Theaelizabet's 2016 Reading

I've been here before, but have rarely managed to stay too long. My life is less hectic these days, so I'm hoping to make it work this year. I know many of you and hope to meet many more. As an introduction, I'll offer a look at the best of the past two years of my reading life:

2015 Reading

Best reading experience: The Ancient Greeks

The Iliad (Lattimore translation) (reread)
The Iliad (Fagles translation)
The Oresteia (Lattimore translation)
The House of Atreus adapted from The Oresteia by John Lewin (reread)
Sappho: A New Translation of the Complete Works by Diane J. Raynor and Andre Lardinois

Best new experience: The graphic novel, or more specifically, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Several books made it to Broadway this year and this was one of them. It was terrific, but, as always, the book was better.

Best Correspondence: Meanwhile There Are Letters: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and Ross MacDonald. Two thoughtful and decent people become soul mates. And since I had never read anything by Macdonald…

Best Mystery: The Moving Target by Ross Macdonald. His first book. I hear he gets better and better so I'm looking forward to reading more. Honorable mention: The Lewis Trilogy by Peter May.

Best Nonfiction: The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert. We are doomed, but at least Kolbert makes the reasons for our demise fascinating. Couldn’t put this down. ‪Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano, ‪The Invisible Woman by Claire Tomlin, ‪Lincoln at Gettysburg by Garry Wills and Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicolson all get honorable mention here.

Best Novel: The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante Book 2 of 4. I'm hooked. Honorable mentions: Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff, A God In Ruins by Kate Atkinson and the Things That Always Were by late LTer Solla Carrock.

Best Essays: ‪Between the World and Me by Ta Nehesi Coates. As powerful as you've probably heard. I've read his Atlantic magazine blog for years and loved reading his thoughts as he explored the Civil War and studied French.

2014 Reading

Best of the Best:

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

The Best:

A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb
Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Dickinson Unbound: Paper, Process, Poetics by Alexandria Socarides
Columbine by Dave Cullen
"The Henriad" (Reread Richard II; Henry IV, part 1; Henry IV, part 2; and Henry V prior to watching The Hollow Crown)

Honorable Mention:

A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor
The Immortal Evening by Stanley Plumly
Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman
Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall

Curently Reading:

Barcelona by Robert Hughes
The Heart of Spain: Anthology of fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry by Alvah Bessie

Ongoing:

The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition by Emily Dickinson, ed. by R.W. Franklin

2016 Reading

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee ★★★★
The Man in the High Castle by Philip Dick ★★★1/2
City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World's Largest Refugee Camp by Ben Rawlence ★★★★
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr ★★
Outline by Rachel Cusk ★★★1/2
Our Mother's Brief Affair by Richard Greenberg (a play) ★
Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald ★★★★
Troubles by J.G. Farrell ★★★★1/2
A Spool of Blue Thread By Anne Tyler ★★★
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard ★★★★
A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century by Jerome Charyn ★★★1/2
Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson ★★★★★
Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 by Adam Hochschild ★★★★
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell ★★★★★
A Not So Perfect Crime by Teresa Solana★★★
Venus and Adonis by Shakespeare ★★★★
The Merry Wives of Windsor by Shakespeare ★★★★

Nice to see you over here again.

I'm noting your Homer comments. My New Years day will involve starting the Iliad for the first time. I always assumed I would read Fagles - but have it in Kindle ebook form, which I now regret...and I have a copy of Latimer in hardback on loan from the library. Now I'm thinking I really should go with Latimer...

Any opinion on who has better notes?

Anyway welcome to the new CR.

Hi thea,
The Welty MacDonald letters look interesting. I binge read Ferrante a few weeks ago. Great stuff. Happy you're back.

Hi Dan. Thanks for the welcome.

The notes, such as they are, and the introductions for both the Fagles and the Lattimore, are fine. The first time I read Lattimore I used the A Companion to the Iliad, based on the Lattimore translation by Malcolm M. Willock. It's first rate and would be helpful with either translation. While reading Fagles I listened to the Elizabeth Vandiver lectures on the Iliad from The Great Courses. She's interesting--12 half-hour lectures, fairly basic, but good contextualizing, especially for a second read.

