jdhomrighausen plugs away at the pile in 2014.

October 2014
63. Heracles: The Twelve Labors of the Hero in Ancient Art and Literature by Frank Brommer
64. Philoctetes by Sophocles
65. Medea by Euripides
66. Herakles in the Art of Classical Greece by Rainer Vollkommer
67. Herakles: Passage of the hero through 1000 years of classical art by Jaimee Pugliese Uhlenbrock
68. The Lansdowne Herakles (J. Paul Getty Museum. Publication no. 1) by Seymour Howard
69. Alcestis by Euripides
70. Ajax by Sophocles
71. Alcestis by Euripides
72. Women of Trakhis by Sophocles
73. Herakles by Euripides
74. Ion by Euripides
75. Helen by Euripides

November 2014
76. The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite by Wole Soyinka
77. Agamemnon by Aeschylus
78. Grendel by John Gardner
79. Herakles by Emma Stafford
80. Libation Bearers by Aeschylus
81. Eumenides by Aeschylus
82. Electra by Sophocles
83. Electra by Euripides
84. Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles
85. Harp of Burma by Michio Takeyama
86. Rediscovering the Buddha: Legends of the Buddha and Their Interpretation by Hans H. Penner

December 2014
87. Medea by Donald Mastronarde
88. The Big Kahn: A Sequential Drama by Neil Kleid
89. Gandharan Buddhism: Archaeology, Art, and Texts (Asian Religions and Society), ed. Pia Brancaccio
90. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
91. The Thirty-Seven Practices of Bodhisattvas by Geshe Sonam Rinchen
92. The British Museum Book of the Rosetta Stone by Carol Andrews
93. Neverwhere: A Novel by Neil Gaiman
94. Drosilla and Charikles: A Byzantine Novel by Niketas Eugenianos
95. Read It In Greek: An Introduction to New Testament Greek by L. William Countryman
96. Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden

The Lansdowne Herakles (J. Paul Getty Museum. Publication no. 1) by Seymour Howard

I am now up to nine books on Hercules in Greco-Roman art and literature. This week I downed three. So if these reviews are a bit tedious, understand that they are being written for my annotated bibliography.

Seymour Howard’s The Landsdowne Herakles is the only work I’ve found so far that focuses only on one sculpture. The Landsdowne Herakles, named for its long-time owner and art collector Lord Landsdowne, now resides in the Getty Museum near Los Angeles. I had the fortune to see it when I was there in March.

The Landsdowne Herakles was found in a villa of the Roman emperor Hadrian, a philhellene and lover of young men. Although it was carved in the Roman era, art historians have spilled much ink trying to identify which Greek originals it was based on. After all, much of Roman art was merely copied from Greek originals, or sometimes paraphrased or combined. Lacking modern methods of reproduction, Roman copies were always different from their originals, and often not at the same level of quality.

Howard traves the Landsdowne Herakles to several possible Greek originals, arguing that it contains elements from various sculptors such as Skopas, Euphranor, and Lysippos. For my purposes, his comparison to Lysippos is the most useful. Lysippos was the most famous Greek sculptor of Herakles, inventing the famous “Weary Herakles.” Lysippos was part of a fourth-century trend to portray Herakles not in the midst of battle, but after the battle. The result is a more introspective and human Herakles. Herakles was still the culture hero, but he was also portrayed as “an aging professional strongman – a massive, brooding Stoic, exhausted after a life of fatiguing labors” (32). The Landsdowne Herakles, while coming from an earlier stage of Greek art before Lysippos’ portray of Herakles, foreshadows these later elements.

Overall a useful and interesting (32 pages) book with lots of details on the 1970s restoration of the Landsdowne Herakles. This lengthy investigation into one work of art dovetails well with the broader surveys I’m mostly reading.

