Seeing that illustration again after many, many years was a real blast. Greatly appreciated!
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Very few books/stories by Vernor Vinge left to read … I’m through almost all of them. Just ordered “True Names … and Other Dangers” and “Threats … and Other Promises” (used, ofc), and then, I think, I have all of Vinge’s SF novels and stories that have been printed in books.
Currently I’m halfway through his book “Rainbows End” …
… and it feels like “Five Stars” already … but then again, for me, ALL books and stories by Vinge gave me that feeling after the usual five to ten pages I need to get into his worlds, and after these initial pages I’m totally immersed in them, I have yet to read anything by Vinge that would disappoint me.
After this, if the two story collections mentioned above won’t arrive earlier, it will be Adrian Tchaikovsky again, I still have quite big “To Read” stack of his books.
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Trying to speed through this new release:
I heard one of the authors present his ideas almost 20 years ago; tomorrow I get to go hear the other!
At the halfway point, it seems like a thorough survey of hypotheses about the origin of life. Extreme detail on the biochemistry, far less on geology and astrophysics. I find it interesting but I’m not sure that it’s more useful than just browsing these topics on Wikipedia.
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One of my all time favourites:
Alexandre Dumas - The count of Monte Cristo
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The Count of Monte Cristo is my favorite novel of all time. And the last line is one of my favorite epigrams: “…has not the count just told us that all human wisdom is summed up in two words?—Wait and hope.”
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Interesting …
(I’m still reading the last of Vernor Vinge’s SF stories (“True Names”) that I could find that I haven’t yet read … I think I have read all his novels now … the last one, just as mind-blowing as his others, was “Rainbows End” (see above).)
But the reason I clicked “reply” to your post, @Feijoa, is this book, which is the next in my “to read” stack:
Julie Nováková, Lucas K. Law & Susan Forest (eds.): “Life Beyond Us – An Original Anthology of SF Stories And Science Essays”
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I’m currently reading the second book of the Tsitsi Dangarembga’s trilogy, The Book of Not (but I read it in German, where it’s called “Verleugnen”).
And I’m also reading “Mythos Bildung” by Aladin El-Mafaalani, which is a truly mindblowing sociological analysis of the German education system and its segregation by class. Many seemingly paradox mechanisms are explained logically. If you are German, I can highly recommend reading it (also to people with no children/grandchildren).
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Gives me memory of Durkheim “la reproduction”
Very recognisable, reading multiple books in the same time period.
Hope it doesn’t cause you any reading stress.
I always feel a bit guilty if I start a new book before the one(s) I am reading stil have das Lesezeichen somewhere in the middle of the book. Always a risk that they stay there permanently 
Having said this; just started Giovanni Guareschi’s Don Camillo series.
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I don’t feel guilty about that. 
It’s just a part of living with ADHD.
But sometimes it does stress me a bit, because I borrow most books from the library. Physical books are not a problem, as they are borrowed for 4 weeks and that time can be prolonged. Quite many good books, however, are only available as ebooks, and can only be borrowed for 21 days max. If a book is popular, and other people are waiting for it, it might take a while until I can borrow it again. 
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Strictly a bit off topic …
Isaac Asimov sitting on a throne of books he authored (500+ books, don’t know the exact number).
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Nine Nasty Words by John McWhorter is a guided tour through the history of profanity in the English language. The story is told with an abundance of good humour, although the book also explores the darker side of language with the tone becoming appropriately sober. In any case, McWhorter, who teaches linguistics at Columbia University in New York, displays a firm command of the subject, a wealth of factoids and anecdotal material that stretches from the time of the Viking invasions to the contemporary pop culture scene. It’s ideal for readers attracted to both language studies and trivia.
I don’t know to what extent I can review the book without violating this website’s terms of service. There are certainly some oblique ways of going about it, but I’ve concluded that this would likely be a bit wearisome for me and possibly exasperating for anyone reading it. “Oh for crying out loud, will you stop mincing about and just say the damn word!” That kind of thing.
What I can tell you is that the book thoroughly details how these words evolved, the amazing versatility some of them acquired over time, and, perhaps most impressively, how language just keeps on bobbing and weaving and resisting attempts to control it. It really is a force of nature, relentless and often capricious. Words originally intended to demean and disparage can sometimes become terms of fellowship and solidarity; or a word that once indicated minimal worth suddenly expresses authenticity. People of bygone eras seem predictably puritanical about religious terminology, yet they can surprise us with their liberal use of gutter words that we would hesitate over. There’s a great deal to discover here.
