Books & Reviews – Page 22

Machiavelli and the Elizabethans

2014-03-16 2014-03-16 Books & Reviews / History & Biography / My Writing / PoliticsLeave a comment

In 1555, Bishop Stephen Gardiner wrote a treatise to King Phillip II of Spain, in which he borrowed (aka plagiarized) extensively from Machiavelli’s The Prince and The Discourses. Gardiner did not credit Machiavelli or attribute any of his quotes, but rather copied some of Machiavelli’s content verbatim or very closely. This was less than two decades after Machiavelli’s works had been first printed, and before Pope Paul placed it on the Index librorum prohibitorum, effectively banning it in Catholic countries (but also making it more interesting, as any banned book inevitably becomes, thus guaranteeing its publication and translation). Some two ……… click below for more ↓

What’s in a missing word?

2014-03-11 2014-03-15 Books & Reviews / Education & Learning / Language & Grammar / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

There’s a line in one of Horace’s epistles that really caught my eye. In Latin it reads: Utque sacerdotis fugitiuus liba recuso, pane egeo iam mellitis potiore placentis Horace: Epistles, Book I, X No, I can’t translate it.* However, I was reading David Ferry’s 2001 translation and he renders it like this: I’m like that slave who ran away because They fed him honey cakes and he longed for bread. That appealled to me both for my recent passion for making bread, but also for its philosophic – almost Buddhist – intent. Ferry gives us both the Latin and English, ……… click below for more ↓

Reading: A Canadian tragedy… or not?

2014-03-02 2014-03-02 Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Culture / Education & Learning / Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

The map above might show the making of a serious tragedy for Western and especially Canadian culture. It indicates in colour which nations read the most. Yellow is the second lowest group. Canada is coloured yellow. In this survey, Canada ranks 10th – from the bottom! Twenty countries above us have populations which, on the average, read more per week than we do. That surprises and shocks me. And it disappoints me no end. I’m not only a voracious reader, I’m passionate about books, language, reading and writing, and have been on the library board for 20 years actively helping ……… click below for more ↓

Lucretius and the Renaissance

2014-02-23 2014-02-23 Arts / Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Education & Learning / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

It’s fairly clear, even after reading only a few verses, why Lucretius’s didactic poem, On the Nature of Things – De Rerum Natura – made such an impact on thought, philosophy, religion and science in the Renaissance. It must have been like a lighthouse in the dark night; a “Eureka” moment for many of the age’s thinkers. For others, especially the church leaders, it must have arrived like a mortar shell among their intellectual certainties and complacencies; shattering walls and window. An act of war that threatened to tear down whole schools of thought and belief. While today his descriptions of atoms, ……… click below for more ↓

Amo, Amas, Amat…. and what?

2014-02-14 2014-02-14 Books & Reviews / Education & Learning / Language & Grammar / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

My well-thumbed copy of Eugene Ehrlich’s book, Amo, Amas, Amat and More, is dated 1985. It’s amusingly subtitled “How to Use Latin to Your Own Advantage and to the Astonishment of Others.” It’s still in print, it seems, or was as recently as 2006. I’ve read my copy on and off for the past 25-plus years, but have not been able to effectively astonish anyone with my grasp of Latin. Possibly the reason for this is that my grasp of Latin is small. Very small. I had a single year of Latin classes in high school; lessons mostly relegated to ……… click below for more ↓

Raisin and sourdough this week

2014-02-08 2014-02-08 Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

While I haven’t tried to make a sourdough raisin bread yet, that idea occurred to me while I was making my latest breads, this week. I’m sure it would be a good mix, but I’ll have to build my levain up again, since I used all my countertop levain in yesterday’s bread (about 350g). I still have a culture in the fridge, however, and will take some out to get it going in the warmer kitchen, today. I made a medium-sized sourdough loaf, and two smaller raisin-cinnamon loaves, Friday. Somewhat ambitious of me, but with mixed results. Two? You ask. ……… click below for more ↓

Corn and other breads

2014-02-03 2014-02-03 Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

The last loaf of January, 2014 was a machine-made corn bread, made using a recipe from Washburn’s & Butt’s 300 Best Canadian Bread Machine Recipes book that I’ve mentioned previously. It’s a good book for bread machine users. Unlike my previous efforts to tinker with bread recipes, I used the basic, printed 1.5-lb. recipe without any alterations this time (not even in the salt). Medium crust setting, basic (white) bread menu selection. The results were good, if not spectacular. The recipe calls for 1/3rd cup of cornmeal. I used a commonly-available, supermarket brand, the sort I often use for dusting ……… click below for more ↓

Reading Thucydides at last

2014-01-29 2014-01-29 Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Personal Reminiscences / Politics / War & Military / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

