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We Dream of Space by Erin Entrada Kelly
I just finished reading We Dream of Space (2020) by Erin Entrada Kelly, a young adult novel that follows the lives of three siblings over the course of a month in early 1986. The siblings have a teacher who is closely watching the unfolding of the Challenger mission, and weaves the event into her classroom…
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Thyestes by Seneca
I read Thyestes by Seneca (translated by E. F. Watling), a tragedy written in the first century AD. This is the first play by Seneca I’ve read, having only read his letters to Lucilius Junior in the past. Euripides, one of my favorite writers, wrote a play with the same title some 500 years earlier.…
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First Take
I picked this album up years ago at a thrift store back home. At the time I had never heard of Roberta Flack, but something about the album caught my eye. I gave it a listen and immediately loved it. Back then I worked at a tree nursery and we had a record player in…
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Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
I finished reading Agnes Grey (1847) by Anne Brontë. This is the first book she published and the only one I have read by her. The novel carried me away to Agnes’s world and I could often relate to her inner thoughts. The fictive world that Brontë builds is simple and clean, and feels bright…
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Pharsalia by Lucan, video
I just posted the first video I’ve made for The Vulgar Eclectic. Here it is:
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Pharsalia by Lucan
“No, it will be the match we always have— Liberty pitted against a Caesar“ I recently finished reading Pharsalia (written about 65 AD) by the Roman poet Lucan, translated by Jane Wilson Joyce. This is an epic in ten parts written in verse in the tradition of Homer and Virgil. Unlike those poems, however, Pharsalia…
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Carmina Achilochi: the Fragments Of Archilochos
I read this collection of poems by the Greek lyric poet Archilochus back in January of 2021 and wrote a very brief reaction: I just finished reading Carmina Archilochi: the Fragments Of Archilochos, translated by Guy Davenport. Archilochos was a 7th Century Greek poet and soldier. This book was really fun to read and felt…
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Postcard potpourri
I added a number of new postcards to the postcard pages. Some of them I picked up to mail with particular people in mind. It’s fun finding old postcards and writing a note to someone special and mailing them off.
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Snowy world
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,In the bleak midwinter, long ago. -Christina Rossetti; excerpt from In the Bleak Midwinter
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Under A Lucky Star: A Lifetime Of Adventure by Roy Chapman Andrews
I read this book back in January of 2021 and wrote the following reaction afterwards: This morning I finished reading Under A Lucky Star: A Lifetime Of Adventure by Roy Chapman Andrews. It is a memoir by a man who was famous during the first half of the 20th century as a naturalist, archaeologist, and explorer. It…