I'm re-reading George Eliot's "Silas Marner," almost forty years since first reading it in grade-school. I've just started, so this post won't be a full review. I'm going to share some of the reading experience I've had thus far, both by myself and with my kids, who've shocked me a bit by asking me to … Continue reading The Weaver of Raveloe
I've been reading the Birchbark House series to my kids, before bedtime. I read the series myself a year ago but reading it to them I've experienced these stories through their eyes, and they have been enthralled. We've read to my son practically since he was born and he's always loved it. Even now at … Continue reading Reading to my kids
Time again to draw some lines between texts, for fun and maybe more. Texts today: Book of Job, Bhagavad Gita, Lord of the Rings, Gilgamesh Compare – Your hands have formed me and made me,Put me together—then destroyed me!Mind now, it is you who made me like clay,And will return me to the dust!He elevates … Continue reading Gita and Job, shoutout to JRR
I've been thinking a lot about eyelids. In the Book of Job, the King James Bible gives us a memorable phrase, "the eyelids of the morning" (41:18). Both Job and God speak this phrase, which is translated by Robert Alter as "eyelids of dawn." A few days ago I came to the very end of … Continue reading The Eyelids of Job’s Daughter
"The Fellowship of the Ring" came out in theaters twenty years ago, almost to the day. Below is an essay that I wrote in the days after I saw it -- an essay that, besides being a bit of a time portal, covers a ton of subjects about books, movies, history, religion, dead white males, … Continue reading The Fellowship of the Ring
In a previous post I shared what it was like to read David Ferry's version of the Epic of Gilgamesh twenty years ago. I've just read Stephen Mitchell's version, from 2004. Both versions render the Epic as English free verse. They're similar in that sense: they're English poems that read like complete stories, meaning they … Continue reading Gilgamesh, Smaug and Krishna
December 16, 2001* Last night I finished David Ferry’s rendition of Gilgamesh; I read it out loud. It has reminded me of my favorite moment ever in “Star Trek”: the Epic of Gilgamesh as told by Patrick Stewart in “Darmok,” an episode during the fifth season of “The Next Generation” TV series. Captain Jean-Luc Picard … Continue reading Twin Towers at Uruk
In my blog posts I've compared similar passages across different novels, and I've got several passages from "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" that I want to link to other novels: "Moby-Dick," "Huckleberry Finn," "Tom Sawyer," "The Lord of the Rings," "Matilda," and one nonfiction book, Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot." Compare this declaration by King … Continue reading Esmeralda, cosmologist
I picked up “Pilgrim’s Progress” only because I was reading “Little Women,” which I found made constant reference to Bunyan’s earlier novel. So I put down Alcott and started “Pilgrim,” and it was a mixed experience – riveting in many places, but often hard-going. As often happens when I pick up a new author, the … Continue reading Pilgrim’s Progress
It's a common trope in fiction: a final confrontation between the central hero of a story and its central villain. It's an important trope in Westerns, both on the page and screen -- Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" is just one famous example. And we see it in works of fiction that are too many to count: … Continue reading Hero, meet your villain; or, never mind
