WWW Wednesday

Posted November 14, 2018 by Nicky in General / 5 Comments

The three ‘W’s are what are you reading now, what have you recently finished reading, and what are you going to read next, and you can find this week’s post at the host’s blog here if you want to check out other posts.

What are you currently reading?

The Crucible of Creation, by Simon Conway Morris. He did a lot of work on the Burgess Shale, so he’s got an interesting perspective on evolution, and he’s pretty sharply critical of Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins’ perspectives, so I’m pretty fascinated. I’m onto the middle chapters where he’s doing an imaginative reconstruction of the Burgess Shale lifeforms when alive, which is a bit weird, though. (Interesting thought experiment, I guess, but I’m not sure what it adds?)

What have you recently finished reading?

The Mycenaeans by Rodney Castleden. I need to read around a bit to decide how in or out of date the book is, though it’s obviously a step-up from Kitto’s book on the Greeks. He weirdly manages to talk about Alexander and Achilles, and the affinity Alexander felt for Achilles, without mentioning Hephaestion once. Patroclus is mentioned, but only in passing (Achilles organises his funeral games, Achilles seeks revenge, etc) — it’s not an important point in the context, but it feels so weird to just ignore that aspect of Alexander and Achilles. Instead he talks about Alexander’s fascination with Roxane as being like Achilles’ with Briseis…!

What will you be reading next?

I’m not sure. I have rather weirdly and for no apparent reason been told that I’m not to use one of my local libraries anymore, without explanation, so I need to finish the books I have out from that one. So possibly The Traitor God, by Cameron Johnston. Or maybe the book on the Sumerians… Who knows!

This week this post goes live without cover thumbnails, because WordPress is being super weird and suddenly no longer letting me add images. 🙁

What about you? What’re you reading?

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5 responses to “WWW Wednesday

  1. arbie

    Ooh! The Conway Morris book sounds interesting – looking forward to a review of that.
    Weird about the library – what’s going on there?

  2. I had (maybe still have, somewhere) the Castleden book but ever since I read his book on King Arthur I have been reluctant to trust it. (My review explains all: https://wp.me/p2oNj1-6k)

    As for WP, much as I love it, the more updates and tinkerings there are the more temporary glitches arrive—I use its mobile app a lot (like right now) but find weird things occasionally occurring which, thankfully, I can eventually resolve. So, commiserations over your problems with images, pro tem one hopes!

  3. The problem with a lot of non-fiction books covering a topic like Alexander or the Greeks is, by the time it’s been researched, edited, and published, between 5-8 or even, 10 years can have passed. So I always view the content as being on the stale and or possibly, out of date side of science.

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