Happy St. Patrick’s Day! As you might have seen on Twitter, I’ve been going deep on the Classic Books-internet rabbit hole. It goes to show that reports of blogging’s death have been greatly exaggerated: there are a ton of great blogs on books that, by all accounts, are doing it in the Hitz-ian sense of leisure — not for profit or career advancement, but just because they enjoy it.
With that, here are some recent links from the blogosphere, which is a word I’ve not used in around a decade.
- Tips for reading Pride and Prejudice. I started reading this over Winter Break a few years ago and didn’t finish it. It’s in the third year of the great books project, but I suspect I’ll try it again before then.
- There’s a new translation of Beowolf out. I started reading the Heaney translation the other night, and I’m excited to check this one out. I’m reminded of Emily Wilson’s new translation of The Odyssey and how important it is to update translations. Amy, on the new Beowolf: “It’s clearly the translation of a twenty-first-century woman who is interpreting this ancient tale in her own way. She hasn’t rewritten this poem but she has reimagined it for herself and for a new generation of readers.”
- An analysis of Antigone that includes a defense of Creon.
- Tyler Cowen has been reflecting on his early career, which has been fascinating to read. Tyler, on what he learned from his early successes: “Try things, and make people tell you no. Just keep on trying, in the most naive “Reader’s Digest” sense. Most people simply won’t be doing that, so it can be a huge comparative advantage.”
- Some good old-fashioned naval-gazing: a list of non-fiction books about the reading life.