The castle at Fotheringhay, about sixty miles northwest
of London, Wednesday, February 8, 1587
The day had dawned incongruously fair, the soft rays of the winter sun gradually diffusing the darkness to illuminate the forbidding aspect of the vast medieval fortress, nearly five centuries old, that dominated the surrounding landscape.
Daughters of the Winter Queen: Four Remarkable Sisters, the Crown of Bohemia, and the Enduring Legacy of Mary Queen of Scots, by Nancy Goldstone
Early one evening in the autumn of 2010, my wife Margaret and I stood in front of Carlisle railway station in the far north-west of England with two loaded bicycles and a one-way ticket from Oxford.
The Debatable Land: The Lost World Between Scotland & England, by Graham Robb
“The question of interaction is a crucial one in many areas, including for the purposes of understanding certain psychological, social, and economic phenomena.”
In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonders of Complex Systems, by Giorgio Parisi (in collaboration with Anna Parisi, and translated by Simon Carnell)
“Here’s how I want the phony little conniving, no-talent, preppiewad asshole of an editor to die: I lace his decaf with Seconal and strap him down in such a way that his head is fastened to my desk and I thump him at cheery intervals with the carriage of my Olympia standard.”
“Let’s say you want to visit the era when the most powerful predators in history attacked the largest land animals the planet has ever seen.”
How to Survive History: How to Outrun a Tyrannosaurus, Escape Pompeii, Get Off the Titanic, and Survive the Rest of History’s Deadliest Catastrophes, by Cody Cassidy.
"Jame Retief, Second Secretary and Consul of the Terrestrial Embassy to Quopp, paused in his stroll along the Twisting Path of Sublime Release to admire the blaze of early morning sunlight on the stained glass window of a modest grog shop wedged between a stall with a sign in jittery native scrip announcing Bargain Prices in Cuticula Inlays, and the cheery facade of the Idle Hour Comfort Station, One Hundred Stalls, No Waiting.
It’s either “No matter where you are at this moment, you can probably spot some spider silk.” (Preface) or “The ancient Greeks imagined the common ancestor of all spiders as a human, a girl named Arachne.”
Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Million Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging, and Mating, by Leslie Brunetta and Catherine L. Craig.
Goddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath
of great Achilles, son of Peleus,
which caused the Greeks immeasurable pain
and sent so many noble souls of heroes
to Hades, and made men the spoils of dogs,
a banquet for the birds, and so the plan
of Zeus unfolded-- starting with the conflict
between great Agamemnom, lord of men,
and glorious Achilles.
This is from the new translation of The Iliad by Emily Watson. At over 700 pages, it’s pretty hefty, but something I’ve never read all the way through. I even had it in my Christmas-wish list. I know the basic story, but not all of the smaller parts. I’ll be reading summaries of the 24 books as I go along just so I don’t get totally lost. Wish me luck.