Sunday Morning Book Thread: 10/15/2017

OregonMuse is otherwise engaged, and in his absence you will have to tolerate the adolescent scrawlings and screechings of other, less urbane and witty and well-read cobloggers.

As reading rooms go, this one ain't bad. I like the combination of tables for studying and easy chairs for more relaxed reading.

But college and university libraries are rapidly digitizing pretty much everything, so I wonder whether the reading room and the stacks are going to be expensive albatrosses that will be discarded in favor of funds better spent on safe rooms and segregated dorms?

The Iliad and The Odyssey, translated by Robert Fagles, whose work is absolutely fantastic. I have read Lattimore's translation, and it is excellent, but Fagles does such a great job of making the ancient world come alive, complete with blood and guts and sex and death. It's less poetic, but more real.

Next up is the Bible. But which one? I think starting with the Old Testament is a good plan, and there is no better a version than Robert Alter's translation with commentary.

Herodotus? Probably. But I don't know enough to suggest a version. Anyone out there?

And then? The Aeneid. I've only read one version from start to finish, and you guessed it...Robert Fagles!

Plato and Aristotle and the Greek plays and the New Testament and Marcus Aurelius and Dante and Augustine and....

posted by CBD at 09:03 AM

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