You've got quite a reading line-up, one that I'll be really interested in following, for all of the Classics to be sure, but also for Pynchon. I've been putting him off for years.

Hi Jane. Good to hear from you.

The letters are low-key by today's standards, but if you're a Welty fan, which I am, they will be of special interest. I could easily binge on Ferrante, but I've been teasing the books out over time. I'm hoping to get to the third this winter and I may take on the fourth quickly because several friends are aching to discuss the series with me and I'm worried that one will eventually say to much about it!

I look forward to following your reading.

So good to see you here again! I kind of dropped out last year midstream but am looking forward to following your reading this year.

Suzanne! Good to hear from you! I looked for you when I joined this year and was disappointed not to see your thread. Off to find it now...

Haven't got the thread up and running yet, but soon. . . . very soon.

>1 theaelizabet: Hi! I too, enjoyed Fagles' vivid translation, and I'm looking forward to your thread this year. Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, Reva! Thanks for dropping by.

Hope to follow your reading again this year!

A God in Ruins and The Sixth Extinction were two of my top reads for 2015 too.

>12 arubabookwoman: Hi! They were both really top of the line, weren't they? Looking forward to reading about your reading, too!

Hope you do stay around this time. The Welty - MacDonald correspondence sounds intriguing, no LT reviews though.

>1 theaelizabet: Interesting that you think either translation of Illiad is good. I've heard people who live and die by one or the other. I haven't read it, but I'm pretty sure I have the Lattimore translation.

Hope you had a great weekend!

1. Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life★★★★
by Hermione Lee

Several years ago, at a local library’s used book sale, I bought the entire fictional output of Penelope Fitzgerald—10 rather slim books for which I think I paid about five dollars. The books looked as though they’d never been read. I knew little about her. A “late bloomer” I thought I’d read somewhere? The blurbs on the covers mentioned many awards and honors. It seemed like a good deal.

I enjoyed her first novel, The Golden Child. It’s a humorous mystery, published in 1977, and written largely to amuse her husband when he was battling what turned out to be a terminal illness. “A marvelous mess,” wrote one reviewer. Fair enough. It’s a smart, satirical look at a major archeological exhibition at a major museum (think Tutankhamen at the British Museum) with lots of fusty academics and bureaucrats plotting and politicizing. Fun.

Next I read The Book Shop, her second novel, published a year later. At a mere 123 pages, it’s a jewel of a book. Its publication surprised the Brit Lit world since the book--and its author-- seemed to come out of nowhere to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She was 62 at the time and would write seven more novels, a book of short stories, a third biography (she had written two others just before switching to fiction) and win a slew of awards before her death in 2000 at the age of 84.

After reading those two books I forgot about her and the rest of her work that sat on my shelves until the NYT Book Review saw fit to name this biography as one of their “Ten Best Books of 2014.” It’s the first full-out critical assessment of her work and life. Apparently, forgetting about Fitzgerald happens a lot.

Fitzgerald was elusive and private. Novelist A.S. Byatt, who for a time was a teaching colleague of Fitzgerald, explained as much to biographer Lee:

Antonia Byatt found her contradictory. She could be sharp; she could appear vague and self-effacing; she was also knowledgeable, perceptive and generous. “She was interesting to know, but not easy to get to know well….” Byatt hugely admired her work, and gradually came to think of her as “one of the major writers of my time.” But remembering their period together as colleagues, she thought that Fitzgerald was “not a nice person. Geniuses are not nice people.”

Lee ably takes the reader through the sweep of Fitzgerald’s life. Born during WWI, she came from an accomplished family; her father was the editor of Punch magazine, one of her uncles was a member of the Bletchly Park team that conquered the Enigma machine during WWII. Known both as “The Blonde Bombshell” and as incredibly smart during her Oxford years (legend has it that Fitzgerald not only “got a First,” but that her papers were “…so outstandingly good they were kept and bound in vellum by her examiner…”), she eventually ended up as a BBC producer and scriptwriter during and after the second world war. Post-war, she married an Irish army officer, had three children, co-edited a literary magazine with him for three years (World Review) and then had it all crash down around her when his alcoholism and serious trouble with the law made them destitute. They lived for many years in council housing while the family scraped by largely on her teaching income (she taught for 26 years). Lee is especially good at contextualizing and exploring Fitzgerald’s work, influences and relationships (which were mainly with family members, but also those few friends with whom she became close, especially writers J.L. Carr, Stevie Smith and later Penelope Lively).

