Current reading, May 15, 2023
Notes on my current reading
by Carl Bettis in Books
- Poetry:
- Middle English Lyrics, edited by Maxwell S. Luria and Richard L. Hoffman
- I had thought my grasp of Middle English was pretty good for someone who's never studied it. I now realize it's only Chaucer's Middle English I'm comfortable with, doubtless through repeated exposure. Like when a preschooler has memorized a favorite book and thinks they've learned how to read.
- Middle English Lyrics, edited by Maxwell S. Luria and Richard L. Hoffman
- Fiction:
- Selected Short Fiction of Leonid Andreyev, Rusalka Books.
- Seven translators are listed, but no editor. I haven't researched the matter, but I suspect these are public domain translations. For one thing, the text is sprinkled with typos, and they are mostly of the sort OCR software would be more likely to make than human typists. Andreyev (at least in these translations) is hit or miss, but "The Red Laugh" is an expressionistic masterpiece on the madness of war.
- Selected Short Fiction of Leonid Andreyev, Rusalka Books.
- Nonfiction:
- A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbols of William Blake, by S. Foster Damon
- Because I'm that nerdy.
- A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbols of William Blake, by S. Foster Damon
