(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best literary criticism books

I'm very happy that I was able to help :)

And yes, a lot of people will blame everything around them for the misery of themselves. This seems to be the easy way out, but you must ask yourself what good it does in the end. There are things which are outside of your control. What people might do to you, say to you, and so on. However no matter what harsh things you go through in life it is ultimately you that decide how to respond to them. You decide what to do with it. It is as Epictetus once said:

> "Man is affected not by events, but by the view he takes of them."

Usually I do not actually like to talk openly about the philosophy I follow, for the simple reason that I just try to live by it. Use actions, not words. Also for many people it might seem that you try to push something on to them. However I felt in this case I was justified to give an explanation of what exactly helped me :-)

Anyways, if you are interested in the principles I explained, then what you seek is reading on Stoicism. The book that has especially helped me is this one:
Stoicism and the art of happiness

It has eye-opening/life-changing wisdoms and perspectives on everything that has to do with you. How to deal with emotions, what they are, and what is essential to life a good life. Another interesting fact is that many of the mental exercises and perspectives the stoics used is now today amongst some of the most scientifically well-documented practices used by cognitive behavioural therapy (also with a quick google search, you will find that even the founder of CBT was inspired by the stoic teachings), which deals with practically all kinds of mental sufferings you can imagine.

It's a practical book on the life philosophy of Stoicism, and it is written by a credible psychotherapist who also takes interest in the study of Stoicism (hence the book!). It's not academic in any way, it's meant to be easily approachable and easy to implement into your life. Here's a quick breakdown of it all:

Stoicism is a life philosophy that was founded by the ancient greeks around 301 BCE. It's not a religion, or any kind of weird cult. It is a collection of principles that is meant to guide you towards happiness (in greek context meaning something more along the lines of inner well-being and tranquility).

I would suggest you read the book :-) Maybe you will come to pick up on everything stoicism has to offer, maybe you will only pick up whatever principles and wisdoms that you think are right, or maybe you won't find much agreement with it at all, all which is fine. However I think you will find some wisdoms you will definitely find to your liking, as you sound intrigued by the principles. The important thing is that no matter what, it will most certainly set you out on your way to think more about yourself and how to control your life and achieve your own understanding of well-being.

If Stoicism comes to your liking (start with the above book first, though), I could recommend books by some of the most famous ancient Stoics through time. I will leave some here for future reference for you:

Meditations - Marcus Aurelius - This is one of the most famous stoic texts.

Enchiridion - Epictetus

Dialogues and Essays - Seneca

These books read as manuals, not to be read in one sitting. They are huge collections of letters, essays and short passages from these excellent people about everything that has to do with achieving inner well-being, and how to view the world around you. They are remarkable ancient works, and it is truly inspiring and motivating to open them and just read a few of the lines from time to time.

As with anything, it's a learning process to change mindset. But it slowly comes when you study it. You learn the wisdoms and principles they had, you think about them and if they make sense, you apply them and live them, revisit them and so on, until they really become a part of you. It is truly worth the time though, and I think you see that too from what I could understand in your reply.

Best of luck to you! If you have any questions feel free to PM me as well, I'd be happy to help.

I'm really glad you enjoyed my reply. It's difficult to learn about these things, unfortunately, and it takes some special study. It's a very foreign time period, and because we know so little about Anglo-Saxon England, everything we do know has been very hard to come by. The world of AS scholarship is very small, and there is very little incentive to reach out beyond that world.

But don't stop pursuing it! When I was in high school, I hated Beowulf and used to joke about how bad it was. We read a terrible, outdated translation from a text book and it couldn't have been more boring. It wasn't until I read the original in college that I saw something in it. But I have the highest respect for high school English teachers. I remember telling my English teacher in my senior year that I was going to be a literary critic, and she told me she believed I would. I can still hear the sincerity in her voice to this day, and it motivated me for years. Actually, now that I think of it, it still does. You do incredible work and probably don't even know it most of the time. I can tell you that I never saw Mrs. Fennimore after leaving high school, and it took me years of reflection even to realize that I'd been so deeply influenced by her.

As to how I know all this crazy stuff: I studied OE for years, ultimately culminating in a phd in English, and I can tell you that OE meter is not something that even many professors of OE lit have a strong grasp of (it was just something I was particularly interested in, so I learned a lot about it). I was lucky enough to study with some of the world's best medievalists, and I learned history (it was my minor), paleography, codicology, dialectology, and historical linguistics, in addition to reading the literature. Most of the professors who were influential to me are retired now. They were old school, and had a very different perspective, and different training, than many current medievalists. The old guard talked about "training" and a "well trained medievalist" like you'd talk about a well trained doctor or mechanic, and I love that. My dissertation adviser is thanked by Heaney in his translation, and produced an illustrated version of it for Norton (it's a beautiful book!).

But academia was not for me. I couldn't help but look around at all the incredible research we were doing, and wonder why no one knew about it. I was in England visiting libraries to do some codicological work one time, and a man and woman struck up a conversation with me in a small, local museum in Winchester (which used to be the capital of England in the AS period). They asked me what I was doing there, and I mentioned that I was studying the Anglo-Saxons. It turned out that they hardly knew who the Anglo-Saxons were or what they did. This struck a chord for me, and I realized that I wanted to do something different with ancient history.

I loved teaching more than anything else I ever did in academia, but there are a lot of sacrifices in time and energy just to keep your job. I made the decision to try to do something else with all the incredible research we've done on the ancient past over the course of the 20th century. It just seemed such a shame that it all seemed so inaccessible to everyone but hardcore specialists. I don't see the point in producing so much incredible research, that people have devoted their lives to, while it just gathers dust in the library. And academia, as you probably know, doesn't recognize anything but monographs and articles as worthy of the scholar's time. I had to choose whether to keep on doing what I was doing, or strike out and try to express all this incredible stuff we've learned about the ancient past, and what's more important, the incredible feeling of engaging the past.

So to do that, I've begun working on the first of what will hopefully be a series of historical novels. If I accomplish a fraction of what I hope to do with the first one, I'll be happy. If few people read it, that will be fine, because no one read my academic stuff either, outside of the very small world that is the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists! As for work, well work's work. It's there to pay the bills so you can do the important stuff.

I wish I could point you in the direction of some resources for self study of OE lit, but there isn't much out there. If you have the time, you could work through a book like Mitchell and Robinson's Guide to Old English, which is what I first learned with. I know that Richard Hogg's An Introduction to Old English is well respected by some of the Anglo-Saxonists I know too. If you know anything about German or Latin, the grammar won't be so foreign to you, since Old English is a case based language. But even if you don't, you could still learn to read OE with some determination and a few months time. To be honest, reading Beowulf is hard, but most other OE poetry and prose isn't that challenging once you get the hang of it. The Beowulf-poet is legitimately on another level though--Beowulf is the crown jewel of OE lit, and reading it with pleasure takes work but it's definitely worth it.

Thanks for your interest. Good luck with your studies!

In addition to reading, reading, and more reading: interact with your reading. Write notes during and after you read a novel. Write all over the margins (if you dare). Think about what you've read. This might sound crazy, but have a conversation with your book. Your author is trying to have a conversation with you, so go ahead and reciprocate. What are they talking to you about? What questions are they asking you?

Act like you're filling out the major sections of a Spark Notes book.

• What was the overall plot?
  
  
• What were the major themes?
  
  
• What were major symbols that helped support those themes?
  
  
• Are there things that feel significant but you're unsure where they fit? Continue thinking about it. If you have even the slightest inkling that maybe a particular passage or event is significant in any way, run with it until you hit a wall. Even if you don't get it all, it's still practice.
  
  The more you learn, the more questions you'll ask yourself. The more you read, the more you'll find that the answers to these questions often come from particular places. There are patterns that authors use when crafting the answers to those questions (rest assured they are thinking about them always), and the more you read the more you'll pick up on those particular patterns.
  
  If you've ever read something and thought that a passage seemed significant in any way, you've already started picking up on those patterns. You might think the author spent a peculiar amount of time describing some mundane thing, or the author seems to be using a lot of the same imagery, and so on. These are all ways the author is communicating to you through more than just the story. The more you read, the more obvious these become.
  
  Keep a "reading journal" where you write these ideas down. It doesn't matter if you never go back to them, because the act of writing forces you to think about it a little longer, and helps solidify these patterns in your mind. You'll find that it's easier to analyze the works you read and you'll get more enjoyment from them.
  
  Talk to others about a book if you can. I've begun to think that reading (or appreciating any art) is a communal act more than a solitary one. Learning what others have to say about a particular piece will help you learn new ways of viewing material that you couldn't come up with on your own, and therefore find new ways to view material in the future.
  
