I recently received a lovely care package from the kind folks at Slightly Foxed. Based in London, they publish a quarterly literary magazine. “The independent-minded quarterly that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach.Companionable, entertaining and elegantly produced, Slightly Foxed puts its readers in touch with a world of interesting and often forgotten books. Within…
It’s kind of amazing that I became an English major considering how many books we had to read in high school that were either A) terrible, B) badly taught, or C) both. These are some ideas that I think would have been much more effective and enjoyable in high school. Maybe some of you were…
THE HISTORIES by Herodotus Ever since seeing The English Patient, I’ve meant to read The Histories (“Am I K in your book?). Tom Holland has worked with Penguin Classics to publish a new translation. Having studied Latin in high school and some classics in college, the ancient history of the Mediterranean was not entirely strange to me.…
This year I will be blogging once again from Virtual Booth #221b for Armchair BEA 2013. Yes, that is a Sidney Paget illustration of Holmes in an armchair, with his ever faithful companion Watson in one as well. But on to the introduction… – Who are you? How long have you been blogging? Why did…
One of the the wildest stories related to a Yellow Diamond — a famous gem in the native annals of India. … Partly from its peculiar colour, partly from a superstition which represented it as feeling the influence of the deity whom it adored, and growing and lessening in lustre with the waxing and…