Slumpade böcker från Garp83s bibliotek

The Greeks Overseas: The Early Colonies and Trade av John Boardman

Dragons of Eden av Carl Sagan

No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories av Gabriel Garcia Marquez

My Life As a Man (A Henry Holt Classic) av Philip Roth

The Temptation of Angelique (Book 7) av Sergeanne Golon

The First Ladies av Margaret Brown Klapthor

The State of the World Atlas av Michael Kidron

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vänner: colukben, HarmlessTed, keylawk, scaifea, Stevia

intressanta bibliotek: colukben, ejj1955, HarmlessTed, keylawk, scaifea, Stevia, ThePam, timspalding, wildbill

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Medlem: Garp83

Bibliotek937 böckerse bibliotek

Recensioner1 recensionse recensioner

Molntaggmoln, författarmoln

TaggarAncient History (1) — se alla taggar

GrupperAmerican Civil War, American History, Ancient History, Hellas, Homer, the Trojan war, and pre-classical Greece, What Are You Reading Now?

FavoritförfattareAndre Brink, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Irving, Gabriel García Márquez, William Styron (Delade favoriter)

Om mig I have always loved to read, but only in the past several years have I returned to reading on an almost daily basis. I often read five books at a time, bouncing from one to the other as my interest rises and falls in the work at hand.

I read a lot of nonfiction, especially history and biography. Traditionally, my interest has been primarily in American history, colonial period through the Civil War, plus Presidential biographies from all the various eras. Over the past few years, however, I became seduced by ancient Greece and the classical education I never had, so I read The Iliad & the Odyssey, Hesiod, Herodotus, Thucydides, and some great treatments of the various periods by current historians.

I used to read a lot of fiction. My favorite authors are William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Andre Brink, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and John Irving. Of late, I began reading contemporary literary fiction fairly regularly, including great recent stuff by Cormac McCarthy, Richard Powers, Junot Diaz, Khaled Hosseini, Dennis Lehane, and Andrea Barrett. I joined a first edition book club at a local independent bookseller that has been feeding me a steady diet in this vein. At the same time, I have attempted to re-visit classic fiction such as Dickens, Crane, Stowe and Melville.

I also belong to a local books-and-beer reading club, and we pick out an unusual book each month that strays beyond usual interests.

It is not unusual for me to have four or five books in progress at the same time, often a mix of fiction, non-fiction and classical. That way I never get bored!

I am very meticulous about handling and caring for my books. I loan anything to friends except books, because that is the one item few value on the same level as I do.

Om mitt bibliotek I have about 1500 books in my collection, primarily hardcover, which I catalogued using the awesome Book Collector software from collectorz.com. I batch uploaded my collection from Book Collector to LibraryThing when I joined recently, but only 937 actually uploaded, so eventually I will have to sort thru and figure out what didn't stick.

Here's what I've read over the last several years:
1. The Eternal Frontier – Flannery
2. Facing East From Indian Country – Richter
3. Benjamin Franklin – Isaacson
4. Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Stowe
5. The Dahlgren Affair – Schultz
6. Lincoln’s Last Night – Axelrod (5/16/05)
7. His Excellency: George Washington – Fleming
8. American Colonies – Taylor
9. A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies – Las Casas
10. Moby Dick – Melville
11. Memories of my Melancholy Whores – Garcia Marquez

READ 2006
12. The Iliad – Homer (2-2-06)
13. 1491 – Mann (2-3-06)
14. Troy – McCarty (2-9-06)
15. President Nixon – Reeves (2-21-06)
16. The Last Voyage of Columbus – Dugard (4-2-06)
17. The Red Badge of Courage – Crane (4-10-06)
18. The Odyssey – Homer (4-20-06)
19. Empires at War – Fowler (5-31-06 ?)
20. Troy and Homer – Joachim Latacz (6-12-06)
21. Agamemnon – Aeschylus (7-7-06)
22. 1776 – McCullough (7-9-06)
23. The War at Troy – Quintus of Smyrna (7-16-06)
24. Guns, Germs, and Steel – Diamond (8-20-06)
25. Gulliver’s Travels – Swift (8-29-06)
26. The King Must Die – Renault (10-13-06)
27. State of Denial – Woodward (10-29-06)
28. Before the Dawn – Wade (11-23-06)
29. Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman – Shostak (12-9-06)
30. The Trojan War: A New History – Strauss (12-17-06)

