I read Cicero's On Old Age, On Friendship, & On Divination [De Senectute, De Amicitia, De Divinatione], in William Armistead Falconer's 1923 translation for Loeb Classical Library. Divination was a bit tedious, but the other two were charming, at times even moving.

did not finish - just posting in case it saves someone the heartburn. Besides being print-on-demand, this gives every indication of being machine-translated, with no effort towards formatting or typesetting. The supplementary materials might well have been AI-generated.

I read Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico, by Javier Marías (1996). Elvis famously filmed Fun in Acapulco without ever setting foot on location. Marías's counterfactual has a translator/language consultant get into serious trouble while hanging out with the star in Mexico.

I read The Famous Magician, by César Aira (2013; 2022 translation by Chris Andrews for New Directions, in their silly 'Storybook' series). Another fanciful daydream from the prolific Aira. I rarely rate his books more than 3/5 stars but keep coming back for more. Inexplicable.

I read Poetry as Enchantment, by Dana Gioia (2016), a plea for recovering the primacy of the joy and experience of poetry, and recalling that analysis and criticism are mere ancillary activities.

I read A Weakness for Almost Everything, by dilettante (architecture, filmmaking, publishing) and bon vivant Aldo Buzzi. "Notes on Life, Gastronomy, and Travel." An amuse-bouche for the pause between weightier tomes. 1999 translation by Ann Goldstein.

I read 'O Pioneers!,' by Willa Cather (1913). Indomitable Swedish immigrant Alexandra Bergson tames the wild Nebraska prairie, but those she loves are not so easily mastered.

I read The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem. Interestingly, it runs in reverse chronology, from Golan Haji's 'The End of Days' (2017), to Aloysius Bertrand's 'Haarlem' (1842). A prose poem is inherently an ambiguous thing, but each of these 200 diverse pieces could be an epitome of the genre.

I read The Other, by Ryszard Kapuściński (2008), four lectures addressing the concept of 'the Other,' especially as he took it from Jewish and Roman Catholic thinkers, and as he brought it to bear in his journalistic career. Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, with an introduction by Neal Ascherson.

I read Bach Among the Theologians, by Jaroslav Pelikan (1986). Bach's navigation of some of the Lutheran controversies of the time (not so easy when one colleague calls another "an apostle of Satan"!). I flagged so many passages (great points, further reading, etc.) that I guess this one's a keeper.

cleaning house this morning to Dewey Balfa & Co www.youtube.com/@LomaxFilmCo...

I read David McCullough's '1776' (2005), a fast-paced General's-eye account of Gen. Washington's military actions, and those of his top lieutenants, from the Siege of Boston to the routing of the British and their Hessians at Trenton and Princeton.

I've been reading Maintenance: Of Everything, by Stewart Brand, which is great, but I was just now looking in the garage for some old college stuff and found one of his Whole Earth Catalogs (Fall 1969 - I bought it used, I wasn't yet in college in '69). Wow, what a 70s rush!

Just wonderful: Martin Schoeller's portraits of the guys who impersonate/interpret George Washington at historical parks and such. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

I read The Gardens of Mien Ruys, by Conny den Hollander (Timber Press, 2025). Ruys (1904-1999) is an icon of early Modernist landscape design. My uni library doesn't have anything by or about her (!), and the county library rejected my request that they buy it, but then they acquired it after all.

a birthday stack for birthday boy Hermann Hesse (1877)

I read The Last Gentleman, by Walker Percy (1966). In part a road trip, a novel of manners, and bildungsroman, with Southern eccentricities. I loved it.

I read the first volume of Paideia, Werner Jaeger's visionary overview of ancient Greek culture (1933; Highet's translation, 1939). Covers Homer, Hesiod, Tyrtaeus, Solon, Theognis, Pindar, the Tragedians, the Sophists, Aristophanes, & more, up through Thucydides.

made me think of this bit of lunacy, the Faxa Bay nest of Icelandic filmmaker Hrafn Gunnlaugsson, which I stumbled upon a few years ago.

Jeff Young@wildtwin.bsky.social · 2mo ago

For the 27th edition of Science & Magic I wrote about the feral outsider artists on the banks of the River Mersey. You can read it here: www.violetterecords.com/science-and-... Lots of other wonderful things in this one including the debut of the brilliant Donna Enticknap @auuop.bsky.social

I read The Soul of Brutes, by Carlo Ginzburg (Seagull Books, 2026). I was sorry to hear that he passed away today. RIP, Professore

I read A Mere Accident, by George Moore (1887). H/T to Thomas Kitson (@thatiliazdguy.bsky.social) who has been posting it sentence by sentence. One of which tipped me into getting a copy -- I couldn't justify the cost of a first edition (or second) so I got this relatively decent hardcover POD.

It's Burl Ives' birthday (1909). Here's a couple of performances for the Ed Sullivan show, broadcast from the deck of the USS Wisconsin in 1955: 1) Ballad of Davy Crockett www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpdQ...

Burl Ives "The Ballad Of Davy Crockett" on The Ed Sullivan Show

YouTube video by The Ed Sullivan Show

youtube.com

I read The Memory of Old Jack, by Wendell Berry (1974).

I read A Place on Earth, by Wendell Berry (1967, rev. 1983). One of his early Port William novels and one of my most-loved. "They are in the midst of what they must go through," Berry writes of the Feltners, but as much could be said of every character in the book in all their sundry situations.

I had a look at the Shikimei Sōkan [book of color names], by Wada Sanzō (1931). I think the wall of shelving in the guest bedroom would look fine in Rainette Green. The '53 Chevy pickup will be done in Pale Burnt Lake. I might do the front door in 'French Vermirion.'

A stroll in the Sixty-Acre Wood. There were Nootka roses and what promises to be a bumper crop of thimbleberries. Had the season's first handful of salmonberries.

I read The Bible, a three-year project (festina lente). I used Thomas Nelson's 1611 Edition, which follows the 1611 edition but is reset in modern type - I think it may be a reprint of a 1911 Oxford setting. The type looks very close to the first Roman-type printing of 1612.

I read Conversation in the Mountains, collected from the rather slim pickings of Paul Celan's prose. New Directions reprints Rosmarie Waldrop's 1986 translations.

I read Shopkeeping, by Peter Miller (Princeton Architectural Press, 2024). I've been a fan of Peter Miller Books since the 1980s when, although a poor architecture student, I always had money for books. It has been too long since I've visited his Post Alley shop, I'll have to rectify that soon.

120 years ago today, Terence Hanbury White was born to write this splendid book.