I’ll leave you with a couple of language nuggets. The original English word for rabbit is coney—rhymes with money. This seems innocuous enough. But the root of the word bears a troubling resemblance to a distasteful four letter word the nature of which I won’t specify here. And thanks to some mischief makers ( among them the famous seventeenth century diarist Samuel Pepys ) coney eventually fell out of favour and was replaced by rabbit, which originally referred to a juvenile coney.
Furthermore, according to a now discredited theory, another of those nasty words was inspired by an instruction that sometimes appeared on merchant vessels. Ship high in transit. Because you wouldn’t want all that sheep manure to get wet belowdecks. That stuff is gold, man. Got to care for it properly.
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This calls to mind Gershon Legman’s No Laughing Matter: The Rationale of the Dirty Joke. I have a copy of that from my dad’s library, but I have never read it because it is a huge book. I did read my father’s 2-volume edition of Legman’s limerick study: The Limerick and More Limericks. Limericks, of course, originated as a lewd literary form, and the ingenuity of the lewd mind is extraordinary to behold, but ultimately it is boring. I traded them away some years ago and got very good value on them, as they are somewhat rare.
Coney is another name for the rock hyrax in the Near and Middle East, still commonly used today among the English speakers in those areas. It also appears in translations of the Old Testament. I didn’t know about it as an early alternative for rabbit, but it suggests an interesting explanation for its present survival. Translators often use familiar terms for things unknown to them. In this case the early Bible translators probably didn’t know the hyrax and so they used the familiar term for a similar creature the rabbit, known to them at that time as a coney. Thanks for the info.
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Thanks, ordered a used copy … sounds like something that I MUST have, as I have always had a liking for the vulgar and obscene
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About to start this one (but forst finishing another book 
It is about Western Europe after the Roman empire collapsed and the early middle ages started.
Translated into Dutch of his early book (1999) Krigarnas och helgonens tid: Västeuropas historia 400–800 e.Kr. ( The Era of Warriors and Saints: Western European History 400-800 A.D.)
Not sure if it is translated into English.
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I finished my Iliad rereading project more than a month ago, but I have been procrastinating about posting here because it is hard to know what to say. I first read it when I was 13 or 14 in the highly regarded Richmond Lattimore translation, but I wasn’t keen on it and liked The Odyssey much better. Nevertheless, I have wanted for decades to reread it as an adult. When I decided to do so, I faced the problem of choosing a translation. I was so impressed with Robert Fitzgerald’s translations of The Odyssey and The Aeneid that I was determined to read his Iliad. However, since 1990 I had wanted to read Michael Reck’s version. Originally self-published as The Iliad for Speaking, it was picked up and republished by HarperCollins (1994) simply as The Iliad. The reason for my interest was that Reck was my father’s best friend (I’ll say more on this at the end). Consequently, I conceived the idea of simultaneously reading all three versions, comparing them side-by-side, thinking it would provide more illumination of the text. This proved true and valuable beyond my expectations.
I was amazed by the great divergence of the translations. The first problem posed by the Iliad is that it is written in dactylic hexameter, which does not fit the English language very well. A book that delves deeply into the problem and potential solutions is Matthew Arnold’s On Translating Homer (On Translating Homer - Wikipedia), which I read in the Chelsea House reprint edition (1983). Arnold does a great job of defining the qualities in Homer’s poetry in a way that is understandable even if one, as I, does not read ancient Greek.
Lattimore used a free, six-beat line and insisted on an epic diction without anachronistic words and usages. He is usually faithful to the details of meaning and use of epithets. His overarching deficiency, surprising for such a revered translation, is that he was a bad poet in my opinion. He commits the two chief crimes of bad poetry: padding his lines and torturing the syntax to make the meter work. Some of the syntax is so bad that I had trouble understanding the passages without the help of Fitzgerald and Reck. Another consequence of his choices is that his is the least swift of the three versions when it come to the movement of the lines.
Fitzgerald used a free iambic pentameter, but he often omits the epithets and he seems to have the least fidelity to the details of the original, which I found disappointing. He is, however, a much better poet than Lattimore, and his lines have great clarity and movement.