Herakles in the Art of Classical Greece by Rainer Vollkommer

Vollkommer’s 1988 book identifies and organized 619 instances of Herakles in Classical Greek art (roughly 450 - 300 BCE). He analyzes pottery, sculpture, coins, and other minor works of art that are long-lost but described by writers such as Pausanias. I like how Vollkommer relates depictions of Herakles to literary, religious, political, and historical trends. Because he identifies so many depictions of Herakles, the reader also gets a sense of which parts of the Herakles myth were portrayed the most, such as his fight with the Nemean lion (42 works), with the Amazon women (25 works) and his apotheosis (24 works). Other works are less easily identifiable, such as works in which Herakles is with various gods and goddesses in scenes that are unidentifiable or generic (44 with Athena, 31 with Nike).

In later chapters Vollkommer analyzes Herakles in the theater, in philosophy, in religious cult, and in kingship. These to me were the most interesting. Classical Greek theater, like the sculptures of Lysippos, portrayed a more human Herakles, who could have a tragic downfall (in tragedies such as Sophocles’ Women of Trachis), be a drunken libertine (in comedy and satyr-play), or a ladykiller and thief. (Perhaps Herakles’ larger-than-life quality made him easy to exaggerate for humor.) Meanwhile, philosophers such as Cynics and Stoics allegorized Herakles’ myths, painting him as a model of virtue and heroism. Vollkommer relates this to Lysippos’ Weary Herakles (aka “Farnese Herakles”), which shows Herakles in an introspective human rather than a perfect hero. Herakles’ religious cult was even more complicated, as he became a patron deity for athletes, sickness, fertility, protector against death, and even a destroyer of insects. Cults devoted to Herakles varied widely from region to region, and scholars cannot always tell if the cult is focused on Herakles the hero or Herakles the god. Lastly, in political imagery Herakles was adopted as ancestor and role model by dynasties seeking to gain legitimacy (most notably Philip II and Alexander the Great).

Vollkommer’s conclusion asks some insightful questions: which depictions are most popular on which types of art? For example, monumental sculpture favors different scenes than vase-painting. He also has an interesting excursus on Herakles’ age and its significance. Although Vollkommer does not analyze the art of Herakles as much as I would have liked, his task of cataloguing the art is a necessary preliminary step.

(Sorry for the tedious reviews -- also google "Landsdowne Herakles" to see some good stuff. The "Weary Herakles" of Lysippos is also known as the Farnese Herakles.)

Herakles: Passage of the hero through 1000 years of classical art by Jaimee Pugliese Uhlenbrock

Uhlenbrock’s book, written to accompany an exhibition at Bard College, gives an overview of Herakles in Greco-Roman art and literature. The book has three parts: various chapters briefly detailing Herakles’ broad mythos and its treatment in Pindar, Seneca, and Euripides; 62 images of Heraklean art; and commentary on each work of art in the exhibit. By far the most useful part of this book for me is the chapter “The Herakles Motif in Classical Art,” which gives an overview of the artistic tradition of Herakles in 11 pages. The rest of the book was less useful. I see myself coming back to the plates later for primary source data.

Enjoying catching up with your reviews both here and on your previous thread. Hope you are enjoying your immersion in the Herakles story!

Just catching up with your thread. Who knew there were so many books on the Herakles? You have definitely piqued my interest. No apologies necessary. Your reviews are not at all tedious.

Thank you, all. I think I am done with the Herakles phase now -- moving into the Indian Buddhist art phase! Will come back to Herakles research later.

Between working on senior thesis #1, trying to post to my blog once in a while, taking 25 units, working two jobs, and fantasizing about my relaxing post-graduation life, I haven't been around here much. But I just want to say that I am NOT dead, and that I am actually very happy doing what I am doing. :)

Had a good meeting with the academic advisor the other day. The results are in: I am graduating in June with double majors in religious studies and classics and a minor in medieval and renaissance studies. I think I'm the most unemployable college graduate in the country. Good thing there is graduate school.

Next March I am presenting the results of senior thesis #2 at the Western Region American Academy of Religion; the next week I have applied to present thesis #1 at the Pacific Northwest meeting of the same academic society in Portland. Both of these serendipitously fall in my spring "break."

Grad school looms on the horizon... my tentative plan is to go into Buddhist-Christian comparative theology. I'm most interested in engaging with scripture rather than systematic theology. To my knowledge there are no comparative theologians also trained as scripture scholars, though there is valuable work in that vein (cf. John Keenan).