I’ll continue to read Fitzgerald in order, so next up for me will be Offshore, a story inspired by the time she and her family lived on a houseboat on the Thames because it was all that they could afford. (In real life, the boat sank, taking all of their possessions with it. She still showed up to teach on the day that it happened.)

Offshore was awarded the Booker Prize in a year where many thought V.S. Naipul would win for A Bend in the River. Lee describes a BBC program about the prize that year as being “breathtakingly condescending” toward Fitzgerald. Host Robert Robinson, “…evidently thrown by not having the big beasts he had expected, and by being presented a with a winner he had clearly never heard of, or read, steers the conversation, in his best patrician manner, with many jokey remarks…into a general discussion about literary prizes. He begins by proposing…that “the Booker judges had made the wrong choice” and that the “best book didn’t win….” Did she have a view of what a novel should be?

“That’s the scandal about novels, isn’t it?” she replies. “That they don’t have any classical models. But I would say it started as soon as people realized that it was dark as night—that it was dark outside. And they felt that they would like a story told them. And that’s what novels are for.”

Blankly uncomprehending, Robinson lumbers on: “But don’t you think it must deliver something of importance to everyone?” “No, I don’t,” she answers, just for a moment allowing sharpness through. “I think it’s that, for the time being, you forget that it’s dark outside.””

Enjoyed your review of the Fitzgerald bio. Have been curious about her books for a while but haven't gotten there yet. Making a note --- again!

>16 theaelizabet: Good review! I love Fitzgerald. Her books are short, but it feels like so much talent is distilled in them. I'll have to keep an eye out for the biography. Offshore is excellent--I hope you enjoy it.

>14 SassyLassy: I'd never realized that! I should try my hand at one if I have time. Narrow audience, though. I think you have to really love on author or the other to care about it.

>15 The_Hibernator: I know, right? I actually think both are quite wonderful, they just offer different things.

>17 Poquette: There's always another interesting writer and not enough time to read them all! One of the beauties of Fitzgerald is that she believed in "writing short."

>18 cabegley: Thanks! I'm looking forward to it. There's so very much to say about the bio. It's well done and Fitzgerald is a truly interesting subject.

Great review of Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life -- a writer I knew nothing about and must find our about.

>21 janeajones: Thanks, Jane. I hope to get to Offshore sooner rather than later.

>16 theaelizabet: The biography sounds good, but mostly I'm interested in Penelope Fitzgerald's books. I may have one in my wishlist somewhere, but you really make me want to read them.

>16 theaelizabet: That's a great review of Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life. It has landed on my wishlist, and The Blue Flower, which is on my shelf, has moved up the queue.

>23 FlorenceArt: and >24 NanaCC: Thanks! This is my year to put more of a dent into her work. I've just ordered her bio of poet Charlotte Mew (Charlotte Mew and Her Friends). I'm interested in Mew, but also in how Fitzgerald handles her.

Great review of Fitzgerald. I remember reading The Bookshop and really loved it, but somehow I never read another one by her. You brought her back on my radar!

I don't think I've ever come across Penelope Fitzgerald before. Some of her books sound interesting. I think that's yet more for my wishlist!

>16 theaelizabet: that's a great review! I actually hadn't come across her until Lee published this and it was reviewed in turn. I'm going to see if I can get my hands on The Golden Child.

Enjoyed reading your excellent review of Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life. Quick search of my bookshelves has revealed i have not got any of her books.

Always interested late bloomers.

>26 Simone2: I know. I dumped her after loving The Bookshop. I even enjoyed Golden Child, which was really before she established her voice.

>27 valkyrdeath: Glad I can add to what I'm sure is an ever expanding list! I see that you're reading The Man in the High Castle. Me, too. We'll have to compare notes.

>28 reva8: The Golden Child is fun, The Bookshop is close to sublime. She's worth looking into!