  Don't worry about being behind in your class. Many of them have their own ideas for sure, but I'd be willing to bet a few of them are just reading Spark Notes before they come in to class. Either way, as I said before, other people have different ways of reading material and different levels of experience reading. This doesn't make you any more or less behind in your expertise. You have your own, very unique, background in life that gives you a unique perspective and therefore unique insight into every piece of literature (or otherwise) that you pick up. What you find significant in a novel, even if it's totally different than everyone else, is just as valid as anything else. (A professor may like strong support for your arguments so you may have to give a little there, but with for-pleasure reading it still holds)
  
  Finally, after you've read the book and thought about it and wrote your own notes about it, go ahead and read the Spark Notes on it. I loved Slaughterhouse Five and picked up on a lot of things, but reading those Spark Notes blew my mind! Just like conversing with friends, Spark Notes help you view the material in new ways and even provide overwhelming support for their claims.
  
  I also want to add (and it's been posted before), I cannot recommend How to Read Literature Like a Professor enough. It will help you immensely, even if you think you already understand literature.

Adult Dystopian Recommendations:

• Oryx and Crake – Jimmy/Snowman coasts through life fueled mainly by ennui. His only rebellion is to be mediocre when his advantages in society (white, upper (maybe middle) class, Western male) have him poised for success. Glenn/Crake deliberately turns himself into the Big Bad in order to correct the wrongs he sees in society. Whether his main issue is with human nature, sucking the planet dry, socially stratified capitalist society, willful ignorance, or insatiety and curiosity is unclear. Oryx sees it all and accepts them all, knowing that she’s too unimportant to do anything except pick up the pieces and provide comfort in the meantime.
  
  
• The Year of the Flood – The world and especially capitalist society is stacked against you, but resourcefulness and an open mind will serve you well.
  
  
• The Handmaid’s Tale – Quiet rebellions like memory and record-keeping can be subversive also. But it’s only actions that set the stage for change. And the people you (maybe?) save will interpret everything differently from your intentions anyways.
  
  
• Never Let Me Go – Is it truly a dystopia when only a small group is affected? If you’re thinking of reading this, do not under any circumstances watch the movie trailer. The slow build to “something is not quite right” is part of the charm.
  
  
• Into the Forest – Literary fiction. More about acceptance and regression to a [“natural”](#s "and feminist, which apparently means incestuous but Deep! and Thematically! incestuous") state.
  
  
• Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress – Historical fiction about Chinese reeducation camps, but still pretty dystopian. Bourgeois teenage boy questions his educated, upper-class roots and teaches peasant love interest about Western literature. [She](#s "abandons him for a capitalist dream because the lesson she took from it was that love was worthless. Basically, they both take away the worst parts of each other’s starting philosophies and smash them together.")
  
  
• Wild Ginger – If historical fiction is happening, why not another Cultural Revolution one? If you keep your head down, you might just survive long enough to grow up and really see the hypocrisy – stuff even greater than what you saw as a kid.
  
  
• 1984 – Isn’t this more about how the system will break you and leave you a husk of your former self if you trust anyone completely? So you should be smart and skeptical and never assume things are in your best interest just because someone’s telling you so.
  
  
• Brave New World – Have to admit, at 12 this had me thinking that maybe fascism wasn’t such a bad idea after all. The despair and existential crisis aspects weren’t hitting me then: I just noticed how happy almost everyone else was.
  
  
• The Road – All about bleakness and futility and carrying on because the hope of family’s the only good thing left?
  
  
• Fahrenheit 451, where the people in charge are corrupt specifically concerning that thing you're fighting against.
  
  
• World War Z – I’m almost hesitant to call this dystopian, because even though it’s about a freaking zombie apocalypse, it’s uplifting to hear all the stories of human resourcefulness and ingenuity and the mental strength you didn’t think was there. Of course, some of the stories covered are “logical responses” gone bad.
  
  YA-ish Dystopian Recommendations:
  
  
• Feed – It doesn’t work out for the only [person](#s "(Violet)") who truly fought the system (she’s beaten down so horribly that it’s heartbreaking that even the reader wants to look away), but she does technically inspire one other person to at least notice what’s going on in the world, even if it’s probably too late.
  
  
• Hunger Games – Katniss is really only involved because she has nowhere else to go. Side characters have real motivations for being involved, but she really is a figurehead along for the ride and that’s OK. The story is about that and how she copes.
  
  
• The Selection – cough Popcorn cough. America is highly motivated by money (For her struggling family, of course). Ignoring the love triangle stuff, her ideal is to move from serfdom to literally any other [political system.](#s "And this never happens. The political buildup you see in The Selection and The Elite is stomped all over in the vapid cheesecake of the love hexagon finale.")
  
  
• Incarceron & Sapphique – Finn’s rebellion is that he just wants out to someplace that must be better. Claudia lives in artificial luxury and rebels mostly just for personal rebellion, not anyone else’s sake.
  
  
• The Giver – Probably more MG, but how did running away from one collective society automatically become “capitalism is best?” Jonah runs away because he’s learned enough to make his own moral decisions about one of the helpless members of his society (and artificial protection sounds socialist to me). I can’t remember reading the sequels.
  
  
• The Book Thief – Again, MG and historical fiction about a bombed out German town in WWII, but I think a setting like that qualifies it as dystopian. Technically, Liesl fights the system by stealing (possibly forbidden) books from the wealthy and by not reporting the Jew in the basement, but that last one is just showing loyalty to her new family. Her entire upbringing predisposed her to not trust the System, especially a War System, anyways.
  
  Other Dystopias:
  
  
• Matched and Delirium will be considered together because they are the same damn book, right down to the Boy-Who-Could-Have-Been-Chosen-If-Not-For-Rebellion! and the protagonist’s government-approved hobby. Delirium has better writing. Matched is easier to read and has more likable characters. We get it, teenagers should be allowed to date who they like and mommy and daddy non-biological guardians shouldn’t say no. Also, it sucks to have a guidance counselor Make A Schedule for you in order to prepare you for an office job equivalent that’s full of busywork but one of the few respectable positions left. The horror! Seriously, in what world is that rebelling against socialism? You know, that thing that promotes trade schools and equal rights for everyone, even the people you don’t personally like?
  
  
• Divergent – I’m going to let someone else handle that one because urgh. I know a lot of people like it, and it’s YA, so someone else, please support, qualify, or refute.
  
  I’d also be curious to hear what /u/bethrevis has to say about the societies on Godspeed and elsewhere and where they fit into this opinion piece.
  
  Guys, I think I just wrote an English essay. And probably put more work into it than I did in high school. And I won’t even get an A because it’s the internet and we deal solely in lolcats.
  
  But tl;dr: Adult dystopias (that I’ve read) tend to be about the futility of existence or the necessity of self-sacrifice to get a result. The YA dystopias I liked were a little more hopeful (usually) and didn’t support this opinion piece’s thesis. The ones I didn’t like made me understand the hate for dystopias.

I'm no expert in Medieval or Old-Norse studies, however I've do have an interest in it & from some searching on various different aspects of the Vikings I come across these:

The Cambridge History of Scandinavia: Volume 1. Prehistory to 1520 it's a anthological survey book consisting of both historiographical and hagiographical (biographies of saints) primary & secondary sources ranging from prehistory ( before historical events were documented) through to medieval history of Scandinavia. It's quite pricey but definitely worth the money if your serious...

>The first part of the volume surveys the prehistoric and historic Scandinavian landscape and its natural resources, and tells how man took possession of this landscape, adapting culturally to changing natural conditions and developing various types of community throughout the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. The rest - and most substantial part of the volume - deals with the history of Scandinavia from the Viking Age to the end of the Scandinavian Middle Ages (c. 1520). The external Viking expansion opened Scandinavia to European influence to a hitherto unknown degree. A Christian church organisation was established, the first towns came into being, and the unification of the three medieval kingdoms of Scandinavia began, coinciding with the formation of the unique Icelandic 'Free State'.

The History of Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, Denmark,Finland and Iceland) is similar to Cambridge History yet significantly cheaper

The Viking World by Stefan Brink & Neil Price is a mid-range anthological book compromising of many articles from various scholars.

>I would really appreciate material that covers linguistics.....philology, morphology and the like
As for the other categories, I would really appreciate some introductory material on archaeology.

This book will probably be the best one for you because it includes all of the above.

Myth and Religion of the North: the Religion Ancient Scandinavia this book is a good overview of the different mythologies before the christianisation of the nordics.

