek names like a man. Achilles is spelled Akhilleus, and Achaeans is spelled Akaeans. Basically, Fitzgerald is liberal with the letter "K" and that's OK (get it) with me.
No rules. No mercy. One contestant. The classic struggle of man versus himself. He wants to do his work on time, but he has doubts. Updates weekly at least (or I think I lose marks). Will probably cover a lot of things, books, movies, writing, photography and anything else that makes its way from my brain to my blog. The skeleton symbolizes the undesirable nature of punctuality.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Sometimes I read books
Sometimes these books are good, and sometimes I stop reading these books when I am five pages in (I'm the kind of guy who needs a hook early on to keep reading, a kind of "hooker" if you will). Recently, I've had a fantastic string of luck with good books and I'd like to keep it going as long I possibly can. First, Conn Iggulden's Wolf of the Plains and then the sequel Lords of the Bow, both excellent books that are mostly about Genghis Khan having a tragic childhood, and killing a mathematically indecent amount of Chinese people, respectively. After that, I read Steven Erikson's novel Gardens of the Moon and now I can't remember how it ended. For some people, this would be a negative trait of their reading experience, but I find it nice, because I like to read books more than once and if I can get about halfway without remembering how it ends, that's even better. I'm a little worried that this forgetfulness means that I have extremely early-onset alzheimer's disease though. If this is the case, I need to start reading good books at an accelerated rate because soon I'll be reading the third chapter and wondering what happened in the first, and by the time I reach chapter five I'll find myself reading a copy of Woman's World and deciding that the book has taken a definite turn for the better.
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