Wednesday reading — correspondence and correspondences

Wed, 11 Sep 2013 22:00:57 GMT

What I've been reading

I read Marcus Aurelius in Love, via lysimache and interlibrary loan. It is an extremely entertaining piece of translation, and I really love how Amy Richlin set out a system for conveying the spirit of the originals—like using incidental French to translate the incidental Greek, and familiar quotes from Shakespeare for references that would have been equally familiar—that is both thoughtful and clever, like a really good AU fanfic, and also footnoted everything so you have both kinds of precision. I typed up one of my favorite shorter letters and stuck it on tumblr for your reading pleasure.

I read Chimes at Midnight, the new October Daye book. I have to say, these books have improved a lot in their weak points over the earliest ones—hardly any of the plot of this one depends on Toby being Too Stupid to Live!—and they continue to be fun to read, with a really nice found family thing going on.

I read Lady of Mazes, which is another book I pulled off of Jo Walton's eight books from the last decade that made her excited about SF. I wouldn't go as far as she does and say it has great characters, but it has passible ones for conveying the worldbuilding and the technology and what it's like to share the world with people who are perceiving completely different circumstances, which is what I really enjoyed.

I read Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, edited by Amy Richlin, which is really interesting on a number of subjects, although it's weird to step back into 1991 when the feminist critical discourse around 'pornography' was very different from when I was in school ten years later or now. This is the source of Monday's post about fantasies, as well as this post on tumblr about kids playing venator and bad things happening to bunnies in Roman mosaics.

What I'm reading next

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by blackholly

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goats and asses

Fri, 30 Aug 2013 00:33:24 GMT

The Capitoline Museum in Rome kindly sent over this satyr to debauch Kansas City. I took a couple of pictures of my own and posted them to Instagram with filters and memetic captions, like you do. At least, I think that's what you do. I'm not 100% clear on Instagram.

( I have also placed them behind this cut for your cultural edification )

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potentialities

Wednesday reading — correspondence and correspondences

goats and asses