Glad to hear that you aren't dead!

Have you already started the process of applying to grad schools for next year? Which schools are you looking at?

As someone who graduated with a degree in philosophy, I hear you! One thing that was lovely though was how much free time there was when I was only working one and a half jobs. It was leisurely and so odd to not have things I should be doing every second of the day.

Your planned grad school study ideas sound interesting. Best of luck getting that first degree finished and in getting ready for part two.

Very cool that you get to present your senior theses at professional meetings; that should be a big plus when you apply to grad school.

Congratulations on all your impressive accomplishments!

Thanks all.

I am applying to Graduate Theological Union for my MA program, but the best PhD school for what I want to do is Boston College. Luckily, it's also a well-ranked program in theology with a good record of placing people in tenure-track jobs. They have 10 faculty in biblical studies as well as a strong focus in comparative theology so I'd have good people to study with.

Greetings all.

So the quarter is finished and as you can see, I read a big fat stack of classical tragedy, since I took a course on the topic. I’m not going to review them all as that would take forever. As usual, my reading quota is low because much of my reading is very slow and in classical languages. So if I measure my reading in lines, verses, and chapters, I have done a lot of Greek and Latin. But if I measure it in books, it looks like I’ve done almost nothing!

One of my recent obsessions is the TV show Hoarders. I have several family members who are bad enough to be on that show. I spent part of my childhood in that kind of environment – specifically a cat hoarder. (The phrase “crazy cat lady” is neither endearing nor sweet to me.) It was scary because I saw how I had some of the same tendencies with books. (Let’s face it, this website exists for people with unhealthy book collecting tendencies. LOL.) So I did a lot of book weeding in the last month. A big reminder: each book is an investment in time. Will I have time to do everything in the world? No.

So that was my epiphany. I wonder how many of you identify with it. :P

Anyway, onto the reviews.

The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite by Wole Soyinka

Apart from Things Fall Apart, this is the only work of African literature I have ever read. It was good – though it would have been better on stage. Soyinka provides a retelling of Euripides’ Bacchae, a gruesome tragedy about a man who offends Dionysus and gets ripped apart bodily by his mother. Soyinka takes a Greek play about the dangers of offending a god and turns it into a play about the oppression of the poor. Dionysus becomes not so much an individual character, but a representation of a Nature deity who sides with the oppressed workers of the land over the tyrannical political systems that oppress them. Soyinka makes his retelling even more shocking than the original, which was already one of the most shocking classical tragedies of its day. Given the race overtones of any postcolonial African literature, it was also very apt to read this in light of the injustices in Ferguson.

Grendel by John Gardner

One of the things that intrigued me about Beowulf was the change in how Beowulf related to the three monsters whom he killed. As the epic wore on, it seemed he had more in common with the monsters, and the monsters were easier to sympathize with. But while the dragon is even vaguely relatable, Grendel, the first monster, is described in the most inhuman and distancing terms possible. Gardner’s short book retells Beowulf from the point of view of this Grendel. Gardner asks the question: why do humans need monsters? What do they do for us? Monsters, far from being undesirable, are necessary to sustain humanity. We need enemies. That is perhaps the most frightening monster of all.

This book has some great quotable moments.

“Ah Grendel! … You improve them, my boy! Can’t you see that yourself? You stimulate them! You make them think and scheme. You drive them to poetry, science, religion, all that makes them what they are for as long as they last. You are, so to speak, the brute existent by which they learn to define themselves. The exile, captivity, death they shrink from – the blunt facts of their mortality, their abandonment – that’s what you make them recognize, embrace! You are mankind, or man’s condition: inseparable as the mountain-climber and the mountain.” (62)