Women in the Viking Age is a good book on the niche subject area of Women roles within the viking age nordics & its various colonies (from Greenland to Russia). Jesch uses various pieces of evidence from archaeological finds, runic inscriptions, historical records & Old Norse literature.

I would also recommend you look into the Icelandic sagas & Eddas. I'd use SagaDB because there are many various different icelandic sagas & in a variety of languages including English, Icelandic & Old Norse. If you'd like to go about learning O.N. you check the Viking Society for Northern Research or check out the books: A New Introduction to Old Norse: I Grammar: 1 or Viking Language 1: Learn Old Norse, Runes, and Icelandic Sagas

If you're interested at all in the presence of the Vikings (and later scandinavians) in Eastern Europe check out Viking Rus: Studies on the Presence of Scandinavians in Eastern Europe

Hopefully this helps if you have any more specific questions don't be afraid to ask :)

First off, good on you for taking the initiative.

For introductory books, I'd recommend Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled. Now, I haven't read it myself, but it's been mentioned on this sub often enough for me to feel comfortable mentioning it. It might also be a good idea to pick up a miscellaneous collection of poems in order to get an understanding of the variety and depth of the subject matter. A more informal volume might be something edited by Garrison Keiler, like Good Poems. While that specific book is more bent towards Modern American poets, there's still a lot to draw from. A more academic book would be The Norton Anthology of Poetry ot The Norton Introduction to Poetry, which has a lot more to choose from. These two also give you a bit of structure – my copy of the Introduction has clear headings, like "Symbol" or "The Sonnet," with neat little introductory essays and poems chosen to help you understand how these concepts work. That being said, Norton tends to be a little expensive, though if you live in a college town you can probably find a cheaper copy. The benefit of these kinds of collections lies in helping you to find a poet whose style or subject matter you particularly like.

Regarding online sources, there's The Poetry Foundation, which has archives of poems and articles on the poets themselves. Their monthly articles can vary from the interesting to the banal, however, so keep your bullshit detector on. You can probably also find podcasts that deal with the subject. A personal favorite of mine is called "Entitled Opinions," and is run by a professor of Italian Studies over at Stanford by the name of Robert Harrison. Mind you, this particular podcast deals with philosophy and literature as well, so while I'd recommend listening to all their episodes you would have to do a little bit of searching in order to find a particular episode on poetry – though I would reccomend the one on "Dante and Prufrock." I imagine these kind of examinatioms would be useful because they can give you a sense of what poetry 'does' or 'how it means' beyond a surface play with words.

As for the writing of poetry, the first thing I'd recommend is that you read and meditate on a lot of poetry, good and bad, in order to get a sense of how its all done. Learn certain conventions – like, say, that of the sonnet – in order to see how poets follow through with them, or how they play with them. Learn prosody so you can understand how the precise meter, or 'beat,' of each line can affect the reader. I can't really give concrete advice with regards to this, save for a metaphorical "go west, young man!"

It depends what you mean by "Read Runic".

​

Runic Alphabets

Runes themselves are an Alphabet, not a language, each character represents a sound, ᛖ means "E", ᚠ mens "F". Some charicters mean multiple Latin letters, þ means "th" and ᛠ means "ea". I could write the word "East" as "ᛠᛥ"

This alphabet can be used to write most European languages, simply replace the Latin characters with their Runic counterparts. This is easy to learn, simply find a guide online (for example, Google Anglo saxon runes) and replace your normal letters with the Runes. This only took me a few hours to do proficiently. Reading is harder than writing.

There are many Runic alphabets, I use Anglo Saxon because it works well with writing English and Old Norse, but you can choose whichever ones you like, for example Celtic Runes may work better with some romance languages.

Runic Languages

Runic is Also used to write Archaic languages. For example the other Language I wrote in my original comment was Old Norse, I wrote it in the Latin alphabet because it is easier and better for the sounds of the language.

Archaic languages are usually difficult to learn, because there are not a lot of easy to use resources for them. There are some good books on Old Norse, but there is thankfully a lot online for free.

Personally, I use: https://notendur.hi.is/haukurth/norse/

This is a good book if you want to learn more, but it is fairly expensive so make sure you are dedicated!

There are also a few good YouTubers such as Jackson Crawford, who make it easy to understand.

Other Runic languages include Old English, Proto Norse and Saxon. These are all equally difficult to learn, and are usually written in the Latin Alphabet for simplicity.

However, as with any language, Old Norse requires a lot of patience to learn, you need to make notes and practice. Modern Icelandic would be an easier alternative to Old Norse, because it has a lot of resources and fluent speakers.

If you want to Practice Old Norse, you can always look for people on r/Norse, I am still pretty amateur at the language, but you can DM me if you like after you've learned the basics.

he is saying both sort of. life has no meaning, but meaning isn't found within the struggle exactly, rather we exist in between the struggle and we create our own meaning. we are free, we have only to realize that the rules don't apply.

I can give you some advice for reading existentialism and also some places to start.

just curious, tho, how old are you?

there's several ways to approach reading philosophy.

method 1:
when reading philosophy of any kind you can get bogged down in the references and footnotes. when I was just starting out I would get so overwhelmed by things I didn't understand I would give up. don't give up. and don't worry about what you don't understand, just keep reading and see what you get out of it.

method 2:
BEFORE you read a book, read the Wikipedia page on it. back in the day I had to collect Coppleston's history of philosophy volumes to read commentary, but now it's online. so before you read, do some quick background reading so you know a) where the author is coming from/their general point of view/any important details about their life that pertain to understanding the book B) the author's main argument in the book - this will help you pick out his argument and understand it better.

3) some tips: a) read for pleasure. don't feel bad if you hate a book and just can't read it or make sense of it. sometimes later it makes more sense, but it's ok to hate a writer even if everyone else says they're amazing b) read with a pen or pencil in hand - underline things you like, write "I disagree" if you do, sometimes I even write "LOL" if it made me laugh and related to that B) take some notes as you go along whatever you think is important.. a sentence, a point, I use notes to restate in my own words the argument I just read... it helps me get it better and I have a reference in my own lingo that makes sense to me

where to start I would start with two books:

1. Donald Palmer "does the center hold? an intro to western philosophy"
   Amazon price ~2$
   
   get this book if you get no others!
   
   http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0073535753/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1462783700&sr=8-2&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=does+the+center+hold&dpPl=1&dpID=51hxbBbmgzL&ref=plSrch
   
   
   2.Walter Kaufmann "existentialism: from Dostoyevsky to Sartre"
   Amazon price 11$
   
   http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0452009308/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1462783302&sr=8-2&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=walter+kaufmann&dpPl=1&dpID=41lkh1kWkeL&ref=plSrch
   
   after that, depends on what you want to learn, but after the above I would read "Notes from Underground" by Dostoyevsky
   
   then maybe: JD Salinger "Catcher in the Rye"
   
   this was how I learned... after those two I went back chronologically and read Plato(he's foundational and easy enough to grasp), Kierkegaard, Dostoyesky, Camus and Sartre, then I started skipping around once I had a foundation.
   
   with existentialism the important thing to remember is that it isn't an exact philosophy. it was at first a reaction against exact philosophies with prescriptive definitions to how we should live. existentialism, rather, is a shared angst (Wikipedia Kierkegaard Angst) about life, an anxiety in the face of the meaninglessness of life. life has no meaning. now what? if life has no meaning, then all the rules are arbitrary, and you are truly free. free to do and be whatever you want.
   
   good luck on your quest, it's a worthy one.
   
   and my last piece of advice is this: there's no hurry... if a book takes you a year to digest, that's fine! if another takes you a week, ok! another might require 2 months. don't rush, digest the argument and internalize it.
   
   and I'm around on Reddit all the time if you have questions. and don't let philosophy snobs tells you you have to blah blah blah... philosophy should be accessible to all, otherwise it's a stupid endeavor.
   
   again.. good luck.
   

First of all, I want to say that it speaks very well of you that you are looking to use your time in prison to your advantage. Most people would see this as a catastrophe, but you see it as an opportunity. If you want to make this a full-time, in-depth study, this is the plan I recommend.

I would first start with a good introduction to the entire Stoic system. A great one is Stoicism by John Sellars.

Then I would start reading the source material. We are fortunate enough to have the lectures of one of the great teachers of Stoicism, Epictetus. I would go with Epictetus - Discourses, Fragments, Handbook translated by Robin Hard.

After reading Epictetus, you can move on to Marcus Aurelius, who was directly influenced by the Discourses. Robin Hard has also done a translation of the Meditations.

To fully appreciate the Meditations (and to better appreciate Epictetus), next read The Inner Citadel by Pierre Hadot. This is an incredible analysis of the Meditations which explains Epictetus' influence on Marcus Aurelius and his work.

