Serendipity

Although still not completely clear of virus I am attempting to get back into some academic reading after the Christmas break. The 'to-be-read' pile has increased significantly since my package of book-requests arrived from uni. the other day (see previous post), so some headway has to be made, whether I'm under-par or not. The most obvious candidate is Constantine Campbell's 'Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek' which has attracted a lot of online interest; some positive, some negative and a lot of interbloggular arse-kissing. I have to say that I am finding it rather interesting, somewhat didactic..but not necessarily in a bad way. In fact the repetiton does go some way to fix CC's principles in the mind (off-screen howls of protest that 'the dust has not settled on this particular field yet, so how can you talk of principle-fixing' yada yada). However it is not my intention to go into detail in this blog: any serious stuff will appear on 'metalepsis' when I have had a chance to cogitate, nay, pontificate, further.

Having finished 'The Raw Shark Texts' (ho hum: promising start, last two-thirds in need of a good editor), I was lacking a good 'bedtime' book: nothing too demanding. Not really wanting to lash out on 3 for 2 (there's usually only ever one on offer that I vaguely want), I trawled around the charity shops for suitable candidates. Nearly bought Michael Gruber's 'Book of Air and Shadows' but then remembered how disappointed I have been in this genre recently, so put it back on the shelf. Nothing else turned up, so I called into the library on the school-run and picked up 'The Liar' by Stephen Fry. The protagonist is so obviously Fry thinly disguised, and the print quality is atrocious, but I was actually laughing out loud within a few pages, so it will do the job nicely.

The daughter, now on maternity leave, wants an easily digestible book for comfort-reading so we tried to get hold of Victoria Hislop's 'The Return', but both Waterstones and Borders only had it in superlarge paperback format (at £12.99!). Sure that we'd seen it at normal size we went into some charity shops. No joy, but I did get hold of a Penguin Classics copy of 'The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English' - a bargain at £1.50, although slightly crumpled. It is currently being corrected under LSJ, the Oxford Classical Dictionary, Moulton and Geden and Funk.

Christmas Books Past and Present

Christmas usually brings me at least a few books. Whenever quizzed about what I would like for Christmas, my list is ever-simple: good espresso-ground coffee, wine, dark chocolate or a book. I'm easily pleased. This year I already know that I am getting the second Loeb volume of Epictetus (books III & IV, plus the Enchiridion). Hurray! I love the Loeb series: the handy-size, the small, neat font, the air of studiousness that they give out. I strive to collect them and have serendipitously bought a number from charity shops which tend to price them cheaply (best buy: 2volumes of Aristotle's Historia Animalium; £7 for both. I use small chunks to teach Greek to The Boy). With Christmas books I generally have to make specific requests and direct the purchaser to the most appropriate outlet. I remember one year asking for 'Spartan Women' by Sarah(?) Pomeroy and saying that it could be bought from the classics department at a certain bookshop (I'd actually seen it on the shelves). However I got a story back that it wasn't in stock, they'd never heard of it so they couldn't order it. All patently untrue. I sulkily took myself in, the week after Christmas, picked off the very shelf where I'd last seen it and bought it for myself. Not sure what happened there.

I often ask for easy reading at this time of year: Stephen Fry's 'The Ode Less Travelled', 'Pistache' by Sebastien Faulks, Alan Bennett, that sort of thing. Last year though, my Christmas reading was the New International Greek Testament Commentary on the Gospel of Luke by I.Howard Marshall. Fascinating.

I have finished 'This Breathing World' by Jose Luis de Juan, purchased last week. It was well-written (or at least, well-translated) but I'm not really sure what was going on with the plot: two parallel storylines nudge up against one another, but there is no satisfying unifying denouement (which it cries out for), just a low-key trailing off. I was (and still am) running a temperature whilst reading it, so it was all a bit vague and fever-dreamlike. I should get on with some serious reading: Constantine Campbell, Stanley Porter and Bernard Comrie, but I think I'll wait until I feel better for those heavyweight guys.

I'm going to start my Hardy novelette ('The Well-Beloved') either today or tomorrow, if my eyes stop aching. It always takes me a while to get into Hardy's idiolect, but I do love his writing so.

The annotated Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass was a revelation: so interesting, and Lewis Carroll's wordplay breathtaking. It can be savoured so much more as you get older. Sometimes I think that childrens' books are wasted on children!

I am trying to resist the newspaper book supplements: there are always so many books that I fancy reading at any given moment. I used to note them down for future reference, but the backlog is now just getting ridiculous. My dog-chewed (as opposed to dog-eared) notebook must remain firmly closed for a while.

So of course I ended up not buying a modern first edition for my new god-son. I stayed traditional and he ended up with a RSV-CE New Testament and Psalms, which is good and clear but not too trendy. Doubtless he will never even look at it, but it's there if he wants to.

Another week of prolific book buying: I have been looking for ages for a 'How To...' book on doing a PhD and blow me if two don't come along at once! Browsing in Borders whilst the pregnant daughter availed herself of the toilet facilities, I came across a couple of OU publications, 'How to Write a Thesis' and 'The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research'. Only the former was priced - at £17.99!!! Recognising that buying both would be impossible, I took the latter (unpriced) to the check-out where I was informed that it -although slimmer - was £18.99. Laughing hollowly I told them that as far as I was concerned, they could...er...reshelve it.

Doctoral studies means that my book buying has been cranked up a notch. A rather expensive notch at that. Some books are just so useful or seminal that it is practically mandatory to possess one's own copy. Thus it was with Albert Rijksbaron's 'The Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek' and Constantine Campbell's hotly debated 'Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek', purchased from The Book Depository through Amazon, rather than directly from the former. Likewise my mother who wanted to buy me a 'useful' book for Christmas (i.e. one that I will actually use) found herself unable even to order the Loeb second volume of Epictetus from Borders, garnering nothing but a gormless smile from the unfortunate girl behind the information desk. God knows what antiquated data base they use. I was left to source the book online (again from the BD via Amazon - a bit cheaper than buying direct from BD strangely, even including the added on P&P). Whilst on the web I also ordered the two OU publications at £5 less each than the shop price. So - oh joy!- five books plopped through my letter box this week, one of which I am passing on to be wrapped and returned on Christmas Eve *rolls eyes*.

Oh, and by-the-by I bought a holiday reading book too: the Wordsworth Press's edition of Thomas Hardy's 'The Well-Beloved'. I thought that I had read all Hardy's works when expecting child #3, but this one seems to have escaped me. At £1.99, an absolute bargain. I look forward to waking early on the Christmas morns in order to read before the family awakes.