I heartily recommend the Barnes & Noble Audio Classics rendition of Fitzgerald’s translation of The Iliad, unabridged on nine cassettes. Listening to it, it became very apparent to me that The Iliad was meant to be heard, not read, and the natural poetry of its spoken language comes through even in translation.
I have the everyman edition of The Histories, translated by George Rawlinson 1858.
Listening to it, it became very apparent to me that The Iliad was meant to be heard, not read, and the natural poetry of its spoken language comes through even in translation.
The introduction notes to the version I have (Penguin Classics I think) does make this point, but I’ve never had the priviledge of being in a position to hear it. I will keep an eye out for those tapes (though hopefully theres a couple of CDs about somewhere).
The Fagles Iliad and Odyssey are also out on tape. There’s actually a debate to what extent the poems are meant to be recited–on the one hand, they’re clearly of the epic style that was recited out loud; on the other hand, they’re way too long for any actual recital. A few editions have intros talking about the question. (I know the Fagles does, and I’m sure I’ve seen others discussing it)
Incidentally, I just read them out loud to myself, and that solves the problem of finding tapes, at the expense of having people stare at you :D .
Gav
Well, whilst laid up with the 'flu, I took a break from Cryptonomicon to read Tom Sharpe’s latest, Wilt in Nowhere. Ideal if you’re not feeling too great, it’s a short, undemanding, but well written farce that can be read in a couple of sessions.
Love and Honor by Randall Wallace, the guy who penned Braveheart and did the screenplay for We Were Soldiers. It’s a very entertaining read - I’d put it a notch above the sort of pap you buy from the grocery store paperback section and a notch below literary fiction.
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
Can’t Buy My Love by Jean Kilbourne
Just finished Memories of Ice, the 3rd Malazan book by Erikson. Much better than the first two.
I am on a memoir reading kick right now. I am reading Tim O’Brian’s The Things They Carried and Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life. Just really awesome stories. I have read both previously, but they’re that good. O’Brian says his book is a novel, but I say it’s more like a memoir. It feels authentic, even if O’Brian says the details have been manufactured.
Also, Louise DeSalvo’s Vertigo and Crazy in the Kitchen. These last two books are interesting because they both cover her childhood years, but they are told in completely different ways. I studied under Louise when I lived in NYC. She wrote a book on how to do memoir writing which is also pretty good. I didn’t realize it until earlier this month, but she put my in the acknowledgement section.
I have also started some other non-fiction books. Code, which is a Microsoft Press book, attempts to describe how programming works using familiar technologies from the early part of the last century. It’s pretty interesting in a geeky kind of way.
I also have Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel while I’m waiting for his new book to become available from the library. Haven’t really started it yet, but I have Jason to thank for putting this guy on my radar. Thanks!
I just read through Exalted: The Sidereals, in one sitting, broken by sleep.
Just finished David Fromkin’s Europe’s Last Summer, on to Peter Padfield’s Tide of Empires.
Fictionwise, I haven’t read anything for ages. I want to start on Cryptonomicon one of these days then go into the steampunk trilogy… but there are a couple of relatively new W.E.B. Griffin titles I really want to get back into. I’m way behind after being caught up with everything a few years back.
— Alan
Just read Robert Kagan’s Of Paradise and Power. His strategic analysis of the Euro-American relationship is sound, though unfortunately burdened by the worst possible example, i.e. the recent Iraq war (Kagan still believes in “weapons of mass destruction”!). Kagan doesn’t have anything relevant to say about America’s interests outside of Europe; he seems to share the Neocon’s belief in the miraculous peace-bringing power of aircraft carriers.
Just finished Kurt Vonnegut’s Hocus Pocus and am now re-reading Machiavelli’s The Prince.
Just finished Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America. It was OK. Ended a bit suddenly. And very rushed in the last couple of chapters.
Troy
The Valachi Papers
I’m reading Extremes by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, which tries to be a science fiction hard-boiled detective novel mixed with a police procedural. I’m not really sure it works, because mysteries are so dependent on the reader knowing how the world works, and in science fiction you can always say, “Well, see there’s this alien that shoots laser beams out its eyes, and so the alien killed him.”
So far it’s about a marathon on the moon and the death of a runner. Lots of suit logistics and low-g athletics. There are hints of aliens, but nothing’s shown up. The problem with sf mysteries is you don’t know if they’re lame or not until the mystery is solved.
Also reading Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan. He got a fair amount right, but some stuff is kind of odd. He keeps talking about “electric culture” which has been more or less supplanted by “digital culture.” His hot and cool media seem kind of arbitrary-- the phone is a cool medium because not much information is transmitted, but the radio is a hot one because it totally engages the sense of hearing. Huh? Doesn’t the phone also engage the sense of hearing? What if you play Mozart over the phone?
Wired made him the patron saint of the internet, but I’m really not sure why. He mostly argues that content is irrelevant and that (famously) the medium is the message. Yes media should be studied, and yes different media change the world, but I like my content too.