-
Fingertips
I love the softness of weathered cottonwoods and spring grass. A walk through this area was solace for my soul.
-
Mozart and Salieri by Alexander Pushkin
I also read a short play by Alexander Pushkin called Mozart and Salieri (1832), translated by A. F. B. Clark. Despite being a very, very short play it has been influential, and was an inspiration for the play Amadeus (by Peter Schaffer), which in turn was adapted for film. The play has only two speaking…
-
8 Babies and 4 Bugs
Several months ago I came across a very memorable postcard. I finally got it scanned and added to the postcard page. It’s interesting enough that I thought I would make a post about it here. It’s an old card, with one cent postage domestic and two cents foreign. I don’t know what in the world…
-
The Trojan Women by Seneca
I finished reading The Trojan Women by Seneca (translated by E. F. Watling), a tragedy written in the first century AD. This might be my favorite of Seneca’s plays thus far. It tells the fate of Polyxena and Astyanax after the fall of Troy at the hands of the conquering Greeks. This is a familiar…
-
Eugénie Grandet by Balzac
I just finished reading Eugénie Grandet; by Honoré de Balzac, a short novel published in 1833 and translated by Marion Ayton Crawford. This is only the second novel I’ve read by Balzac, and I wasn’t feeling deeply enmeshed in the story at first. Thankfully, I stuck with it and ended up loving the book. By…
-
Art and Fiction
I love these old paperback collections of Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian barbarian. Frazetta’s paintings are to Conan in my mind as Larry Elmore’s paintings are to the Dragonlance characters. Artwork seems particularly important to fantasy and science fiction books, perhaps because the worlds within these works are often meant to be substantially different than the…
-
A is for awesome cover
I recently had access to a small number of books from my personal library that is now mostly in storage. Thought I would share a few photos. Here is a great collection of short stories by one of the masters in the field! I’ve also got a copy of R is for Rocket, as well…
-
Phaedra by Seneca
I read Thyestes by Seneca a couple weeks ago and then decided to try another of his plays, this time reading Phaedra. I’m very pleased I decided to read another one, as I enjoyed Phaedra a great deal. Here is the little reaction to it I wrote: I finished reading Phaedra, a play written around…