(acommonreader.st)
Friar: Humor s a relief! It shows the truth.Every Laugh s a window on the void—crack jokes with me, and by them crack the world sfacade to show the bedlam underneath! Rabelais: Humor is no chaos, but the verydrip and flow of everything, the stickyfluid carrying life up from stodgysoil to all these many moistening bodies humor is our unity, [ ]
I recently read the revised edition of Stanley Lombardo’s translation of the Phaenomena of Aratus (titled The Sky Is Our Song: The “Phaenomena” of Aratus) and thoroughly enjoyed it. This edition is lovely, too. Spencer A. Klavan has extended comments of the poem in New Criterion titled A phenomenal poet and it is currently not behind [ ]
Love Wisdom, say I, but not with what s above!She s a pretty girl, and ripe; lover herwith your body, your skin and bones, the gurgleof your gut; love her with your rutting heart.We re all little pigs, rooting in the dirtafter something—the slut, the priest, the lord,magister, mother, student, tenant, doctor,bishop, king, pope—saints and sinnersall rooting in [ ]
Before I return to posting on recent reading, I wanted to post a continuation of sorts to my early 2025 live music post. The second half of the year proved to be a bit more challenging to see groups in the area. I ended up seeing some acts I m not necessarily a big fan of [ ]
My apologies for the radio silence. I just stumbled across the University of California Press Luminos publishing project. From their FAQ page: Luminos is UC Press’ new Open Access (OA) monograph publishing program. It will make a version of the digital edition of scholarly monographs available free of charge to anyone around the world. In [ ]
Update: I didn t realize my post had been made with an early draft I had made before I finished the book. I ve added my comments on the last section of the book at the bottom of the post. It doesn t make for a good flow, but wanted to include all the notes I wrote on [ ]
Menus, by definition, promise to serve as guides for diners, presenting or at times clarifying food choices. But in Tastes and Traditions I have argued that menus are also—and even more so—strategic documents: they shape diners choices, guide diners towards particular decisions and enhance their dining experiences. This exploration was driven by four central [ ]
I have some projects I have been wanting to start but first I ll share a few books I ve recently enjoyed, starting with this book. When I was homeschooling my kids I thoroughly enjoyed going through Holes by Louis Sachar with them. The writing was fun, plus the book lent itself to additional assignments tangential to [ ]
This production, a unique collaborative project led by the Oxford Ancient Languages Society, will stage a complete dramatic recreation of Euripides’ play, demonstrating the vivid dramatic fruits of meticulous, interdisciplinary scholarship.It will be performed entirely in the original Ancient Greek (with English surtitles), with authentic costumes and masks. Crucially, it will restore Euripides’…
Radio Prague International dedicated a podcast to a short story by Karel Čapek titled On the Decline of the Times. Čapek s Apocryphal Tales (1932) is a collection of short pieces such as this that he composed in the 1920s and early 1930s. The translation is by Vít Pohanka, who reads the story, and is followed [ ]