This is just a quick post to share an article across which I recently came. It was published in the Wall Street Journal, and since we often discuss linguistics in our posts it seemed worth sharing.
It’s a Not-So-Small World
couple of days, and I will get to my destination quickly, with readily available food, shelter, fuel, and other resources readily available in familiar forms all along the way. I can get in an airplane and fly anywhere in the world with a minimum of effort and time expended. Even more remarkably, I can take out my phone and conduct a live video conference with people in a dozen different countries, and we’ll hardly notice a delay.
Poetics Review
Despite the title, Poetics should not be thought of as applying exclusively to poetry. Rather, it is equal parts literary criticism, and one of the world’s earliest “how to write fiction,” books. Much like Art of Rhetoric, there were pieces that have become outdated, but much has remained surprisingly relevant to modern literature. All that is required is a bit of translation.
Art of Rhetoric Review
I was a little worried, going into my reading of Aristotle’s The Art of Rhetoric, and subsequently The Poetics, that these classic texts might also fall into that category, where they are lauded for their continued relevance mostly because they are so general that they can hardly fail to be relevant.
The Abbot’s Tale Review
The Abbot’s Tale, though, is something different, and in this Iggulden is serving more as a translator than a writer, or even a researcher. It is drawn almost entirely from a surviving manuscript written by Dunstan, a tenth century English monk, and the titular protagonist of The Abbot’s Tale. That manuscript is a sort of memoir or maybe a personal confessional, and it is clear that the original author never intended for it to be read, or even to survive.
Essays
e’ve posted essays here on the site, but we’ve never taken the time to define what separates an essay from a generic blog post. Is this post itself an essay? How is an essay different from an article? Are my book reviews essays? The context will have some influence on what constitutes an essay, but these days I consider an essay to be a long-form, written analysis or reflection on a particular topic that can be primarily expository, but should have an element of persuasion or assertion. It need not have five paragraphs, it need not have a precisely formatted first paragraph with a thesis as the last sentence, and it need not have all of the points the essay will cover neatly laid out therein.
Thoughts on Losing the War
Perhaps I could have made this into a “book review” – the essay is certainly lengthy enough to justify it – but I rarely have trouble keeping up with book reviews, while writing Tuesday’s blog posts can be more of a challenge. More pertinently, I don’t so much want to review Losing the War for you, as I do want to share my thoughts on this peculiar, rambling essay. It was something my dad first found and shared with me several years ago, and it somehow came up in recent conversation, so I decided to revisit it. If you haven’t read it before, you can find it here: Losing the War.
Blood Magic S2:E9: Bread and Steel Release
knew, beyond a doubt, that it was going to be one of the most exciting and interesting episodes to write, because Vere is such a fascinating character, and we would finally get to spend a significant amount of time in his viewpoint. We've had brief snippets in his viewpoint, like in All Cooped Up and No Place to Go, and Fallen Angel, but we've never had an episode where the main events of the story revolved around the Guardcaptain. Bread and Steel was going to change that, with a story leveraging his particular talents and traits in service to the peculiar setup of Merolate's military.
The Popol Vuh Review
In my literary tour of the ancient world, I've visited Iceland, Europe, the Middle East, India, and the Mediterranean, and I have plans to visit China (that will be next week's review, sort of). The perhaps obvious gaping holes in this journey are Africa and the Americas, which simply do not have the same ancient literary traditions as the other locations I've mentioned. I could be reading ancient Greek literature for the rest of the year at least, but even finding a single title authentic to the Americas (as opposed to a history of the region) was a challenge. Eventually, I stumbled across something called the Popol Vuh.
Intergalactic Update 2021
established a social media presence. Granted, that’s only through GoodReads, for the moment, but it’s a (painful) start. If you’re tired of reading my book reviews here on the site, you can also find them posted on GoodReads, along with a list of books I’m intending to read, and a progress bar for books I’m currently reading.
IGC Publishing 