READ 2007

31. The Kill Bill Diary – David Carradine (1-11-07)
32. Freethinkers – Susan Jacoby (2-19-07)
33. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley (3-23-07)
34. Persian Fire – Tom Holland (3-25-07)
35. Histories – Herodotus (6-2-07)
36. The Classical World: An Epic History From Homer to Hadrian – Robin Lane Fox (6-5-07)
37. Thomas Paine – Craig Nelson (6-14-07)
38. The Other Side of Silence – Andre Brink (8-6-07)
39. Cities of the Plain – Cormac McCarthy (8-9-07)
40. A Dangerous Friend – Ward Just (8-12-07)
41. Mayflower – Nathaniel Philbrick (8-12-07)
42. The Peloponnesian War –Donald Kagan (8-23-07)
43. The Kite Runner -- Khaled Hosseini (9-8-07)
44. The Inheritance of Loss – Kiran Desai (9-22-07)
45. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz (9-25-07)
46. The Echo Maker – Richard Powers (10-14-07)
47. The History of the Peloponnesian War – Thucydides (10-25-07)
48. Bridge of Sighs – Richard Russo (11-17-07)
49. Theogony – Hesiod (11-29-07)
50. Roanoke Island: The Beginnings of English America – David Stick (12-1-07)
51. Coronado – Dennis Lehane (12-6-07)
52. The Air We Breathe – Andrea Barrett (12-13-07)
53. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens (12-23-07)

READ 2008

54. The Case of Abraham Lincoln – Julie M. Fenster (1-2-08)
55. The Pirate’s Daughter – Margaret Cezair-Thompson (1-31-08)
56. American Shaolin – Matthew Polly (2-8-08)
57. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens (2-11-08)
58. Frogs – Aristophanes (2-12-08)
59. Hellenica: Books 1-4 -- Xenophon (2-16-08)
60. Charlatan – Pope Brock (3-3-08)
61. A Golden Age – Tahmima Anam (3-16-08)
62. Arslan – Engh (3-25-08)
63. The Commoner -- John Burnham Schwartz (4-2-08)
64. Anabasis – Xenophon (4-6-08)
65. Scapegoats of the Empire – George Witton (4-13-08)
66. Killing Custer – James Welch, Paul Stekler (4-20-08)
67. The Persians – Aeschylus (4-24-08)
68. The Choephori(The Libation Bearers)- Aeschylus(4-27-08)
69. The Eumenides - Aeschylus (4-30-08)
70. Ajax – Sophocles (4-30-08)
71. Philoctetes – Sophocles (4-30-08)
72. Oedipus Rex – Sophocles (5-3-08)
73. American Creation – Joseph Ellis (5-11-08)
74. Antigone – Sophocles (5-18-08)
75. The River of Doubt – Candice Millard (5-22-08)
76. All the Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy (5-31-08)
77. Mudbound – Hilary Jordan (6-5-08)
78. The Crossing -- Cormac McCarthy (6-24-08)
79. Four Hats in the Ring – Lewis Gould (6-24-08)
80. Me of Little Faith – Lewis Black (7-3-08)
81. Zeus:A Journey Through Greece in the Footsteps of a God – Tom Stone (7-14-08)
82. How to Survive a Robot Uprising – Daniel H. Wilson (7-25-08)
83. Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy (8-2-08
84. The Cruelest Miles – Gay Salisbury & Laney Salisbury (8-15-08)
85. Inverted World – Christopher Priest (8-23-08)
86. Whale Hunt – Nelson Cole Haley (8-24-08)

Riktigt namnStan

PlatsWestern Massachusetts

E-postgarp83verizon.net

Kontotypoffentlig, betald

AnknytningsnyheterAnknytningsnyheter

URL:er http://www.librarything.com/profile/Garp83 (profil)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Garp83 (bibliotek)

Medlem sedanDec 2, 2007

Lämna en kommentar

Hi, you seem to be quite a scholar in ancient history, especially Greek history. Nice to meet you!

Ted
Thank you for your review of Persian Fire. This is on my TBR list, and your review has moved it further to the top!

You might want to try Victor Davis Hanson's Why the West has Won. As a classicist he's very good on the enduring impact of Greek culture on the military practice of the West. This article by VDH here

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm...

might also stimulate your festering wound from the ancient Greek bite!

It's nice to know there are more classicists around.
Murr.
The compelling thing about the subject of Persian Fire -- or perhaps about all history -- is that we really do seem to be perpetually fighting slave-driven empires on the one hand, and our own immediate neighbors on the other. Perpetually, this Peloponnesian War, and so many triumphant heroes trundled off to exile. (Both Themistocles and Aristides?)