>29 baswood: Knowing your reading Barry, I suspect you might enjoy The Blue Flower, a book I've read about, but not yet read, granted. I'm much more interested in reading her complete works after getting to know her through this bio.

>16 theaelizabet: Penelope Fitzgerald is an author whose works I've circled around for a while, but even if I pick one up, I always put it back. I'm not sure why, perhaps because I fear she will be too "English" in that sense of insular middle class subject matter. The Blue Flower which you recommended to bas above is probably the one I would be most likely to read, if only to rid myself of this probably unfounded bias, and because it is a different place and time. Whenever I have heard her interviewed on the radio, I have always resolved to read her, but so far to no avail.

I did like your linking of your Fitzgerald reading to the biography. Apparently, forgetting about Fitzgerald happens a lot says something about her writing. For some reason I had always linked her writing to wanting to be A S Byatt, whose writing I admire, so that was interesting to discover they were onetime colleagues and presumably polite rivals.

>16 theaelizabet:, >31 SassyLassy: forgetting about Fitzgerald happens a lot

Yes. It doesn't help that there are quite a few other middle-class, mid-20th-century English women writers with quite similar names. I keep on overlooking her, but I read both The bookshop and Offshore last year and loved both of them. I can see how she might not appeal to American readers, though, because both of those books are effectively celebrations of heroic failure, which is a concept that doesn't necessarily travel well. Byatt probably isn't a good point of reference: I think Fitzgerald aligns much better with writers like Beryl Bainbridge, Elizabeth Taylor and Barbara Pym (and the amazing Stevie Smith, of course, who's already been mentioned a couple of times above). The abstract ideas are buried in the absurdity of the other stuff, not pushed into the foreground.
I particularly enjoy the way Fitzgerald does children: that seems to be quite inimitable.

>30 theaelizabet: Interesting timing with The Man in the High Castle! I've enjoyed most of the stuff by Philip K Dick I've read so I'm fairly optimistic about it.

>30 theaelizabet: Just adding a thumbs up for The Blue Flower. I think it's my favorite of Fitzgerald's that I've read.

>32 thorold: While I'm not American, I see what you mean about "heroic failure" not travelling well, although Sebastian Faulks did write an interesting nonfiction book on the topic: The Fatal Englishman. Beryl Bainbridge was an author I had thought of as a comparator. I have yet to read any of the others (there's that evil bias again) but would like to try Elizabeth Taylor. I wasn't thinking Fitzgerald compared to Byatt, just that she might like to.

That is interesting about writing children, a very difficult thing to do well, and one I look for when children are involved.

>34 cabegley: I'll keep that in mind as I may now have to commit to reading a Fitzgerald book!

>31 SassyLassy: >32 thorold: >35 SassyLassy:

Your very interesting comments reminded me of these excerpts, which I had underlined during my reading. There are more, but this will give you the gist. I wish I could better weigh-in on them, but my reading of her, so far, is elemental. Thorold, Lee also noted Fitzgerald's excellent characterization of children.

"You are in Barbara Pym's group someone said to me firmly the other day, you either have to be in hers or Beryl's." She admired Barbara Pym--more than she admired Beryl Bainbridge--but she did not want to be in anyone's group....

She often described herself as a typically English novelist, typical because English wit is a matter of "self-concealment, meiosis, and self-deprecation," because most English people think "life is not important enough to be tragic and too serious to be comic," because if you are English you feel "you shouldn't make a fuss" and because English humorists are also great depressives...Yet she identifies much more with European writers, often speaking of her love of the European novella. She is--and she knows it--a very un-English English novelist, more to be compared with writers such as Beckett, Turgenev, Alain-Fournier or Pavese than with English counterparts like Stevie Smith, Barbara Pym, Beryl Bainbridge or J.L. Carr....

She regularly said that, at a certain point in her writing, she wanted to get away from her own experiences. But she also wanted not to be defined by her Englishness. This was not just a matter of moving her subject matter outside of England. Her strategies for making a fictional world out of scenes, images, fragments, moments, with a light yoking of plot and a strong feeling of things not said, created a feeling of strangeness in what could be superficially read as lightweight comedies of manners. These strategies made her more like Turgenev than like Barbara Pym. Always evasive, she enjoyed camouflaging herself in foreign colors....

