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2009-05-26, 1:56 p.m.:
Revised* reading list, summer 2009: *Revised, yet still not reasonable The Hero with a Thousand Faces
The Canterbury Tales (Riverside Chaucer)
The Consolation of Philosophy
Dracula (re-read)
Frankenstein (re-read)
The Tale of Genji (finish)
Companion to the Tale of Genji
The Making of the Middle Ages
Le Morte Darther (Winchester Manuscript)
Watchmen
Barbarians to Angels
Six Records of a Floating Life
The Norman Conquest
Ex Machina
Arabian Nights
Good Wives
Clarissa
The Grail Tradition
The Arthurian Tradition
Four Hundred Years of Excess Horror
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword
The Wasteland
The Good Soldier
La Reine Margot
Charles I (finish)
Walden Pond & Civil Disobedience
The History of the English Language
Piers Plowman (most important poem of Alliterative Revival)
The Owl and the Nightingale (among the first Middle English poems)
Wynnere and Wastoure (another key AR poem, 1352; Black Death, 1348)
Mandeville�s Travels (ca. 1356; source for Purity, by Gawain poet)
Bocaccio�s Olympia (ca. 1360; source for pearl, by Gawain poet)
*The Decameron
Gawain and the Green Knight (Gawain poet: flourished from 1360-1390)
Troilus and Crisyde (ca. 1385)
Japanese Gothic Tales (finish)
Travellers of A Hundred Ages (excerpts from Japanese diaries)
The Far Side of Evil (a favorite from my childhood � long sought after, recently rediscovered)
Blindness
Quicksand
Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language If there�s time:
The Complete Works of Tacitus
The Dream of Scipio (Macrobius)
The Portable Atheist
Daniel Deronda
1 comments
2009-05-11, 8:12 p.m.:
... Craig Arnold ... . 0 comments
2009-05-11, 1:28 a.m.:
I have realized for a fact that I am definitely Werther trying to be Charlotte in this life and that this is my great burden/challenge to work out ... The first thing that has not come easy to me in this life. How to be a good parent, now that I am one. When really I was made to be a scholar the whole time. Now I must reconcile both, as neither Werther nor Charlotte did. Successfully. Nothing I ever seriously worked towards did not work out. And now this ... being a parent, a good parent. It is the challenge of my life, my life's work. But I WILL NOT give up scholarship ... And so I must figure out a way to make it all fit and to give these two boys the best that I can and all they deserve. More, if possible. It seems daunting to be facing your first REAL challenge at the age of 44. I realize now how easy everything has been till now. I realize the enormity of the task before me. And that I must take baby steps towards fulfilling it or else succumb to despair. And we all know that despair leads nowhere. And so I will smile until the smile feels real and work until the work pays off. And so, also, to bed. 0 comments
2009-04-22, 9:39 p.m.:
I come out of the bedroom to find Atticus and Ronan standing in the hall. It is about 7am. Atticus shows me the thermometer he is holding. He then fixes me with a very serious look and says, "Ronan was coughing so I took his temperature. It was 96-2."
And indeed it was. The next day he went in with me to pick up Ronan at preschool and Fiona shyly greeted him and he shyly greeted her. He smiled his goofy, happy smile and rolled his eyes around a bit. She's just a few months younger, has the prettiest mother ever, but she is an entire year behind him in school. So later I said to him: "So you like Fiona?" And then, the best thing. His eyes rolled completely back into his head, his smiled got as wide as ear to ear, and he declamed: "She HYPNOTIZES me!" 2 comments
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