Finally, you must of course read Seneca. Two good sources are this book of his essays and this book of his letters.

Between the footnotes in these translations and the detail given by Sellars and Hadot, you won't need Wikipedia to get clarification on any points. You'll have the expert knowledge in your hands.

I don't think it's necessary to read one of the modern how-to type books before you begin reading these, but if you think it would help to read something lighter first to become acquainted with the core concepts ahead of time, I recommend Stoicism and the Art of Happiness by Donald Robertson.

There are other sources, such as Musonius Rufus and Cicero, but these are the three most people start with and the three that I recommend first. You can look at the FAQ for more ideas if you'd like.

Find out how many books you are allowed to have at one time, as this may be an issue in prison.

As others have said, it's a very good idea to keep a journal of your thoughts, both on what you are reading and how you relate what you are reading to your life.

I'm in a similar boat as you; interested in continental, but surrounded by a lot of analytics.

Hegel is notorious for being dense and difficult to read, and while he was incredibly influential on many later continental thinkers, I don't think anyone who really wanted to help you get into continental philosophy would have you start on Hegel, unless they were committed to reading through it with you.

Heidegger's maybe a bit less obtuse at times, but he can also be confusing if you don't have a professor or more experienced student guiding you along. I asked a professor where I should start, and he recommended his published lecture notes from The History of the Concept of Time, which I admittedly haven't finished yet, but he spends a lot of time in it explaining Husserl's philosophy of phenomenology, which is crucial for understanding Heidegger, as well as a number of other continental thinkers.

As for some easier continental-esque thinkers, there are some that I think are a bit more accessible. Bear in mind that there isn't exactly a group of thinkers who all signed a document saying they were continental philosophers, but there are a number who seem to run in the tradition, and many others who were at the very least related to them.

To begin, I'd recommend some Kierkegaard. He was a Christian philosopher, and is often considered to be one of the earliest existentialist philosopher's. He did a number of works on concepts of faith, anxiety, dread and other elements of the human condition, adding his own angles on them to apply them to Christian philosophy. He wrote under a number of pseudonyms in order to create a number of different perspectives, although underlying all the chaos was a desire to get you to start thinking for yourself. A good place to start with him would be Fear and Trembling. Many of his ideas were influential on continental thinkers such as Heidegger, Jaspers and Sartre.

To go in a very different direction, Nietzsche is another thinker who was very influential on many continental philosophers. The self-declared Anti-Christ, he basically believed that we are about to enter a post-God world, with his writings often either trying to burn our bridges back to the Church or trying to point us in a new direction. Like Kierkegaard, he doesn't always say what he means directly, but much of his philosophy is ultimately aimed at getting you to start thinking for yourself. I'd recommend this anthology, as it contains a number of pretty crucial writings of his.

If after this you're still interested in Heidegger, I don't have as much background there, although I've read a few of his Basic Writings, which is a collection of essays of his. In one of my classes, we also read an essay from his Pathmarks which wasn't terribly dense, so that might be a nice place to start as well. Being and Time is generally considered to be his most important work, but it's renowned for being dense and difficult, although there are a number of commentaries on that book alone that may prove useful.

For one final recommendation, I'll throw in Kaufmann's anothology of existential writings, which has a number of essays on existentialism, which was heavily tied to many core continental thinkers.

And I wouldn't worry about your roommate.

I'll answer as best I can. If you decide to use any of my answers, my name's Tabitha Hastie.

In your own words, what is steampunk? What isn't steampunk? Feel free to give examples.

The idea of a past society that uses steam as their main source of power, as well as things like clockwork and maybe electricity. Usually set in Victorian Britain, specifically London, but the basic idea can extend to other cultures. A key theme is industry and how this affects a rapidly changing society (as seen during the industrial revolution). As for what isn't steampunk, I guess anything that doesn't fall into that category.

What made you come to these conclusions/definitions?

Because that's pretty much every definition of steampunk I've ever seen.

What is the purpose of steampunk?

Maybe some people would have some deep answers for this, I'd just say it's for fun.

Why did you get into steampunk? Do you like alternate history, writing fiction, do you enjoy making costumes, or something else?

I'd vaguely known of the genre for a while, then I saw a woman in a steampunk outfit at a convention and fell in love. I was already into cosplay so loved the idea of making my own outfit.

What do you like and dislike about steampunk and/or the people who participate in the subculture?

I wouldn't say there's much I dislike about the genre itself, and most of the people within it are great. But it is annoying that /r/steampunk seems to have a deep hatred of glueing gears on things and will link to the song at any opportunity, when the song is about glueing gears on something completely unrelated then calling it steampunk because of those gears; not glueing gears on something already clearly steampunk as decoration. I've even seen someone complain about something and use that song as an argument, when the song commended exactly what they were arguing against.

How do you think steampunk handles issues of identity, gender roles, nationality, etiquette, religion, morality, racism, class systems, or other topics? Which topic is most important or relevant to you and why?

I've never really seen any issues like this come up. I wouldn't really say any of them are particularly important or relevant to me as I've never had any problems like that.

Why do you think so many people are nostalgic about the Victorian period, or other genres that have -punk followings for that matter?

I guess there's a sort of nostalgia about it; when people look back they tend to forget about all the bad things of an era and romanticise it. Personally, I love the look of the Victorians. They put so much more effort into how they looked and wore amazing outfits - beautiful dresses, suits, top hats - now it's all jeans and t-shirts.

We live in a very digital age. Is there something about this that deters people from digital-looking art, items and clothing, and makes people yearn for these aesthetics from the past (even if they are from an alternate past like a steampunk/Victorian age)?

I don't really get the question. I don't think so, I don't think people generally have anything against digital stuff. Sorry I don't really know how to answer this.

Is steampunk "just a trend" that will eventually die out? Why or why not? Is it becoming too mainstream? Is that a bad thing?

I'm sure it will eventually die out just as anything will eventually die out, but I think it'll be around for a while. I wouldn't say it was just a trend, it's existed since the 80s under the term steampunk (I think it was the 80s, anyway), and has technically existed since Victorian times, even if not under that name. I once saw someone compare it to goth, saying that years ago goth was relatively unknown and was very similar to steampunk, then it gradually became more mainstream until it became what it is now. I could see this happening to steampunk, it's certainly way more mainstream now than it was when I first got into it. There are steampunk clothes and accessories in high-street stores, musicians are doing steampunk music videos (such as Justin Bieber...), and it continues to get more and more popular. I think it's kind of sad in a way since part of what makes steampunk steampunk is the idea of making your own outfits and gadgets, coming up with your own ideas, and if it becomes too mass-produced then everyone's outfits will start looking the same. Plus, manufacturers put the steampunk label on anything and everything. But with it becoming more mainstream also brings more people to the genre. So there are pros and cons, really.

Have you seen steampunk art exhibited in a gallery, museum, or other public venue? Was it intended by the artist to be steampunk, or did it just fall into your categorization of what steampunk is to you?

I was in Oxford in 2010 and saw a steampunk exhibit at a museum. A class from the local school did a project on steampunk, and all their creations were in the museum. That was definitely intended to be steampunk. Other than that, not particularly. The closest I can think would be steampunk art/merchandise being sold at places like Camden Market in London.

Are you a steampunk artist? Have you exhibited any work in galleries or other places? Can you explain and describe some of your pieces? Can you provide links to the exhibit or gallery review articles?

I do make my own steampunk stuff, but certainly haven't had it exhibited anywhere! You can see what I've made here: http://demorafairy.deviantart.com/gallery/24638457

Are there any books, scholarly articles, or videos you found that could answer and elaborate on any of the above questions?

The Steampunk Bible has a lot of interesting reading.

I think that's just about the longest comment I've ever written. Hope this helps!

I strongly suggest you disregard advice to buy ANY book by David Day. They are not accurate, and are full of stuff he just makes up. Day is the laughingstock of the fandom; he's even been banned by the Tolkien Society from attending their future events.

But don't worry, there's lots of good-quality stuff out there for your husband to treasure!

If he has read only The Hobbit and the LOTR trilogy, look for an attractive edition of The Silmarillion (there are many). This is the great backstory to Lord of the Rings, the legendary past that constantly gets referred to in LOTR. If he hasn't read it yet, that's the Next Big Step for a Tolkien fan.

If he's already read the Silmarillion, Check his shelf to see whether he already has a copy of Karen Wynn Fonstad's Atlas of Middle-earth. If not, that's definitely a great gift for him or any Tolkien fan. "A book of maps" doesn't do it justice -- it's not just geography, but changes over time, populations, heroic journeys, and famous battles, all laid out in a way that keeps you turning the page in a way you wouldn't with a real-life atlas. The way the maps are presented also helps the reader visuallize the progression of the Ages of the World, even though there's not a dedicated timeline.

