So I'm putting aside my usual hatred of Valentine's Day, and I'm reading A Parliament of Birds by Geoffrey Chaucer, the poem that started it all ( Read more... )

So I have a pile of books on my desk I've been meaning to review. The oldest of these is The Wind in the Willows, a book many read in childhood but which I only came to as an adult ( Read more... )

The weird recent assaults on red-headed kids because some morons thought it'd be great to invent a new hate crime got me thinking about the old A. E. Houseman poem. Houseman was gay, and it was reportedly inspired by Oscar Wilde's trial ( Read more... )

Reading and enjoying the second book of The Dark is Rising series has got me thinking about fantasy lit, and about its weird place in the canon -- as far as English literature courses are concerned, the stuff does not exist ( Read more... )

I finished Beowulf last week. It really has stood the test of time, and I'm now able to read enough Anglo-Saxon to get the gist of things, so I can better appreciate the work of the anonymous master (or, more likely, series of masters) who first crafted the poem ( Read more... )

I've been very scarce lately. At some point I'll post a review of Beowulf. Right now, I'm knee-deep in my own novel, as well as Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. I haven't read my LJ friends page in a week, but I'll try to tomorrow at lunch.

In the meantime, here's a late entry on my historical blogProbably not the most exciting stuff I've researched ( Read more... )

I felt really good this last week, better than I have in a decade, with no real reason for it. Maybe it's just that the novel's going well -- I think most people are giving up on me ever finishing the thing, but it's so much better in this version than any of the others I've shown to people that I think the progress exceeds all previous progress ( Read more... )

so I'm reading Beowulf, and trying to puzzle out the Anglo-Saxon before I cheat and read the the translation on the opposite page ( Read more... )

So, to clarify, I think as usual the party will be kind of a drop-in, since afternoon is better for some, and evening for others. I was thinking about opening the doors around one in the afternoon on Sunday ^_ ( Read more... )

Well, it turns out I passed my exam, so I have all my requirements for my Master's degree ( Read more... )