Category: Books & Reviews

Literature, culture, fiction, non-fiction, writers, authors and the craft of writing.

Books for the Kaiju Aficionado

Film & Reviews / Godzilla / Musings / Pop Culture / What I'm Reading Now2 Comments

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With possibly two new Godzilla films coming to theatres in 2023*, it may be time to refresh your memory and appreciation of the previous films in the franchise. And what better way to do it than with a brand-new book about them? And perhaps re-reading some of the content in your older book and movie collection (especially that Criterion Collection of the first 15 Godzilla films on Blu-Ray — see below — which you can start watching now to build your anticipation for the new films!). Godzilla: The Official Guide to the King of the Monsters was released this week, ……… click below for more ↓

Bread Machine Cookbooks

Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Daily life / Musings / What I'm Reading Now4 Comments

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Among my shelves of books on baking bread by hand, is a smaller selection of books about using a bread machine to craft loaves and other items. I admit I’ve been somewhat lax in my creative uses of the bread machine, using it only to bake somewhat plain, whole loaves when I wasn’t up to or able to bake one entirely by hand. The results, I also admit, have been somewhat mixed, in large part because I tend to experiment with ingredients and settings rather than strictly follow recipes (cooking is for me a bit of a science lab…). But ……… click below for more ↓

Real Bread, Slow Dough, Bread Books

Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Musings / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Making bread is a small passion of mine, has been for many years as readers here will know*, although the results of my efforts do not always match my optimism. It’s always a bit of a guessing game what will result when I put the dough in the oven. That doesn’t stop me from trying, though, and I thoroughly enjoy the tactile process of making the bread, even if the end result is occasionally more brick-like than loaf-like. There’s something to be said about making bread as mindfulness therapy… Yes, making bread is also therapeutic: it involves focus, freedom from ……… click below for more ↓

Back to Horace No. 2

Books & Reviews / Classics / Poetry2 Comments

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I was browsing online recently because I wanted to order another book of Horace’s Odes or maybe his Epistles in my efforts to understand and appreciate the poet more fully. I was scrolling through the always-poorly organized list of items on Amazon’s search page results (selected, it seems, mostly to promote a wide range of unrelated rubbish they want to offload…). Some titles caught my eye (wanting more books is a longtime obsession… and owning many translations of the same work is commonplace with me) but wasn’t sure if I already had that translation. Who can remember all the names ……… click below for more ↓

How to Win an Election

Books & Reviews / Classics / Municipal elections past / Municipal Politics / PoliticsLeave a comment

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Anyone running for office should consider reading How to Win an Election, by Quintus Tullius Cicero, translated by Philip Freeman. It’s a short, small book subtitled An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicians (Princeton University Press, 2012). It contains both the Latin and the English translation of Quintus’ letter to his more famous brother, the orator Marcus Cicero. Quintus penned it in 64 BCE when Marcus decided to run for the position of Consul, the highest office in the Roman Republic. No, it won’t give you a secret winning strategy. Nothing will. But it has some practical advice that might help, ……… click below for more ↓

Back to Horace

Classics / Musings / Poetry / Poetry & LyricsOne Comment

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During the pandemic lockdowns, I heard a lot of people bemoan their inability to travel; on vacation, to visit relatives, to shop, or just to get out of their homes and see new places. People felt isolated, some went stir-crazy. We are a not merely a culture easily bored with staying in one place: our entire species has wanderlust. Two millennia ago, the poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus — aka Horace — wrote a letter (Epistle I.XI) to his peripatetic friend, Bullatius, a man who travelled the known world looking for contentment. Horace chided him, saying, You can change the colour ……… click below for more ↓

The Science Fiction of Robert Frost

Musings / Poetry / Poetry & Lyrics3 Comments

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Robert Frost was a great American poet, and I’ve enjoyed many of his poems over the decades I’ve been reading poetry. Some are a tad bucolic for my taste, but many also plumb the depths of human emotions so succinctly as to make Frost more universal than simply American. But while he never wrote any science fiction, his words have been used in that genre. Recently I came across a verse in one of Ben Bova’s more recent scifi novels that made me re-appraise and re-read Frost. It was: They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars — ……… click below for more ↓

Hobbesian vs Benthamite Politics

Collingwood / Council / Political philosophy / Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was not an optimist about human behaviour. Writing more than a century after Niccolo Machiavelli, the English political philosopher argued in his masterwork, Leviathan (1651), that the quest for power was the main motivation for humans. And that our quest to acquire more would never cease until we were dead. He wrote: …in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of Power after power, that ceaseth only in Death. And the cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight than ……… click below for more ↓