If he has both of these, go for a copy of Unfinished Tales, which contains extra material that didn't make it into the published LOTR and Silmarillion. He'll love the extras about the Palantiri and what Gandalf got up to while Bilbo and the Dwarves were making do without him.

If he has all that, you have choices to make. If he's graphic's oriented, he may like the John Howe decorative map set or the Alan Lee sketchbook or half a dozen options from artists who've tackled Tolkien. If he's a calendar guy, you can pick from at least that many popular options every year.

If he's a hardcore reader who has made it through the Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales and still wants more, he may want to take the deep dive into the 12-volume History of Middle-earth, which is very affordable now that it's in good-quality paperback. But you probably want to check with him on that before buying them all; some volumes are, well, pretty hardcore in their density, and some are best read sequentially. One that would be fine as a standalone is Vol. 12, The Peoples of Middle-earth. Lots of good lore and interesting things in that one.

A number of Margaret Atwood's books have won awards, including the Man Booker and Hammett Prizes for The Blind Assassin and the Governor General's Award for English language fiction and the Arthur C. Clarke Award for The Handmaid's Tale. A full list of her awards can be found here.

Alice Munro is another Canadian author who has won a number of awards for her (many) novels.

Cory Doctorow's science fiction novels have also won a number of awards, including the Locus and Prometheus Awards. Little Brother is YA and a free ebook.

In fantasy, Guy Gavriel Kay has won the Sunburst Award and Prix Aurora Award for novels like Under Heaven.

I love it. It is a SLOW read, but it's wonderful. The deliberate manner of nearly every point in the book will make you able to ponder it for hours and hours on end.

I'd add that you should definitely read the book with some version of annotations (this one is great but you can find it online for free I'm sure, or you can try this website). I also like keeping up with these illustrations for each page of the book because it's fun to do so. Enjoy the book most of all, but don't get discouraged if it starts seeming like a bit of a chore.

There's a few resources out there, none perfect.

This is a short little bit by Gaiman on how to read Wolfe. Not specific to Book of the New Sun, and a little joking, but it's completely accurate. Approach Wolfe in that manner and you may get more from the books.

This is a dictionary/glossary that can be useful to link different parts of the series to eachother, and provides a lot of context as to the real world origins of words he uses. Wolfe invents a lot less words that it seems at first glance, almost every unfamiliar word is either just a really rare/archaic word, or is invented, but pulled from a real life reference. Sadly, it's a book and not freely available, but what can you do.

This is a wiki about Wolfe's works, kind of hit or miss, but the list of obscure words is useful, and some of the analysis/discussion is good.

This is the best regarded in-depth literary analysis of the series, but it's super dense and not a straightforward explanation by any means.

There's also a super long running mailing list about gene wolfe's work, but good luck digging anything useful out of it, it's just way too much with no organization.

> I would like to find something with mythology of the gods and goddesses

If you would like a modern rendition of the Irish and Welsh tales, then Peter Berresford Ellis' Celtic Myths and Legends is a good choice.

If you are interested in delving into the lore directly, check out Táin Bó Cúailnge and other tales from Ireland's mythological cycles, or The Mabinogion for Welsh myths and legends. These are also available for free online, but I recommend buying the books if you can swing it because they tend to have higher quality translations and copious foot/endnotes that help put the stories in context and explain things to the modern reader.
> nothing goes into enough detail to connect dieties, or tell their stories, just general "this is the god of this, that and the other"

There are a lot of deities who we have only sparse information about. The majority of Celtic deities were local gods and goddesses, which gives us very few sources of detailed information. However, there are a good number of more widely-worshiped deities about which we know more. The myths and legends I mentioned above are the biggest sources of information about these figures, though we learn a lot of important info from the archaeological record as well.

You can check out http://www.maryjones.us/index.html which we link to in our sidebar. It has some decent articles and sources for many different Celtic figures and gods. If you would like a book that gives good info about archaeology and how it connects to the myths, check out Proinsias McCana's Celtic Mythology.

Wikipedia's Celtic and pagan projects have grown quite a bit, so you can even find some informative articles there with reference lists that can point you to more sources. For that, start with:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_deities

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Celtic_deities

The vast majority of the 'witchcraft' books are reconstructionist and 100% shit made up and adapted from myths and legends.

Wicca was created in 1954 and any book remotely connected to "wicca" is 100% reconstructionist, basically the opinion of the author or whoever taught them.

Some authors, Cunningham for example, are far more well respected but in the end you aren't practicing something people did 100 years ago, 1000 years ago, 10,000 years ago. If it's in a book like that it's almost certainly someone's personal folk-magic.

The exceptions to this would be stuff based on earlier sources, like Solomonic magick which mostly draws from texts like Clavicula Salomonis Regis (Lesser Key of Solomon) which is a compiled grimoire or 140 spells from the mid 1600's which may or may not be based on texts from the 1400-1500s.

Unless a book is claiming to be newly divined/gifted information but then it is absolutely someone's interpretation of magick or the alleged interpretation of spirits/entities they were contact with.

Magic(k)/witchraft/druidry/asatru isn't like Christianity where you have a documented history going back 1700 years (Counsel of Nicaea and then moving on to any particular denomination's history which may be tens of years old or 1700ish years old) where you have a documented history.

Just like organized religion, magic(k)/witchraft/whatever is something that is very personal. You adapt what works for you, you adopt what calls to you.

You want to start somewhere? Start with mythology.

• https://www.amazon.com/Myths-Legends-British-Richard-Barber/dp/1843830396/
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Early-Irish-Myths-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140443975
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Celtic-Myths-Legends-Peter-Berresford/dp/0786711078
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Poetic-Edda-Lee-M-Hollander/dp/0292764995
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Edda-Everymans-Library-Snorri-Sturluson/dp/0460876163
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Bulfinchs-Mythology-Legends-Charlemagne-Chivalry/dp/0440308453
  
  
• The Iliad and the Odyssey, just search Amazon for a copy with reviews that speak to you
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/DAulaires-Greek-Myths-Ingri-dAulaire/dp/0440406943
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Pushkins-Fairy-Tales-A-Pushkin/dp/5938934176
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Folktales-Collection-Afanasyev-Dual-Language/dp/048649392X
  
  
  That's a good start.
  
  
  I'd also find the Audubon society book for trees and the like in your area, you should be able to find one for your region on Amazon used for 5-10$. Becoming aware of the plant life in your area will help you be able to find materials from the earth instead of coughing up money to some 'new age' shop or witchcraft supplier like 13Moons or Azure Green for a horribly overpriced piece of wood or herb.

You'd probably find this english/french "parallel" book (and others like it) pretty useful and in the genre of what you are looking for.

Also, I realize this isn't exactly what you were asking for, but setting custom google chrome searches to ping word reference has saved me SO MUCH TIME whilst studying. Specifically... you can set up google chrome so that if you type a special keyword in the search bar, chrome will run the "search" function that's normally on any particular page. So, I set three custom searches, and I use them constantly:

• fe will search the french-english dictionary
  
• ef will search the english-french dictionary
  
• conj will bring up the conjugation page for whatever verb i type in.
  
  So for example, i'd bring up a new tab, then type fe, space, and then aimant, and hit enter. I'd get the search page for aimant, which of course i then discover means "magnet" in english.
  
  When making flash cards or any of tons of other studying activites, double checking words in the dictionary can be time consuming, and this will save you a million seconds.
  
  You can also find plugins in chrome that will pop up with a definition of a word if you hover over it or right click... which is pretty useful for reading french news or other sites, when you need a little help.
  
  Edit: spelling is important :)

This is a very good video introduction to Stoicism.

The main ancient Stoic books that have survived are Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, Epictetus's Discourses and Enchiridion, which is basically a summary of the Discourses, and Seneca's Letters to Lucilius and Essays. All these editions are relatively new translations and, in Seneca's case, abridged, but they will give you an idea of what Stoicism is about. I suggest you first read the Enchiridion (it is no longer than 40 pages) and then the Meditations (around 150-200 pages), and then dig deeper if you get interested.

There are other ancient sources, and quite a lot of modern work is being done currently, but those are the ones I suggest you begin with.

Then there are very active modern Stoic communities, like /r/Stoicism, the Facebook group, and NewStoa, with its College of Stoic Philosophers, that lets you take a very good four month long course by email.

