Posted on 05/05/2006 10:45:00 AM PDT by RightWingAtheist
Before finally sitting down to write "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," Edward Gibbon briefly contemplated a project entitled "The History of the Liberty of the Swiss," as well as a book about an obscure Egyptian pharaoh whose agricultural innovations ultimately led to the invention of geometry. After being banished by Augustus Caesar to a backwater on the edge of the Black Sea, Ovid wrote a eulogy in honor of his nemesis in the language of the barbarians that inhabited the region. Both the eulogy and the language have disappeared. ....
Those intrigued by such oddities, or even practical sorts jumping the gun on Christmas shopping for the literati, will surely find Stuart Kelly's "Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You'll Never Read" worth a gander. An absolute joy, if a mite esoteric and demanding, Kelly's book is as appealing for what it is not as for what it is. In an age of slapdash laundry lists of places to see before you die, or dining establishments to visit before you leave Albuquerque, "The Book of Lost Books" is a work of great passion, insight and scholarship. (Kelly studied literature at Oxford, and regularly contributes to the Scottish press.)
.... in Kelly's hands, the saga of literature's labors lost is presented in both witty and illuminating fashion, via anecdotes that are sometimes heartwarming (how Kafka's novels escaped destruction) but usually heart-rending (how most of Sophocles' plays did not). It is a book written by a passionate, erudite man who obviously lives and breathes great literature, aimed at likeminded souls. Where Random House hopes to find an audience for this book is beyond me.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Weird-oid, but she's good with adjectives.
Whoa.
I'll have to check that out when I get home. Not clicking that at work!
Just what I need more books to order. LOL
The classical literature we have from the Greeks is mind-spinning. The accounts of what we have lost from the Greeks is numbing.
How much was lost in burning the libraries for the Roman baths!!! The horror...the horror.
My own wish list for forgotten works includes the prose works of Aristotle and the college plays the Jesuits created during the Counter-Reformation.
The condescending sneer on her face makes her look like a hippie-crossed-with-Goth.
And she enjoys Tolkein and C.S. Lewis while despising Christianity.
Wonder if she'd like Charles Williams?
That is what I was going to say.
"Where Random House hopes to find an audience for this book is beyond me."
Reviews that include phrases of this type often lead to the sale of more books than those reviews that lavish praise.
What I call the slippery screwdriver effect, after the famous commercials by Andy Granatelli hawking his corn syrup consistency super lubricant, STP.
In the commercial he would dip a screwdriver in regular motor oil and grasp it by the tip of the flat blade and hold it firmly, dip an identical driver in the STP can and drop it each time despite his best efforts to hold it tight.
Millions of macho weekend mechanics rushed to their local parts stores to buy a can of this mysterious goo just to prove that they were stronger, smarter or somehow more adept at handling slick stuff than the paunchy, aging Andy.
Nobody cared if a drop ever reached the inside of a crankcase.
What makes me hate this town most are various mental retards, hippies, and the rest of the assorted degenerates here that make Eugene so repulsive and utterly detestable. This place is quite simply like the meeting spot of all the scum of the earth. Other cities may be larger and thus have a larger population of crazy people, but they just aren’t as bizarre or as visible as the crazies Eugene has to offer. Living here, one simply can’t avoid seeing all these hordes of “Deadheads” sleeping under every other bush… It’s like an ever-present freak show or lunatic asylum... Many of them have these Rastafarian roly-poly dreadlocks that I think clearly are home to entire “civilizations” of vermin and other unspeakable horrors that boggle the mind, and they also smell like a dead skunk.
It's obvious she's never eaten any mushrooms.
She even spelled "hordes" correctly. Good use of language, overall ... maybe she'll grow up and amount to something, eventually.
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