In our own day, I rankle still over the fact that Mao, Pol Pot, and Idi Amin died natural deaths. Who are we? As I sit here I feel way way past my prime, and what keens the "past" part, is that I have failed to give even the pettiest tyrant -- oh all of them are petty -- so much as a pause.

I'm hoping that Justice no longer cries out for blood and vengence. Forever ingenuous, I offer tea and bun. So great to share enthusiasm with a reader of history. It will always be Greek to me.
Really appreciated your review of Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West, by Tom Holland, which I've not read. I confess I credit the network of Aegean thalassocracies, including the Aeginetans who bore the brunt of the fight with fewer ships, with having won the battle of Salamis in the short-term, and sapping the Persian navy in the long-term. The Athenians did more than merely "win", they tied their survival to ideals of freedom and justice, which make us want to root for them even after their defeats.

Did Holland mention the other Myceneans? The significance in battles of differential numbers of slaves? What would civilization be like if Xerxes, or any Persian at any time, had defeated the Greeks? Hey, thanks for the intro to Holland.
Greek? I'm jealous! I've tried teaching myself Greek and succeeded only in learning the alphabet :(. I think Latin is probably easier, but then again I'm passionate about it! Catullus is a lot of fun, but I don't know whether someone should learn Latin just so they can read him in the original! In an ideal world, maybe.

Good luck with your studies, and keep me posted!
Awesome! I admire your self-commitment! That takes a lot of discipline. I'm not from the UK, I'm Australian, but I'm moving there at the end of the year to pursue a career in classics. *fingers crossed*

Read the Iliad like Alexander? Alexander disconcerts me in a similar way that Caesar does.

Keep in touch. Let me know if you stumble across any wonderful books you'd think I'd like!

Stevie
Hey Garp83,

Greek tragedy is something I've always struggled with. My problem is I have reservations about reading and analysing things in translation. And the fact that I haven't learnt Greek yet has put a stop on me really getting into them. Of course I've read quite a few over my undergrad, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles... but being a huge fan of Latin and Roman culture, I find myself taken away from them very easily.

Conceptually I find the Greeks harder to engage with, but that may be because of my Greek deficiency! I do intend to go back and read them in the original once I've picked up the language!

I'm so chuffed that you're getting the Classical education you never had. I'm worried that it's going to fade away to nothing and that would be such a big loss. Classics is a wonderfully rich discipline. I'm more than a little bit in love with it. In fact, I'm currently doing 13 hour days at uni simply because I love it that much!

Anyway I hope to chat more!
Stevie
Troubadour has a better depth and a more friendly price structure IMHO.

I made it up there over Patriots' Day weekend: thanks for the tip! I'll be adding it to my "on the way to Boston" route.

(The sign outside advertises the selection as "Scholarly and Weird". That fits my family to a T.)
Hiya Garp!

My reading practices probably don't follow the norm on this sort of thing (referring to "1491" and Cahokia) but I'd be glad to tell you what I've covered thus far.

The first authors I read were Moorehead and Crook. These two guys were anthropologists from the early 1900s. In fact, in Moorehead's paper he begged his fellow scientists to save Cahokia because the powers-to-be in St. Louis wanted to tear the mounds down and use them for landfill --YIKES! [They are available for download from archive.org for free]

Next, I got caught up in reading "The LA Salle Expedition on the Mississippi River: A Lost Manuscript of Nicolas De LA Salle, 1682" which Mann referenced. The Expedition itself has little to do with Cahokia, but the introduction by William Foster was quite extensive and he wrote about the trade routes in the midwest, and more importantly pointed out examples of Cahokian traditions that still existed in 1600s.

Finally, one of our LTers has written an excellent article entitled "The Frontier in Pre-Columbian Illinois" which he was nice enough to tell me about. This paper shines a light on what we do know about Cahokia, and what influence they had on other Indian tribes.

I really haven't outlined any future reading on this topic yet. But it's definitely of interest to me. Cahokia, along with the 'Fort Ancients'. I'd never heard of them before, but Al mentions them in his 'The Frontier in Pre-Columbian Illinois'.

Cheers!
Pam
I talked to my Greek Historian colleague, and he recommends: J.K. Davies' Democracy and Classical Greece. He says that it's has a nice coverage of the time period but isn't all that dry. Hope this helps!