A celebration of her life and work at the Royal Society of Literature followed a year later, with contributions by Sebastian Faulks, who read with gusto for Human Voices...and A.S. Byatt spoke about science in The Gate of Angels. She expressed her enormous admiration for Fitzgerald, but also her bafflement. Her books are apparently precise, she said, yet "they cannot be grasped, or completely understood.

>33 valkyrdeath: I think I'll finish it this weekend. I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep a few years and ago and enjoyed it, despite the fact that I'm poorly read in SF. I came to this one because I was curious after watching Amazon Prime's adaptation. Did you see it?

>34 cabegley: I've heard that from several people and it sounds fascinating. Since her books are relatively slim and few, I think I'll read her in order, so unfortunately it's going to be a bit before I get to that one!

>37 theaelizabet: I'll probably finish it within a couple of days now. I liked Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep too, and I've just got hold of a graphic novel adaptation, but one that contains the full text of the novel within it, so I'm going to reread it in that form at some point.
I haven't seem the Amazon adaptation of The Man in the High Castle yet, but I'm considering it. Is it worth watching? And does it have a proper ending or does it just end with a setup for season two? I hate when shows do that and it always puts me off watching until I know the whole thing is finished.

>39 valkyrdeath: It is fairly well-acted and the art direction is first rate, but I thought the story was a mess. Since I had enjoyed Androids (and tend to enjoy alternate histories) I had looked forward to the adaptation. A quick read about the story on Wikipedia showed me that the writers must have been working off of a bad synopsis and sketchy character list. They add storylines and characters and make the premise a "who-done-it?" Don't think that's what Dick was going for. And yes, the ending is a set-up for season two.

Of course, all of this led me to read the book!

Fabulous review of Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life, Thea. I plan to read all of the Booker Prize winners, so I'll certainly read Offshore in the near future.

>40 theaelizabet: Think I'll give that series a miss for now then. Sounds like it only has a vague resemblence to the book. Maybe when it has a definite ending I might consider it again.

It's good that it led you to the book. That's one of the good things about adaptations, even when they're not completely accurate. I've discovered some great books that way.

>36 theaelizabet: Thanks for that really interesting expansion. I may have to read Lee as well as Fitzgerald! There was something there, the "...most English people think 'life is not important enough to be tragic and too serious to be comic,'..." that made me think perhaps that is the great difference between English and Scottish fiction. The Scots explore and may even revel in both the tragedy and the comedy, although in a very minimalist way, life is important; however, cue that self deprecation and depressive humourist you mention with regard to English writing.

The idea of Fitzgerald moving her subject matter outside England to lose some of that feel made me try to think of some of her contemporaries and how successful they might have been at this. The only one I came up with right away was Olivia Manning (eight years older), whom I don't think quite succeeded.

I do like the idea of being compared with Turgenev. I am going to the library later today and will see what I can find.

I came across Alan Hollinghurst's extended review of the Lee biography for the NYRB: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/12/04/victory-penelope-fitzgerald/
He seems to approve of both Fitzgerald and Lee, but somehow doesn't really say all that much about Fitzgerald's writing.

Wonderful review, and terrific quotes in #36.

>41 kidzdoc: Thanks, Darryl. I'll be watching to see when you read her. I'm always interested in what you think.

>43 SassyLassy: I'm intrigued by your comment re: Scots v. English fiction. And though you're probably referring more to the classics, I'm going to keep it in mind as I read What Ends. Also, I've never read Turgenev and think I might profit by adding him to my reading year of PF.

>44 thorold: Mark, thanks for that. Really interesting article.

"Hers was very much the art that hides art, and she had besides a horror of explanation...In her own oblique and lightning-quick way, Fitzgerald pays us the great compliment of trusting our active intelligence in construing and connecting." I think this is very true, even in The Golden Child, which I doubt is indicative of her later work.

>45 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan.