Somewhere on one of my bookshelves, is an old Penguin paperback copy of History of The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. It’s a bit worn, pages lightly yellowed, glue a little brittle. It’s been sitting on the shelf, stacked with many other paperbacks, piled two deep, floor to ceiling, for the past two decades and more. It’s never been read, not completely. I read the introduction, maybe some small sections, back in my wargaming days, 30 or 35 years ago. Like many of its companions on that shelf, it’s a book I put aside for the days when I expected to have ……… click below for more ↓

For want of a nail…

2014-01-21 2014-01-21 Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Literary pretensions / My Writing / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Bought a book at Loblaws (of all places) this week, one by Harry Turtledove: The Big Switch. It’s one of his many alternative history novels, about what might have happened if things had happened a certain way – a different way from what actually transpired – in the opening years of World War Two. He’s written several in this vein and they’ve all been generally well received. I’ve liked what I’ve read of him in the past. Many authors have taken up this sort of speculative fiction, although none as frequently as Turtledove. What would have happened if Hitler had ……… click below for more ↓

The Short and the Tall of It

2014-01-20 2014-01-20 Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

This past week saw several new experiments in my bread laboratory. Okay, it’s a kitchen, but sometimes it feels like a lab, what with all the tinkering and testing I do. I just can’t seem to stop trying new things in bread. It would fee even more science-like if Susan would let me buy the implements and tools I want. First, however, the good news: my levain remains thriving and healthy. I have two batches now: one on the counter, the other in the fridge. The counter batch is used as a poolish right now; the fridge is the long-term ……… click below for more ↓

The 2013 Great Gatsby

2014-01-19 2014-01-19 Arts / Books & Reviews / Film & Reviews / Music & ReviewsLeave a comment

Watched the 2013 film of The Great Gatsby last night. The first half was spectacular, grandiose and captivating, if somewhat over the top. Like Busby Berkeley meets The Fifth Element. Extravaganza, spectacle and excess. The film doesn’t feel like it’s set in New York of the Jazz Age. It’s too shiny, too polished, too mechanical, and not gritty enough. That’s actually okay, and had director Baz Luhrmann chosen to make Gatsby into a scifi film set not the roaring twenties, but rather some futuristic world where the fashion craze is for 20s’ costume, it could have worked better. It would ……… click below for more ↓

Saving Fubsy from Lexicographical Caliginosity

2014-01-16 2014-01-16 Arts / Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / My WritingLeave a comment

Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were awfully holy, weren’t you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you might not have a red nose. You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue that the fubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more from the wet street. O si, certo! Sell your soul for that, do, dyed rags pinned round a squaw. More tell me, more still!! On the top of the Howth tram alone crying to the rain: Naked women! naked women! What about that, eh? A fubsy window? A short ……… click below for more ↓

Brands, Buzz & Going Viral

2014-01-14 2014-01-14 Books & Reviews / Collingwood / Literary pretensions / Municipal Politics / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

My third book for Municipal World, Brands, Buzz & Going Viral, has just been published as part of the Municipal Information Series. I received my author’s copies yesterday. I am very proud of this book; it took a lot of work to research and write. I enjoyed writing it. I hope my municipal readers find it both informative and interesting. I am also delighted to be able to share my knowledge and experience with others in the municipal governance realm across Canada. It’s a humbling experience to be among the respected authors and experts in MW’s stable – authors whose books ……… click below for more ↓

The Music of the Templars

2014-01-12 2024-08-06 Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / History & Biography3 Comments

For the past 25 years, I have had a mysterious page in Latin, held in a cheap picture frame, and stored in a closet for many years. It’s a two-sided page from a book, printed in black and red letters. I bought it at a used-book store in Toronto back when I lived there and frequented such stores. I rediscovered it last week when cleaning out my workroom to create a ukulele space. The page is roughly 21 x 14 inches (53 x 35 cm) and in very good condition, for its age. It’s also quite beautiful, especially to anyone ……… click below for more ↓

To err is human. And bureaucratic.

2014-01-09 2014-01-09 Arts / Books & Reviews / Municipal Politics / Politics / Social Order & Disorder / US PoliticsLeave a comment

Errare humanum est, perseverare diabolicum, et tertium non datur. To err is human; to persevere in error is diabolical; there is no third option. Bit of a tough love phrase, that one. Most of us know this as the later paraphrase of Alexander Pope: to err is humane, to forgive divine. Yes, he wrote “humane” because that’s how they wrote “human” in the early 18th century. And he was making a statement about critics, not about religion. But you get the drift.* Pope’s phrase is a staple in politics. To err is human, and governments are composed of people. In ……… click below for more ↓