Reck’s primary aim was to achieve a style consistent with the oral tradition of the rhapsodists, the entertainers who orated the poem in ancient times (and even today in some places). Reck has a great introduction that focuses on this. Using a free iambic meter (not necessarily pentameter) and simple clear language that is poetically rendered with appropriate alliteration and assonance, he achieves a remarkably swift and usually elegant text. His fidelity to the details approaches Lattimore, and he retains most of the epithets. His one failing, I think, is that he sometimes goes overboard in adopting a modern diction. This was a deliberate effort to imitate the practice of oral tradition to make the work speak to every generation. His introduction alludes to this, but I also have it directly from Reck, when I spoke with him in 1973. On the positive side, his translation is certainly the most swift and lucid of the three; it will be my choice if I ever reread the Iliad again.
I also found one of my father’s books, the Monarch Notes on the Iliad (1963) by classicists David Sider and David Konstan, to be very useful because it has illuminating comments throughout as well as some concise discussion of the narrative elements, which are what interest me the most. For example, the story can be considered more of a double Greek tragedy than an epic, in which Achilles, the loner, is contrasted in several thematic ways with Hector, the social man.
I will mention a few favorite scenes: I was especially moved by the moment when Diomedes and Glaucus exchange genealogies and realize that their grandfathers had pledged eternal friendship to one another. To honor that they decide not to fight each other, declaring that there are plenty of other Trojans (or Achaeans) for them to kill (6:119-236).
At the end of the chariot race (23: 566-611), Menelaus is furious because of the trick that Antilochus played to beat him, but the latter humbles himself, pleading the impetuosity of youth and gives his prize to Menelaus, who is instantly mollified and gives back the prize as a mark of esteem for the sacrifices Antilochus has made in the war. It’s a beautiful scene of mutual graciousness that certainly had little effect on me when I was a young teen.
And of course, the final scene (Book 24) when Achilles yields up to Priam the body of Hector is truly awesome. Both men are broken in their own way, but experience an empathy that arises almost to the level of reconciliation—something so personal that they agree to keep it secret between them because the troops would not understand.
A few recollections about Mike Reck. My dad and Reck met in high school and became fast friends over their common literary interests. During their college summers they hung out in a small friend group, made several long hitch-hiking trips together, and briefly shared an apartment in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood. In 1950, they visited Ezra Pound at St. Elizabeth’s, and Reck went on to write an interesting book about Pound, which I read as a young adult. When Reck’s academic career took him away—teaching English/poetry, ancient Greek, and Japanese at the University of Puerto Rico and later as a visiting professor at several German universities—he and my father stayed in touch with long typewritten letters.
I met Reck on three occasions when he visited the U.S. (not counting the baby shower when I was born). He had the strangest, thick, nondescript accent I have ever heard, due to the fact that he spoke 10 languages. At 15, I was the proverbial child, primarily “seen but not heard” as I enjoyed an evening of reminiscences between him and dad. When I was 19, my dad and I picked up Reck from another friend’s house in Maryland, and on the drive home I had the opportunity for a long, wide-ranging conversation with Reck about poetry (dad was driving). At 39, I had only a brief meet-and-greet at my dad’s house. They went down to the Smithsonian, but had to cut it short because Reck tired quickly from the stomach cancer that soon killed him. Happily, he lived long enough to sign the contract for Harper’s publication, but died before he saw the published book.
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That does sound like a very good read.
It reminds of of a blog article I read about old English street names. Apparently, many towns in England used to have a “Grope**** Lane” or so, which was at some point renamed. This was simply a descriptive name, because originally, you could go to those lanes and grope certain body parts (in exchange for money, ofc), and people were quite straightforward about that in their language.
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<Spock> Fascinating </Spock>
Now, ofc, I had to read a little about Grape Lane (send your kids to bed before clicking that).
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Currently reading Free Fall in Crimson by John D. MacDonald, which is Travis McGee #19 (but only the 14th that I have read). It is without doubt the weakest I have read; I am one-third done and it seems like little of consequence has happened. I sense a falling off of MacDonald’s inventive powers, as this came out only 5 years before his death in 1986.
My nonfiction book is a fun read: Science Fiction in the 20th Century (1999) by the noted SF author Frank M. Robinson. It is a beautiful, large-format, photo-rich volume in mint condition that I got for a dollar at a library sale on Saturday. Normally I wouldn’t acquire something like this, but when glancing over it I found a couple anecdotes I didn’t know, which suggests it may contain other information I don’t know. It also talks about a few obscure pulps I never heard of.
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im reading hikaru no go again but for non go books im reading peter and the starcatchers
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