2. The Man in the High Castle ★★★1/2
by Philip K. Dick

The year is 1962, fifteen years after the end of an alternate version of WWII. The United States, as we knew it, is no more and has been split into three separate entities: the Pacific States of America (the west coast, ruled by Japan), the United States (the eastern third of our country, dominated by the brutal Third Reich) and the Rocky Mountain buffer zone (which is run by…well, its never really clear).

So there’s a scrappy, but ingenious underground movement of Americans battling to overthrow their oppressors and return America to its former glory, right? No. Not even close.

In fact, the conquered natives in this story are surviving and adapting, at least in the Pacific States and the buffer zone, where most of the story takes place. Former Americans now consult the I Ching and internalize and embrace foreign behavior and concepts such as “wu.” They create industries that cater to the ruling tastes, especially the desire for “antique Americana” tchotchkes. They defer and deflect, while contemptuously noting what their conquerors lack. (Note that the story was published during the Civil Rights era.)

The new rulers, however, are less settled. The Japanese mistrust their Nazi counterparts, ever mindful that the Reich wiped out not only the Jewish people, but also most of the population of Africa, and the Nazis are threatened by a book called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, in which the United States wins the war. So yes, you’re reading an alternate history that heavily features a book of alternate history.

Dick packs a load of questions that only become apparent on reflection: What or who can determine fate? Power? Reality? Does art play a role? And finally, on the personal level, just how alternate is this reality?

An interesting note: Dick has written a scene where the woman is in control of her sexuality and choice of partner, and he allows us to see this partner through her eyes, the female gaze, if you will. It’s a quick moment, but an interesting one for 1963, when the book was published.

And finally, Amazon Prime has produced an episodic story that has the title of this book. It introduces new characters and story lines, and yes, there’s a scrappy, but ingenious underground movement. Dick claims he wrote his book using the I Ching to steer the twists and turns of the story. Perhaps the writers for the Amazon Prime series did the same.

A book to reread and ponder.

Interesting and fun review. I had grouped PkD into the scifi category, which for me means I might never read him. But this has appeal.

>48 theaelizabet: Sounds like we were both expecting the usual alternate world resistance fighters storyline. I was so impressed when I realised the book was completely different, though I should have expected that from Dick. It sounds like we had a lot of similar thoughts about it while reading, and afterwards. I liked that it had people who were adapting to the situation, because in the end, that's what most of the people who are surviving would be doing, by necessity. I'm glad that you liked it too and that I'm not just reading things into it that weren't there!

>49 dchaikin: PKD wrote both sci-fi and other stuff that wasn't sci-fi at all, though all his stuff tends to just get put in the sci-fi category these days. Even when he wrote sci-fi, it wasn't quite like anyone else. For some reason, even though they have very different writing styles, I've always sort of associated him with Kurt Vonnegut in that respect.

Enjoyed your review of The Man in the High castle.

>48 theaelizabet: I love Philip K Dick, though that's not one of his books that I've read. Sounds interesting. Thanks for the review.

Hope you have a great week ahead!

Great review of The Man in the High Castle, Thea!

>49 dchaikin: >50 valkyrdeath: >51 baswood: >52 The_Hibernator: >53 kidzdoc: Thanks everyone. I seldom read science fiction, but when I do I turn to those that are now considered classics, which is almost everything that Philip K. Dick wrote. Valkyrdeath has suggested Ubik for my next PKD read and so I may return to science fiction again later this year.

A really interesting review of the PKD, thea. I'm glad I found you here :) I rarely read science fiction either, but alternative history sounds like a sub-genre that could really do the trick. Do you prefer not to post your reviews where we can thumb it? Anti-thumb complex?

Welcome! I have no opinion on thumbing, I just overlooked posting the review to the book. Perhaps now I'll remember to do so. Glad to see you here.

Read the Lattimore Odyssey aeons ago. More recently I really enjoyed the Fagles Aeneid (which I hadn't read at all).

The one type of spec fic that hasn't grabbed me yet is "alternative history" but there is always a first time and Dick is so good.

Great stuff on Fitzgerald. That bio is on my WL -- maybe I need to do something more about that. I was blown away by Offshore and also by At Freddie's.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I just saw that you started reading SPQR. It seems like something I would read as well and I would love to hear your thoughts once you finished it.

By the way, I love the picture in your first post.