Ancient Election Wisdom

Classics / Election campaigns / Political philosophy / Politics / Stoicism & classical philosophy2 Comments

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I recently came across this piece by Marcus Tullius Cicero (one of my favourite classical authors) on the Sententiae Antiquae website (a good source of classical Latin and Greek translations), taken from Cicero’s oration Pro Murena (35-36). Lucius Licinius Murena was elected as his election as consul in 62 BCE but was subsequently accused of bribery. He was defended by  Cicero, who recorded his speech for posterity. Here’s what Cicero said about elections in general: What strait or what channel do you imagine has as many currents, twists, and tide changes as the disturbances in the breaking waves produced by ……… click below for more ↓

The Book of Knowledge: 3

Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Learning & Education / Media / Musings / Politics / Reading & Literacy / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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Back in the Mesozoic of my life, I came across a quotation from Giacomo Casanova that, as far as I can remember these days, went “No man can know everything, but every man should attempt to.” For many decades, I didn’t know the source, or whether it was misquoted, misattributed, or simply a fake as we experience so often on most internet quote sites (aka clickbait sites). But it stuck with me. I recently found a more fulsome translation of his words from Chapter V of his memoirs: No one in this world can obtain a knowledge of everything, but ……… click below for more ↓

The Book of Knowledge: 2

Books & Reviews / Books about books / Fonts & Layout / Learning & Education / Musings / Personal Reminiscences / Typography2 Comments

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Last post I mentioned I had rescued a set of encyclopedias from the dumpster at the end of this year’s Mother Of All Yard Sales (MOAYS; an Optimist Club event). I didn’t explain what I saved and why, but I’m here to explain, and to show. Bear with me. First, let me give you some personal background. Aside from being a writer, in my career I have been a book editor for a Canadian publisher, a magazine editor for two Canadian magazines, and editor-designer-layout person for two of our local newspapers (including the short-lived Sunday supplement, Huronia Sunday). I have ……… click below for more ↓

The Book of Knowledge: 1

Books & Reviews / Daily life / Internet & Social Media / Learning & Education / Musings / Pop Culture / Reading & Literacy4 Comments

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When I was growing up in the Fifties and Sixties, having an encyclopedia in your home was the bee’s knees, to use my grandmother’s phrase. It was a sign of sophistication and learning, of culture and wisdom. And being reasonably well-off, because encyclopedias were not inexpensive. I can still hear Jimminy Cricket singing the song (it’s how I learned to spell encyclopedia). Many school libraries had them, although usually only one set and not always the most current or the best. You could find more sets in the local public library, including in the bigger library branches the vaunted Encyclopedia ……… click below for more ↓

Ars Poetica

Books & Reviews / Classics / Culture / Literature / Poetry / Poetry & Lyrics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Horace’s Ars Poetica, or the Art of Poetry, was written as a 476-line poem in a letter to his friend, the Roman senator  Lucius Calpurnius Piso (Lucius) and his two sons, around 19 BCE. It was known for a time as the “Epistle to the Pisos” until 95CE when the critic  Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (Quintilian) called it the Ars Poetica in his a twelve-volume textbook on rhetoric, the Institutio Oratoria. The name stuck. Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) was popular during the Renaissance when Latin was still taught in schools. Some of his poems were among the works students had to ……… click below for more ↓

Milton Was Wrong

Books & Reviews / Books about books / Censorship / Media Issues / Political fads / Politics / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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In 1644, the English poet and pamphleteer John Milton wrote an impassioned defence of free speech (or, more factually, against censorship of print and in favour of restriction-free publication) called the Areopagitica. It was subtitled A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England. In it, Milton argued that, given the choice between truth and lies, people were wise enough to see what was true. And that people’s character grew stronger when presented with a wide variety of viewpoints, even if those included lies and falsifications. It’s a bit of a dense ……… click below for more ↓

Smith, Rock, and the Trivialization of Western Culture

Books & Reviews / Culture / Media / Media Issues / Memes; Internet & Social / Musings / Social Order & Disorder / TV / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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If Neil Postman were alive today, sitting in a bar or café with Chris Hedges, I wonder which one would say “I told you so!” first after seeing social media this past week? The story that clogged the social media pipes this week was the slap one actor gave another on stage during the performance of the annual onanism festival called the Oscars. And as soon as it happened, even while it was occurring, a shitstorm of comments, opinions and reportage flooded social media. Every social media feed was clogged with pieces like tarry stercus and then flooded by the ……… click below for more ↓

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