Spoken by a pagan priest:
“O the ultimate evil in the temporal world is deeper than any specific evil, such as hatred, or suffering, or death! The ultimate evil is that Time is perpetual perishing, and being actual involves elimination. The nature of evil may be epitomized, therefore, in two simple but horrifying and holy propositions: ‘Things fade’ and ‘Alternatives exclude.’ Such is His mystery: that beauty requires contrast, and that discord is fundamental to the creation of new intensities of feeling. Ultimate wisdom, I have come to perceive, lies in the perception that the solemnity and grandeur of the universe rise through the slow process of unification in which the diversities of existence are utilized, and nothing, nothing is lost.” (115)

Herakles by Emma Stafford

I’ve written plenty on Herakles already. But Stafford’s book is probably the most comprehensive and up-to-date exploration of this hero-god in English. Stafford’s book is a thematic analysis of the many myths and practices associated with Herakles in the Greco-Roman world. In chapters 1 and 2, she focuses on the key events of his heroism, including both the canonical twelve labors and the many other monsters Herakles defeated. Chapter three, “The Tragic Hero,” focuses on tragedians’ depictions of Herakles’ flaws. Chapter four, “Vice or Virtue Incarnate,” looks at Herakles in comedy, in philosophy and athletic inspiration, and as a romantic hero. Chapter five, “The Political Herakles,” unfolds Herakles’ appropriation as a political figure, especially by Spartans, Macedonians, the Peisistratids, and Roman emperors. Chapter six focuses on the manifold Heraklean cults and his role as alexikakos (averter of evils) and kallinikos (fair-victoried). Throughout the book Stafford explains every source of evidence, whether it be literary, artistic, or material. Especially useful for my purposes are her discussions of Pindar, her summary of Bactrian kings’ use of Heraklean coinage (148), and Herakles as colony-founder and far-traveller. The best, most comprehensive source on Herakles, even if it could have used more images.

Harp of Burma by Michio Takeyama

My mom gave this to me, telling me that it was one of the best novels she has ever read. So I was pretty excited to read it. Takeyama’s story focuses on a group of Japanese soldiers stationed in Burma toward the end of WWII. Their job is to convince other Japanese soldiers to surrender since the war had officially ended. After running into the British, the entire unit is captured as POWs, except for Corporal Mizushima who has gone missing. The majority of the book is spent following the soldiers in a POW camp as they wonder where Mizushima has gone with his popular harp playing. The ending of the book surprised me!

I wish there had been more context provided in the introduction, as I know very little about Japanese literature or history. However, I can imagine that the author was pouring a great deal of war trauma into this book, especially the trauma of soldiers who had to come home without their comrades. Throughout the book the soldiers compare Burmese life, which they see as technologically poor but rich in the teachings of the Buddha, to a Japan which is power-hungry and itching to industrialize. What is the cost of this desire for material comfort? What’s the point?

Rediscovering the Buddha: Legends of the Buddha and Their Interpretation by Hans H. Penner

Penner’s historical biography partially fills a wide gap in scholarship on the biography of the Buddha in ancient India. This book is divided into two parts: a retelling of the life of the Buddha from Tripitika and early Sanskrit sources, and a three-part critique of contemporary scholarship on the life of the Buddha. Throughout the book Penner argues that the life story of the Buddha cannot be separated from the cosmological and mythological beliefs it was constructed in the context of, and that early Buddhism was far less a monastic-only religion than it has since been portrayed as. While Penner does not specifically discuss Vajrapani, he does retell stories of the Buddha’s competition with yakshas, nagas, and other ascetic leaders. In the absence of a better source on the early Sanskrit sources on the life of the Buddha, this is a useful book. I only wish he had an appendix guiding readers through the different sources he draws on.

Medea by Donald Mastronarde

Mastronarde, one of the two Euripides scholars in the country, has prepared an amazing commentary for Greek students and scholars alike. This is part of the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series, affectionately known as the “green and yellows” by classicists. Mastronarde’s tome contains an introduction providing solid background context and a thematic overview of the play, the Greek text with textual criticism, and a HUGE commentary that covers the nuances and allusions of the Greek. The only thing missing in this 431-page behemoth is the kitchen sink. I’m very proud to have gotten through a majority of this play, and glad I’m exposed to this useful series for learning Greek and Latin. In fact, I see they have a commentary on Augustine’s Confessions….

