Robert Fagles (1933-2008)

From Chris Hedges’s article in The New York Times, “A Bridge Between the Classics and the Masses”, April 13, 2004:
On his deathbed, the Roman poet Virgil asked that the manuscript of his greatest work, The Aeneid, be destroyed. It was, after a decade of writing, still flawed. And perhaps, as some have suggested, this gentle [...]

Poetry Friday: Bookshelves and anthologies

When My Ship Comes In
by Robert Burdette (1844-1914)
One room I’ll have that’s full of shelves,
For nothing but books; and the books themselves
Shall be of a sort that a man will choose
If he loves that good old word “peruse,”
The kind of book that you open by chance
To browse on the page with a leisurely glance,
Certain of [...]

The 50 Greatest Books ever written

“Over the coming year, an international panel chosen by The Globe and Mail will select the 50 Greatest Books ever written. Each week, a single work will be discussed by an expert or a writer passionate about the work in question. This is the first in the series.”
Just started the other day (Saturday, in the [...]

Great Assumptions

Sophie Gee, an assistant professor of English at Princeton University and author of The Scandal of the Season, wrote in yesterday’s NY Times Book Review section,
Mass-market adaptations make Great Books go bad. Or so conventional wisdom would have it. But every so often, plundering and pillaging a canonical text for the sake of entertainment gives [...]

Beowulf and Grendel

rendered in Lego
by MicahBerger at Brickshelf. Click each thumbnail for a larger view.
This turned up in my “Beowulf” GoogleAlert…

New to me

Sylvia’s Classical Bookworm blog, where the Sidebar Menu includes such tasty treats as “About the Great Books”, “Great Books Online”, “Great Publishers”, “Libraries”, “Reference”, “Reading Guides”, “Reading Groups”, “Book Arts”, “Illuminated Manuscripts”, “Appurtenances”, “Other Good Stuff”, “Art”, “Latin”, and “Just for Fun”. Worth noting that “Appurtenances” includes a link to the Antioch Bookplate Company, whose [...]

A new point on the reading compass

“Books are like neighbors, and your personal library is your neighborhood. Take a look at your bookshelves. What kind of neighborhood are you living in? Are you in a slum or in the suburbs? Who are your neighbors? Are they trash talkers or shrewd sages? If you live next door to Socrates, then invite him [...]