I had some fairly ambitious reading plans for 2021, and while I'm pretty happy with what I did, I still wish I'd done more. I guess that's always the way. I felt like I had a hard time focusing on my reading this year. Still, I had plenty of great titles! Let's see how my challenges turned out... The World War II Reading Challenge at Becky's Book Reviews : 12/12 Choosing WWII as a focus this year was fascinating (although not cheerful) and cut my WWII reading pile almost in half. I wanted to read 12 titles, one each month, and though I am on about page 3 of my December pick, I still got 12: The Coming of the Third Reich, by Richard P. Evans Ordinary Men, by Christopher Browning Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich, by Alison Owings Midway: the Battle That Doomed Japan, by Fuchida and Okumiya Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of WWII, by Svetlana Alexievich For Two Thousand Years, by Mihail Sebastian Book Smugglers, by David Fishman T
Good morning! I am not actually awake yet, because it's 5am and I need my sleep, and I will be mostly unable to join in the readathon until this afternoon. But here is the post where I will make updates. I'm supposed to answer these questions: 1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today? Sunny California! Emphasis on the "sunny"--after a nice cool spring it's in the 90s now. I live in the rural northern part above Sacramento that everyone forgets about--we hold 2% of the total population of California. 2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? It's a smorgasbord of delight! I don't even know. 3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? ...you think I'm well-prepared, don't you? I have a bag of sunflower seeds/Craisins/almond M&Ms, and I'm thinking quite seriously about treating myself to Indian food tonight. That's all I've got. 4) Tell us a little something about yourself!
"The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock. Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun. Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire. I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley. He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died. It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley. Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Yes, this. I'm damned if I know what else to say.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this.
ReplyDeleteWhat a day. :(