The great thing about Stoicism as a way of life is that it has neither the blind dogmatism of organized religion nor the ardent skepticism of atheism. It puts the soul back in the universe, in a way, and, on the personal level, empowers you to take responsibility for your actions and to take it easy with what you cannot control.

Congrats to you and your husband, that is such wonderful news! :)

You should get us both this! I've heard great things about it, it's supposed to be really wonderful.

This one is supposed to be fantastic as well! I've been wanting to read both of them for a while, and I'm not sure which one sounds more appealing to you.

16 bucks an hour!!!

Thank you for the contest!

I'm afraid I don't know about The Kite Runner but equivalent books in French would probably push you quite hard. It's normally best with reading not to have to look too much up because it can be a drag. It's also why I'd recommend sticking to shorter works.

You might like to look into some parallel texts (ie French on one page with the corresponding translation on the opposite side). They really help when you come across difficult idioms and mean you can read easily out and about when you don't have a dictionary to hand. Here's a collection of short stories in French. There are more in this series. They will be harder than Le Petit Prince but it seems you might enjoy more literary writing.

If you're worried about difficulty you might like to look at this Easy French Reader which gets progressively harder. In fact, this might be the best stepping stone for you.

Some recommendations:

Gods and Fighting Men. This covers a lot of the Irish myths.

The Four Branches of the Mabinogi. This covers a great deal of the Welsh myths.

Celtic Gods and Heroes. This is a brief but decent overview of Gods and Goddesses of Irish, British and Gaulish origin.

The Isles of the Many Gods. I have not yet read this one, but it's on my wish list and sounds about right for you.

Celtic Myths and Legends. This covers it all, but perhaps not as directly focused on the gods as you would like. Its a decent read though.




There are some great online sources for the Welsh and Irish myths. If finances are an issue try them out. Good luck!

Asdfjsdhj omg you two are sooo cute. What an adorable contest ;_;

Hope I'm not too late to enter!

Morthy demands:

• Item which would most make you seem like an old posh Englishman: Nothing says old posh Englishman then old world steampunk accessories and an airship. I guarentee there's a monocle in there.
  
  
• Most phallic looking item: Ahahaha now that I'm actually looking, holy fuck these are disturbingly phallic, the have balls and everything. Someone was highly amused when they designed the first pair of scissors o_O
  
  Akeleie demands:
  
  
• Most geeky item: Combining geek and chic :)
  
  
• Item which would most help you achieve a goal: This sewing machine guidebook would be the most helpful thing on my wishlist. Almost everything on my wishlist is actually for my project called Stich N Ditch, where I'm in the process of making 1000 plushies to "craft bomb" a poor innercity neighborhood with cute plushies. The most important thing to me is actually speeding up my process, so learning to use my sewing machine better would truly be the most helpful thing in achieving my goal. Akeleie's demands are suspiciously more helpful then Morthy's. Hmm.
  
  
• Best item to bring to a deserted island: Thread. You can create so many things! The possibilities are endless. I'd never want to leave the island if I had this much thread to work with :D

For Old Norse, I strongly recommend Jesse L. Byock's Viking Language Series. Getting your hands on E.V. Gordon's work is going to be pretty expensive, and the material is pretty dated and dense. Byock's approach is very beginner friendly while still introducing the reader to the technicalities of the language. In the second book, it's very reminiscent of Wheelock's Latin where you will be asked to translate excerpts from the sagas. Hope that helps!

There are some good recommendations here, and some I disagree with (Bukowski, ugh). But your tastes will change and grow. The poets you like now will be different than the ones you'll like a few years from now, most likely. So, I recommend finding this book. It's a pretty nice sampling of many great english-language poets from the last few hundred years and it's been my poetry bible for over a decade, now. This way you can flip through and just see what strikes your fancy. I could recommend some particular poets if you could give some examples of poetry you like or what you like about poetry.

Having read TBotNS twice, I'd also recommend the audiobook. The reader actually does a great job, especially with the "stage script" scenes, which I always found tedious reading. It goes by very quickly.

Also, Robert Borski's Solar Labrynth (http://www.amazon.com/Solar-Labyrinth-Exploring-Gene-Wolfes/dp/0595317294) has some good guiding essays on the books.

The fact that Borski is debated as being wrong about several conclusions just add to my interest in how various parts are interpreted. The Urth.net (http://www.urth.net/) mailing list also has a lot of interesting discussion.

In my mind, digging into TBotNS is as rewarding as Gravity's Rainbow or Infinite Jest. I first read it in high school and just enjoyed the story. As I've gotten older, I keep finding more to enjoy.

There are so many ways into the western tradition that it kind of depends on your interests - do you like to think about ethics, politics, art, technology, questions of reality? Not knowing, here are some very general suggestions: Try Plato (anything), Descartes' Medititations (very readable), Jorge Luis Borges (fictional philosophy, speculative), Hannah Arendt (great writer, more recent). Or find a philosophy college intro textbook with a collection of authors and texts, and see what catches your fancy, then follow those interests further. A secondary source that is a good entre is Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy series amazon link - he's a clear writer and rather entertaining too.

P.S. I was thinking back to my HS days and I think I was really into Dostoyevsky and existentialism... and I think I began with a book called Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre by Walter Kaufmann, a classic intro with excerpts from each philosopher's works, amazon here. Kaufmann's intro to the book is a good read.

P.P.S. I just remembered that I wrote this blog post about your question a long time ago:
Our Top 5 Philosophy Classics for High School and College Students. Enjoy!

Jesse Byock's unfortunately titled but very well-executed Viking Language course has been compared to Wheelock's Latin in terms of its quality, as has Michael Barnes's A New Introduction to Old Norse.

For Old English, I recommend Baker as mentioned below or, if you're like me and like a straight-up grammar, Sweet's A Primer of Anglo-Saxon.

I'm new to Ásatrú but an old hand at ancient languages. Sweet was my grammar in undergrad years ago. PM me if you'd like more info.

I mean, you really need to be reading anthologies to get a basis of the poetic tradition and then move on to individual books. While individual books of poetry help you get a sense of each writer, getting a taste of many poets throughout many periods is the only way to really become well versed (pun-intended). Also, part of the way to learn how to read poetry more critically is learn how to write poetry, or at least what goes into writing poetry. And my personal advice is to purposefully read poetry that is hard for you to grasp or find interest in, whether that be due to understanding or content (e.g. Yeats and his faeries don’t interest me in the slightest).

Theory/Reading Critically:

• A Poetry Handbook (super basic approach)
  
• How to Read Poetry Like a Professor
  
• Why Poetry?
  
• The Poetry Handbook
  
  American:
  
• Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American
  
• The Oxford Book of American (my personal favorite)
  
• Any of The Best American Poetry collections, to read the most contemporary poems.
  
  Other:
  
• The Norton Anthology
  
• Six Centuries of Great Poetry
  
  Source: Have a Master’s Degree in poetry and currently working on my MFA. My expertise is in 20th & 21st Century American Poetry, particularly post-War/post-45.

Marcus Aurelius, is not something you read and go "FUCK YEAH, I CONQUERED THAT BOOK. I'M A BADASS!!!!"

It's an investment that will pay dividends years to come. It's not the simplest stoic text to read. However if you want the feeling of reading the words of a Roman Emperor from 1,000 years ago, and also actually use his words to change and live your life by, here are a few ideas:

• Read and skim through it. Get a general sense of the book. Read the Gregory Hays translation. READ THE GREGORY HAYS TRANSLATION. READ THE GREGORY HAYS TRANSLATION (shout out to a hero of mine /u/ryan_holiday for this)
  
  (I'm trying to emphasise this and I might not get this point across, but honestly you can read a translation written by someone who knows the english language and the worldview context in 2002, or by someone from the 19th century. Your choice.)
  
  
• You won't really understand the book. But you'll get a sense of the general philosophy he was trying to remind himself. They're called The Meditations. Aphorisms and pieces of advice written in a specific format to remind himself how to live. We actually don't have any modern equivalent to this.
  
  
• Now, you're ready for the golden treat. The princess at the end of the castle. The goose that will keep laying golden eggs. Pick up a copy of The Inner Citadel by Pierre Hadot. Think of it as the guide to read the Meditations. The cheat guide to the crossword puzzle. The How-To Manual on how to understand Marcus Aurelius' mindset as he wrote that beast throughout his life. It's with this book that you'll understand Meditations. You'll understand the 3 central tenets he wrote by, and just why he wrote them in a codified mysterious way. You'll get a glimpse into the man. You'll understand just what role Philosophy actually played in ancient times. (Hint: it wasn't the circle jerking that modern philosophy is) And you'll come away with a deep understanding of Stoicism. Heck, it might just change your life.
  
