The Swerve:
This book was mentioned previously in a post that I have re-blogged from Interesting Literature. The writer of Book Shares subsequently urged me to get around to reading The Swerve, so I may have to move it up the pecking order a little. This also means yet again tackling the technical issue of reading books that aren’t actually part of the Landing Book Shelves TBR Pile.
But, I’m pretty sure I gave myself a generous exclusion clause…TBR Pile? What TBR Pile?!
I always thought I received an above-average education from my rural Pennsylvania high school and from the state college just a few miles away. After all, many people I met after college didn’t seem to know much or care about literature, music, art, language, or history, not to the extent that I did. Yet, as I made my way in the world, I learned that I was sorely deficient in one area: classical antiquity
. I had no clue whether Virgil was Greek or Roman; whether Aristophanes wrote in the same century as Sophocles or Euripides, much less what they wrote; who sent the big wooden horse into Troy; why Rome was a republic but all the leaders seemed to be emperors; what Plato said that was different from Socrates; and I hadn’t even heard of Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, or Lucretius.
I picked up some info along the way, and…
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Tales From the Landing Book Shelves 
Thanks so much for the reblog! I can relate to the tough decisions about what to read next. I probably read too many book reviews (feeding the growing pile of books to read). . . .
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Well, the whole point of starting my blog was to encourage me to read what was already in the house but somehow more books seem to find their way onto the shelves and bedside table. Very mysterious. And not helpful on the decision making front at all. But would we really want it any other way? Thanks for commenting, all the best!
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[…] I think I have mentioned in a previous post, I have had The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began (Stephen Greenblatt) on my bed side table for a few months. I bought it […]
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