Amber
Hi,

Oh, this is just one of the many things I love about LT--I was looking at another member's profile and saw your comment about reading colonial American history, and since that's an interest of mine, I popped over to see your library--only to find that we share very few books on the subject. I haven't entered all my library yet, but have put in quite a few of the colonial history books--which means that you have lots of books I'm going to want to acquire and read!

Which is why I've added your library to my interesting libraries list . . .

Cheers,
Elizabeth
Hi Garp83,

It's sort of funny, but I began "1491" and got so intrigued by what he was writing about that I delved off into reading about Cahokia and La Salle, which led off into related themes. As soon as I'm done with the current round of reads, it will be next... again ;)
Thanks for the note. Yeah, that was my site, as is isidore-of-seville.com. I used to do my own content :)
Lol - I'm a Latinist, and also a literary person more than a historian, so Greek history is about as far from what I do as you can get in the field! I've send an email to my Greek historian colleague requesting book recommendations, so I'll get back to you if he comes up with something good. In particular, my interests are in late republican Roman lit; Cicero's letters are my current project. I'm working on how the Roman triumph is portrayed in literature, in particular in Cicero's letters, and I've also got an article started about how Livy uses the image of the triumph too. I'm also in love with Plautus (although he's not late republican), and the character of the clever slave, so I've got a project about that in the works as well. Next I think I'll try to do something with Pliny's letters, but I'm not exactly sure what yet - I have lots of interests I want to pursue there. As usualy, too many irons in the fire at once! It's hard for me to focus sometimes :)
You know, until you asked this, I didn't realize that I don't really have a good answer for what's a good general Greek history book (it's really not my specialty). I have heard of Sealey, but I don't know much about the book. Are you looking for a broad general history of Greece or something more specific?
aww, shucks. *blushes*
It's in my library catalog, if you want to look there, or, here's a link to it on amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/100-Banned-Books-C...

Hope that helps!
I'm glad you got the email(s)! I highly recommend, if you're interested, that you take a look at 100 Banned Books - it has lots of info on the censorship history of each entry. I think now there's an updated version which has 20 more book added.

Amber
I tried sending the list to you this morning, but your email service it apparently blocking it. I'm not sure if you can take my email address (scaifea@kenyon.edu) off the block list or not - let me know if I can do something to fix it on my side
I'm using the list of books in [100 Banned Books]. It's a pretty good book, giving synopses of each book and a history of its censorship. However, it groups the books by banned category (banned on religious grounds, political grounds, sexual, and social grounds), and I prefer to read my way through lists chronologically, so I've made up my own ordering of the books on this list. If you're interested, I'll send you a copy of my version via email - just let me know.
Thanks for the tip on the follow-up books to Paine, which I just finished last night. I really enjoyed it and I think I share a lot of his general views on religion (although he did say that he thought reading Latin and Greek was a waste of time!). I read it as part of my 100 Most Banned Books reading list, and I'm certainly not surprised that it's on the list. Love your collection, by the way - we seem to have fairly similar tastes.
Garp83,
So now we are mutual interesting libraries. As you may have discovered I love to read history. I have read a lot of ancient history and now am 200 pages into the "Landmark Herodotus". My main attraction to that edition is the maps, I need maps when I read history. For the last three years I have been studying the Civil War. I just finished "Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862". It is an excellent book and I finished it in two days because I couldn't put it down. I also have an interest in Chinese history that goes back to college. I look forward to discussing old and new books and getting to know you.
wildbill (Bill Rucker)
Could you tell me how you imported the Book Collector info into LibraryThings? Or point me to the instructions? Thanks!
I signed out to check my SantaThing listing to see what happened, which was: you were late on sending the choice of Persian Fire for me, so Abby took another suggestion that was put in for me. As for The Case of Abraham Lincoln, that has nothing to do with anything; I just was happy to hear that somebody was enjoying it, since I gave it to my mother for Christmas without having read it myself...something that I don't usually do.

I've noted Persian Fire down, and I see that Tom Holland also wrote a book on the last years of the Roman Republic. I'll definitely have give him a try.

LydiaHD
Hello, Garp83:

Yes, indeed, I had been meaning to write you: thank you very much for choosing the Orhan Pamuk books! I read the first few pages of the memoir, and really liked it, and thought to myself: "It's going to be a long, long time before my Turkish is good enough to read this in the original." The books are next on my list to read.

I gave The Case of Abraham Lincoln to my mother for Christmas, and told her if was any good, I'd want to borrow it from her.

Thanks again -

LydiaHD
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