  Honestly it's not the greatest introduction to Stoicism. Personally I prefer Seneca (I've gifted a short version of his On The Shortness of Life to 4 different friends), because he was writing for a wider audience as opposed to just himself. But if you want to go down the rabbit hole. If you want to take the red pill, read it like I've just suggested.

Here is a list of his complete works. For his 124 letters i would recommend this. All of them are very good, i would probably start here.

https://www.amazon.com/Senecas-Letters-Stoic-Thrift-Editions-ebook/dp/B01N9BAEOR/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=seneca+letters+dover&qid=1556029398&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull

As for other works i have ranked in order what i think you should read first. They are all expertly written so all should be checked out eventually, regardless here is my order.

1. On the Shortness of Life
   
2. Of Providence
   
3. Of Peace of Mind
   
4. Of Anger
   
5. Of a Happy Life
   
6. Of Clemency
   
7. Of Leisure
   
8. Consolation letters
   
9. On the Firmness of the Wise Man
   
   This book has most of them except shortness of life, which you should buy separately as it is his best dialogue, or read it online on wikisouce which has all of his works for free.
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Dialogues-Essays-Oxford-Worlds-Classics-dp-0199552401/dp/0199552401/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1556029795

I think the general philosophical idea that people are hinting at so far is Idealism. The essential idea is: The external world is in some sense dependent on the mind of the perceiver.

George Berkeley was was one of the first. He said that "to be is to be perceived, or to be a perceiver". So an object exists because I am perceiving it, and if no one was perceiving it, then it wouldn't exist.

Kant had a different form of idealism called Transcendental Idealism. He thought that although there IS a world that exists independently of us, we can't know anything about it at all. Our minds are responsible for imposing many of the properties we perceive onto the world. Everything from the colour of a wall, to the fact that objects exist in time and space. These are properties that mind assigns to reality, and we have no knowledge of what the external world is like as a "thing in itself".

How does this relate to the quote in Harry Potter? It means that the line between things that are real and things that are going on "inside my head" is a lot more blurry than common sense might suggest. Just because an experience is dependent on my mind for it's existence or it's characteristics, does not necessarily mean it is not "real".

However, having said all that, I'm not sure that J.K. Rowling had any intention of bringing up idealism, even though it seems relevant. It seems more likely that this could be some sort of meeting between Dumbledore and Harry's Cartesian Souls (since the Harry Potter books are 100% committed to substance dualsim). It could even just be some sort of reassuring "it's real for you because you had a nice experience, so it doesn't matter whether this was all just a hallucination or not". Either way, not very Berkeley.

There is a good book on philosophy and harry potter: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Ultimate-Harry-Potter-Philosophy/dp/0470398256/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

I bought it for my sister, but haven't had a chance to read it myself yet. It looks pretty entertaining for those who are interested!

Yes, more or less. It's actually a kind of fiddly matter sometimes. There are some English sounds that just aren't perfectly represented in either the Quenya or Sindarin modes of pronunciation for the Tengwar.

If you look at the title page of LotR, you can actually see an example of the Cirth (a runic alphabet similar in appearance to the Furthork) across the top and Tengwar across the bottom which collectively spell out an English phrase. These give some good hints at Tolkien's preferred mode for English, but there are still some omissions. (I have a copy that I worked on way back in high school. Please excuse the quality of the images. The bit that is left undone on the one page was from the Silmarillion, I believe.)

A good example of something that looks a bit off to most English speakers when just directly transliterated based on the consonant values given in Ruth S. Noel's book The Langauges of Tolkien's Middle Earth, the word "the" is represented just as "dh", because "dh" is commonly used to represent the voiced dental fricative (as opposed to the voiceless dental fricative, such as in the word "thing" or "thin"). So it's still the right sound patterns, just not represented in latin letters the way we're used to it. (At least according to the equivalents she gives.)

There are some other writing samples, too, as well as a multitude of posts on the internet proposing best-fit solutions for an English mode of writing for Tengwar based on evidence and some interpolation and guesswork.

More information can be found by reading the excellent book I mentioned (and linked) above or by reading Appendix E of Lord of the Rings.

TL;DR: YES

You're right that this isn't really the right sub per the first rule, however, since the rule concludes by saying:


> We are here to get smarter and better each other.

I'll take a stab at this one.


Out of the gate you sound pretty fucking depressed. You should check on that. If you're doing any drugs you should probably stop. Working out can help.


Anyway... Most uni curriculum is aimed at breadth of study so that you can find what interests you and build a base of industry knowledge. As such some of your coursework may have been uninteresting, irrelevant to you, or seemingly unconnected. The CFA program is fundamentally different as it is a professional qualification exam targeted at a specific sector within a specific industry. CFA is (from my understanding) mostly targeted to investment managers/HF/M&A types. Perhaps you've found your calling?In any case, the above is really the only apprehension I can address. The questions you pose here can't really be answered by me, or anyone else, but you might be able to reconcile them for yourself.


In my opinion, you should read this book which has selections from 'existentialist' philosophers of old. I like Nietzsche, but Notes from The Underground or some of Sartre's work might suit what you're going through better. Maybe the ending of Beyond Good and Evil


Good luck.

The Encyclopedia of Arda is fairly decent - in my experience, accurate, but pretty thin on the content/details. This is probably because it's not a wiki and put together by one person. Tolkien Gateway is another one - it's a wiki so it's much more fleshed out than Encyclopedia of Arda. If you're open to non-web works, my favorite resource is Robert Foster's Complete Guide to Middle-Earth. It's a pretty cheap and comprehensive encyclopedia-style work, and I like it being a book because I often write notes in it and add post-its and whatnot.

I think it's fine to admit that you developed a love of reading later in life! That said, while you scoop up some of the classics/recent favorites at your own pace, another book you might want to check out is "How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read," by Pierre Bayard.

>With so many important books out there, and thousands more being published each year, what are we supposed to do in those inevitable social situations where we’re forced to talk about books we haven’t read? Pierre Bayard argues that it doesn’t really matter if you’ve read a book or not. (In fact, in certain situations, reading the book is the worst thing you could do.) Championing the various forms of “non-reading,” How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read is really a celebration of books, for book lovers everywhere to enjoy, ponder, argue about—and perhaps even read.

I read it a couple years ago because I heard it was funny, and I've definitely noticed since reading it as a side effect I feel much less awkward talking to That One Guy who shows up at every book club I join and inevitably starts a thinly-veiled dick measuring contest of dropping the title of every "prestigious" book he can think of into conversation. It might be helpful in a similar way to you by providing some tips in general for approaching book discussions, and help you push aside some of those imposter syndrome-y feelings in the meantime while you keep working on building up your Goodreads "read" shelf for real.

Totally worth it. It's a must have for any big fan. It adds all kinds of extra content that wasn't in the books. It's not written by King, but fully endorsed by him. It was developed in part by the work of Robin Furth, King's personal research assistant. Apparently when King started writing the last three DT books, he hired Robin to research the first four and write the concordance. Robin and some other people produced the comics which include stories referenced or not included in the books. The wind through the keyhole was actually dedicated to her and the people at Marvel. Also, the artwork is amazing.

Well like I said, Hayden White is a heavy hitter and has the advantage of being a historian who plays with literature (so he is approachable).

Another good approach is to check out lit classes or, perhaps even more accessible for the busy professional, podcasts of lectures by lit professors. Listening to what they prioritize, what language they use and how they approach material can be quite interesting/helpful

For instance I found listening to The Tolkein Professor quite elucidating. It helped that he is also a medievalist and I am also a big Tolkein nerd.

Let me think about some other options for reading material and I'll do an edit tomorrow.

edit:

• So Yale has an "open" course posted: Introduction to Theory of Literature which might be worth checking out.
  
• Another good intro book worth looking at would be Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice
  
  
• For a lighter approach (i.e. far less "academic" and far more "popular") there is also How to Read Literature like a Professor. I find him to be a bit flippant at times, but he is enjoyable.
  
  Hope that helps!

I would look into purchasing or borrowing a poetry anthology. They usually include biographical information about the poet as well as an analysis. I've enjoyed reading Norton's poetry anthologies. I've purchased them from used bookstores, and sales at libraries. You can find used paperback copies for cheap (around $5) on Amazon. For example, here's one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0393979202/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used

I also liked reading Harold Blooms collection of poems: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0060540419/ref=tmm_hrd_used_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=used&qid=&sr=

I like these collections and anthologies because of the commentary, and they include several poets. So you get exposure to several famous poets. If you like a particular poet you can choose to read more of their work.