The Big Kahn: A Sequential Drama by Neil Kleid

I picked this up for my girlfriend at a friend’s comic book shop, since she is really into Judaica. Of course I ended up reading it myself. Kleid’s book begins with the funeral of a beloved rabbi, a pillar of his local synagogue. The family learns that he was actually a con man, not a Jew at all, a man who became a rabbi initially for the money but over time came to it as a way to atone for his sins. His family is forced to face the difficult question of defining authenticity: is truth something you can fake until you make, or is it deeper than that? Is being Jewish about a lineage, a formal conversion, or is it defined solely by one’s relationship with God? The most fascinating part of this book for me was seeing how Rabbi Kahn’s two children changed as a result of learning about their father’s false identity. The book does not pose an answer to the above questions, but shows how two characters come to different conclusions that both make sense and change their lives permanently.

Gandharan Buddhism: Archaeology, Art, and Texts (Asian Religions and Society), ed. Pia Brancaccio

Another book read for the senior thesis. This book aims to provide a multidisciplinary introduction to current research in Gandharan culture, with contributions from many famous scholars summing up areas of research. Parts One and Two provide archaeological and textual background for the study of art (Part Three). Taddei’s chapter on the problems of dating in archaeology is a useful caution, and Behrendt’s chapter on relic shrines at stupa-complexes was also illuminating. Salomon’s chapter is a fascating bit of historical context, if unrelated to my project. Callieri’s and Kuwayama’s articles are not useful for my project. Rhi’s chapter on bodhisattvas in Gandharan art in relation to the development of the Mahayana tradition, as well as Brown’s article on the Buddha’s bodily relics in Gandhara, look useful. Overall the best introduction to current research on Gandharan Buddhism.

The British Museum Book of the Rosetta Stone by Carol Andrews

Though I was in the British Museum once when I was 18, I was far too young and dumb to appreciate anything I saw there. Though I don’t have the time or cash to go back there and see the Rosetta Stone in person, thankfully there is a full-size replica about a mile away from me at the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum here in San Jose. Andrews’ book provides a short (64-page) overview of what is one of the top ten archaeological finds in human history.

The Rosetta Stone was initially discovered by Napoleon’s troops in Egypt. Thankfully someone had the good sense to recognize its value and send it to France to be examined by scholars. Before the Rosetta Stone, nobody had been able to decipher hieroglyphics, and some pretty ridiculous and fanciful theories were in vogue. The Rosetta Stone, written as a proclamation by priests praising Ptolemy I, has the same text in hieroglyphics, demotic script, and Greek. By finding hieratic transliterations of the Greek names Ptolemy and Cleopatra, scholars were able to begin decoding the hieratic alphabet, this unlocking one the mysteries of Egyptian history, literature, and religion. I especially enjoyed Andrews’ explanation of just how scholars deciphered the code. She includes photos of where it was found and a transliteration of the (pretty dull) edict.

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

My mom loves this book and has taught it to her “introduction to literature” students for 15+ years. So I figured it was time I read it. Paton, a white South African author and anti-apartheid activist, pens a novel about forgiveness and reconciliation under apartheid. The main character is a rural black parson who travels to Johannesburg, portrayed as the big city of slums and sin and social decay, to find his lost son and daughter.

He learns that his son has been caught by the police, charged with murder for killing a white man. This white man happens to be one of the biggest opponents of apartheid in the country. The rest of the novel follows the trial and the slain man’s father, who experiences a moral conversion as he reads his son’s writings. He eventually uses his wealth to build a dam and other infrastructure in the rural area where he and the parson both live.

I had mixed feelings about this book. I have a close friend who is black, and one of her biggest frustrations is literature written by and for white people about individual whites whose compassion crosses color lines. We see that in this novel, and those narratives of compassion are important. But individual compassion is not enough – we must change infrastructures, laws, societies. Those things do not get fixed in this book. Now, is Paton depicting the reality of apartheid and how it seemingly will not change? Or is he ignoring a key aspect of how apartheid will end? Is the ending a reconciliation, or just another white savior complex run amuck?

“Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved with the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or valley. For fear will rob him if he gives too much.” (80)

“Yet men were afraid, with a fear that was deep, deep in the heart, a fear so deep that they hid their kindness, or brought it out with fierceness and anger, and hid it behind fierce and frowning eyes. They were afraid because they were so few. And such fear could not be cast out, but by love.” (276)

The Thirty-Seven Practices of Bodhisattvas by Geshe Sonam Rinchen

First read this two years ago when I was writing a paper on the 37 Practices, on which this book is a commentary. Read it again because I am revising the paper for another class. Rinchen’s commentary is very clear and lucid, which is good because the 37 Practices can be fairly opaque and allude to things a typical Westerner would not know about. Overall a useful commentary.

And now I am caught up on book reviews!

Good to see you, and I'll come back later in the week when I have time to catch up on your reviews. You must be glad the semester's over -- when do you have to go back, and what are you doing on your vacation?

I have to go back the second week of the new year. I have some writing to catch up on over vacation -- hope I can get it done!

Yay, Cambridge green and yellows!

As usual, my reading quota is low because much of my reading is very slow and in classical languages. So if I measure my reading in lines, verses, and chapters, I have done a lot of Greek and Latin. But if I measure it in books, it looks like I’ve done almost nothing!

I can definitely relate to this! Except lately I haven't even been reading a lot of complete ancient works, just dipping in and out of everything.

Nice to see some posts from you and get a sense of where you are at and what you are reading. A fun mixture of books.

Thinking about your comments on Cry, The Beloved Country. It's been a while since i read it. Trying to sift and make sense of my memory. I think the book has a weakness simpy because Paton is writing largely about a part of the culture he is not part of - ie he his white and his main character is black. Not sure on your specific concerns though - on the individual compassion as a limitation. My recollection is that the individual compassion at the end seemed forced. : ) i think the book predates formalized apartheid and serves as an argument against it. So, i think it strives to be larger than about the individuals. But also it's a powerful look at several variations of people in hopeless situations controlled by their cultural context.

>24 dchaikin: Your touchstone goes to the Reader's Digest version...just FYI. :)

15 -

I had always wanted to read Harp of Burma because it's right up my alley in terms of reading (I love Japan and Japanese history) but I read Shohei Ooka's Fires on the Plain first. And that book I fell in love with; I continue to praise it long after I've read it. So when I finally read Harp of Burma I was truly disappointed; I felt that "Fires" is what "Harp" was trying to be. So I highly recommend you look into "Fires". It's wonderful.

>25 lesmel: - had the title wrong. It's now fixed.

Great to read your reviews Jonathan. Nice to see those quotes from John Gardner's Grendel; A Book I really enjoyed when I read it a couple of years ago.

Fascinating reviews, as always. Have a wonderful holiday!

93. The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America by Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz

I had never read a book about American religious history before, so this was a fascinating a short read. This book tells the story of Matthias, a self-proclaimed prophet in the Second Great Awakening whose career ended in scandal: marriages broken up, his alleged murder of his foremost disciple, the complete abandonment of his own wife and children. In a time or urbanization and evangelical reforms that gave women a more powerful role in the family and challenged hierarchical social structures, Matthias sought to reassert a traditional family order of patriarchy and social order. A disturbing story of how a mentally ill but charismatic person can gain sick power over others. The authors do a good job of bringing in background to help explain it. Also, the ending was a huge surprise – I won’t spoil it!

The Stammering Century describes a lot of self-proclaimed 19th century American prophets, along with founders of idealistic communities, temperance proponents, medical quacks, and a whole lot more. It is a somewhat strange book about strange people in a strange time.

What I found fascinating was how much continuity there is between these self-styled prophets past and present. While reading The Kingdom of Matthias I kept thinking about Going Clear, the book I read earlier this year on Scientology. But unlike Matthias, Hubbard was sadly all too successful.

