Copper Quixote

Rocinante by any other name . . . .


(All appreciation to Gustave Dore and his artwork.)

Entitled

"Now that I see your full name, I have to say this:
'Matthew Duckworth . . .
. . . Earl of Sandwich.'"

--clerk at the hardware store

Fun Reading: Malazan!

This is the third book in a ten-book series.
Steven Erikson's Memories of Ice.
Erikson's heroic fantasy is real literature, invoking and breaking the stale cliches of the genre, enlivening character and plot with insight, wit, humor, and compassion, pulling and pushing his readers to the brink of expectation and trauma, again and again.

Very fine writing.





Whiskeyjack, man.  Really?

Restless Rereading

Much of my reading falls into the category of rereading, for I've been a serious reader for a long time.  I'm teaching Homer's Iliad this term and how many times, how many translations, have I read?  Many.  And yet I must reread to be there with my students, to know the text intimately, to be a reader.  And so I do; I reread.

When I am relaxing at home, I read, which often means rereading.  For I read as others listen to music.  Seriously.  And, so, I often reread restlessly, as I think of it.  I don't quite want to read the whole book, but I do want to live in the music of that book.  So, I read a chapter here in one book and a chapter there in another book and even glance into a third.  That's when rereading becomes restless.  Still good.

You can see such from the photo above: four books that offered different music, compelling music.  A heroic fantasy, a literary novel about deep swimming, a thriller with sailboats, and a crime novel with a compelling protagonist and a compelling antagonist and a compelling setting, the mountainous area of Montana.  Different tunes; different music.

All good; all appropriate; all wonderful.  I just wanted a bit of each.

What music am I listening to, reading from, now?

Class Planning

Spring 2018:
Why ever not?

Literary Default: Heroic Fantasy

Sword & sorcery, heroic fantasy, classical epic -- my favorite genre (yes, singular) no matter the space-time continuum.  Last spring I was teaching Homer's Iliad, now I am reading Erikson's Reaper's Gale.  Leiber's Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser series fits somewhere in between, as does Byron's Don Juan.

Glimpses: Or, Lecture Notes