94. Drosilla and Charikles: A Byzantine Novel by Niketas Eugenianos

I blogged this review:

http://jdhomie.com/2015/12/26/review-drosilla-and-charikles-a-byzantine-novel/

95. Read It In Greek: An Introduction to New Testament Greek by L. William Countryman

I bought this book because I was looking for a brief review of Greek without working through another fat textbook. Rather than the more common deductive approach to ancient Greek, building up grammatical knowledge step by step, Countryman introduces Greek bit-by-bit while walking the student through 1 John. The idea is to give students an inductive primer of Greek in one semester. While this won’t give as good a knowledge of the languages as the deductive approach, often seminarians do not have the time for a full introduction. More and more you hear of courses such as “Using Biblical Languages” replacing traditional (actual) instruction in those languages. Countryman hopes to provide a book for these students.

His curriculum choices for the semester are smart. 1 John is a good book to start with, since it is the linguistically easiest and one of the shortest NT books. About midway through the book he began to give exegesis lessons, walking the student through using the standard lexicon, concordances, grammars, text-critical notes, and other aspects of NT Greek.

The book had some grammar review for me (I have forgotten the articular infinitive; terrible!) but mostly I liked the exegesis stuff. Countryman’s book helped me fill in some of the gaps that I didn’t get in my NT Greek class at SCU. I feel more equipped to dive into exegesis now.

93. Neverwhere: A Novel by Neil Gaiman

The usual Gaiman fare, a tale of dark urban fantasy in which an ordinary man finds a wild world beneath the facade of civilization. As usual, Gaiman fails to deliver unsexualized female characters; seems like every woman in the book over 20 is the most beautiful woman the protagonist has ever met. Other than that a fun winter break read.

96. Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden

The story of a man who escaped a North Korean labor camp. A really sad book, and very informative about the sick, dysfunctional system that is the North Korean government. Not much happiness here; he escaped, but he was very lucky and nobody else he knew did. I'm glad I read this because I feel more informed now.

Well, I didn't hit many of the goals I set for this year. But here's a brief reflection on what I did do.

2014 reading reflections

Statistics:

Men vs. women
12 women
84 men

Date of Publication: Before or After 1900
28 before 1900
68 after 1900

Fiction vs. nonfiction
44 fiction
52 nonfiction

Most boring: books I have a hard time saying anything nice about
Jataka Stories in Theravada Buddhism by Naomi Appleton
This was just a boring book that summarized past research without any new insights.

Most Innovative: books that opened new questions for me, often about things I don’t ponder much
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright
Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages by Phyllis Rose
How to Read the Qur'an by Carl Ernst

Most Influential: Books that have a longer impact on my intellectual development, especially as a budding scholar of religions
What the Buddha Thought by Richard Gombrich
Life of the Buddha (Clay Sanskrit Library) by Ashvaghosha, trans. Patrick Olivelle
Haunting the Buddha: Indian Popular Religions and the Formation of Buddhism by Robert DeCaroli
St John of the Cross: His Life and Poetry by Gerald Brenan
The Making of Buddhist Modernism by David L. McMahan
Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America by Eboo Patel

Authors I discovered and want to read more of
G. K. Chesterton (continued from 2013)
H. P. Lovecraft (continued from 2013)
J.R.R. Tolkien (continued from 2013)
Chaim Potok
Alan Paton

Questions:
What changed my reading habits this year?
For a long time I aspired to do bedtime reading of light books. This year I got into that habit. Even 10-15 pages a night can add up!
I also have imposed strict buying limits, which have gone out the window for December. I have to read or discard three books for every one I acquire, and I have to read every book I buy starting December 2014 within a year.

How can I change next year?
I have failed the category challenge two years in a row. This year I will graduate and will have a lot more time for free reading. In 2015 I want to finish the category challenges for both this year and last year.
I also went under my book quota this year – only 95! But I have been doing a lot of writing and language work. Time I could have spent this summer reading I spent working through Wheelock’s. So it’s still been productive. In 2015 I would like to hit 130 books at least.

Most innovative and most influential... great lists. Looks to me like you had a great year.

Hope we'll see you in Club Read 2015, and I agree with Dan about your lists.

I have finally begun the continuation!

http://www.librarything.com/topic/191028