If you're wanting more specific recs, you may like Walt Whitman, he uses vivid imagery. Also Robert Frost, Edwin John Pratt, Edgar Allan Poe, William Wordsworth. Pablo Neruda is good too.

I can't really recommend too many true crime novels because I don't really read as many as I should considering my interests. Typically I read my fictional material and watch my non-fiction material if that makes sense. Not saying they're bad, but so many true crime authors write about the same criminals and it gets so hard to pick out which one of those books is the most engaging.

I don't really have a favorite author; I kinda jump around. However, I can try to recommend a few fiction books in keeping with the theme and what you've mentioned. I would highly recommend Let me In, by John Ajvide Lindqvist. It has serial killing, the paranormal, and some romantic elements, but it sticks more to horror and I hate romance but loved this book. Acceleration, by Graham McNamee, which is about a kid who finds a possible serial killer's journal while working at a lost and found is also a book I remember fondly. And, if you want to give yourself nightmares as someone who frequents child free and is female, The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood is a must. Also The Giver has two sequel books; Gathering Blue and Messenger

I don't want to get too much further off topic and distract from OP's story (I could recommend books all day), so if you are looking for other potential books and authors, I recommend making a post on r/suggestmeabook . Happy hunting :)

It's great that you're interested! However, you're asking for two different things.

This should be a nice book of the [Anglo-Saxon Chronicles] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anglo-Saxon-Chronicles-Michael-Swanton/dp/1842120034/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521744983&sr=1-1&keywords=anglo+saxon+chronicle) in translation, for a non-academic reader.

As for the language, that's a bit more tricky. As Old English is basically only taught at universities and the ubelievable greed of academic publishers, the prices are more than 20 pounds or dollars for a paperback copy. And these are textbooks for learning the language, mind you. They will explain the pronunciation, the case system, the nouns and adjectives, the grammatical gender, the declension of verbs, the poetic metre, etc etc. They also have some shorter texts in Old English, both poetry and prose, with a glossary at the end.

From those, I'd recommend [Peter S. Baker - Introduction to Old English] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Introduction-Old-English-Peter-Baker/dp/047065984X/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521744924&sr=1-8&keywords=old+english) (my favourite), [Richard Marsden - The Cambridge Old English Reader] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cambridge-Old-English-Reader/dp/1107641314/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521744918&sr=1-5&keywords=old+english) (which is more of a collection of texts and not a textbook for learning the language, though does provide some very limited help), or [Mitchell and Robinson - A Guide to Old English] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Guide-Old-English-Bruce-Mitchell/dp/0470671076/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521744828&sr=1-12&keywords=old+english)

For a non-academic book to learn the language, I don't have any experience with it, but people seem to like it on Amazon, so it's [Matt Love - Learn Old English with Leofwin] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Learn-English-Leofwin-Matt-Love/dp/189828167X/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521744828&sr=1-4&keywords=old+english). There is also a book+CD set by [Mark Atherton - Complete Old English: Teach Yourself] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Old-English-Teach-Yourself/dp/1444104195/ref=sr_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521744446&sr=1-14&keywords=old+english)

This isn't a critique of your distillation, but I love the one Pierre Hadot gives in the Inner Citadel:




Activity | Domain of Reality | Inner Attitude
--------|-----------------|--------------

1. judgment | faculty of judgment | objectivity
   
2. desire | universal Nature | consent to destiny
   
3. impulse toward action | human nature | justice and altruism
   
   In other words....
   
   
4. Be objective in your judgments.
   
5. Amor Fati (love your fate)
   
6. Always be just and act altruistically (be virtuous).

I've been in a mode for a while of reading only classics--which, of course, everyone already knows of. It's been a long time since I picked up a completely random book without knowing the author or something about the title.

With a few exceptions. Two weeks ago I was at B&N and wandered into the "Essay" section (which has some surprisingly good stuff) and there found, and immediately loved, a volume of Celtic Myths. This one as a matter of fact. I think it was the cover that drew me in, as well as a general love of myths (largely thanks to Tolkien.)

Oh I envy you being able to read Patrick O'Brian for the first time. I firmly believe that the Aubrey/Maturin series is the greatest work of modern English literature.

I do know that the movie is actually based on the plot of The Far Side of the World, which is actually the tenth novel, and that the stole some of the best anecdotes from various novels. For example, the "lesser of two weevils" gag is from The Fortune of War, which is the sixth book.

Not sure what advice to give you before you embark on your journey but there's two major paths: using references to understand everything, and learning along with Maturin (PO'B uses Maturin to explain some of the more esoteric concepts and terms of square-rigged sailing). I wrote the following in a previous Reddit post:
>In Master and Commander, the first of Patrick O'Brian's brilliant Aubrey/Maturin series (which may very well be the best-written English-language books post-WWII), we are introduced to Stephen Maturin, the perpetual land-lubber who acts as a guide for the reader to the more obscure jargon used by sailors -- especially that of the Royal Navy during the heights of the Age of Sail.

>When Maturin is being given a tour of the HMS Sophie, his first ship deployment, he becomes perplexed by the language being tossed at him and asks, "You could not explain this maze of ropes and wood and canvas without using sea-terms, I suppose? No, it would not be possible. ... No; for it is by those names alone that they are known."

>And that is how it is with the language of sailing; like learning a foreign language, one must become familiar with its terms and jargon for there is no other language to define it.

As for references, there are two major ones: "A Sea of Words", which is a dictionary and general reference for sailing/nautical, naturalism, medicine, politics, and sometimes foreign-language dictionary, though sometimes it comes woefully short on obvious terms; and "Harbors and High Seas", an atlas which maps out the various locations and journeys of Aubrey's missions.

Enjoy! And feel free to ask me any questions regarding the series. I've got whole passages memorized lol

EDIT: I forgot to mention my favorite fact: Patrick O'Brian never stepped aboard a sailing vessel...

It’s a great little book, Mark Atherton is a brilliant scholar of Old English (and his work on Tolkien is equally good, if you’re a fan). It starts very easy, then works up through real texts and cultural context. The same is true of Hough & Corbett’s Beginning Old English– lots of original sections of prose and poetry, starting with basics and building enjoyment alongside the language.

If you want something that’s more academic from the start, I’d recommend Peter Baker’s Introduction, which contains a good grounding in grammar more generally, or the more linguistics-based one by the late Richard Hogg. The best overall textbook is undeniably Mitchell & Robinson’s Guide – but it is dense and (despite what the authors claim) not easy to use in independent study. Their sections on syntax are vast and comprehensive, however, so that might be what you’re looking for.

I'm quite new to Stoicism myself and, like you, am trying to figure these things out. My advice would be to invest in some good books. Something you can take your time with, study, highlight, write in, keep under your pillow at night. Here's a short list of the ones I've found to be most helpful:

[All things Epictetus](http://www.amazon.com/The-Discourses-Epictetus-Fragments-Everymans/dp/0460873121/ref=sr_1_10?
ie=UTF8&qid=1382479293&sr=8-10&keywords=Epictetus)

And to help you understand Epictetus: Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life by A.A. Long

A very helpful translation and commentary on Epictetus' Handbook by Keith Seddon

Marcus Aurelius' Meditations

Along with this indispensable study of the Meditations by Pierre Hadot

I've found Peter Berresford Ellis is a good author to seek out for an introduction at least. He breaks the Celtic world down in very informative way that's easy to digest. He has a book called The Mammoth Book of Celtic Myths and Legends but it is not available in an audio format as far as I know. For me it has the best compilation of Celtic folklore, drawn from some of the most popular stories. There are sections where he addresses the history and culture of the various Celtic peoples, but the stories are largely all told via narrative. But again, no audiobook.

Another of his books, A Brief History of the Celts, does have an audio version. However, it's much more focused on history, culture and society. There's some mention of Celtic folklore but not presented in a narrative fashion.

I did a [quick search] (https://www.audible.com/search/ref=a_hp_tseft?advsearchKeywords=celtic%20mythology&filterby=field-keywords) on Audible and it gave me quite a few audiobooks on Celtic mythology and folklore, but I haven't listened to any of them so I can't speak to their quality.

Ditto!

I also am very interested in some of those books. I will edit my comment tomorrow after I look through my books to see if I have anything that you might like.

E: I have The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th Edition, which is over 2100 pages and has only light writing in the back and some shelf wear. I can send you a list of the poets if you are interested.

The Norton Anthology World Masterpieces, Expanded Edition is in rough shape but contains lots of poetry.

I also have The Complete Works of Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe, Plato's The Republic, biographies, and boatloads of literature and other books. Anything trip your trigger?

I would really, really like:

C++ Without Fear - Overland

Hacking, The Art of Exploitation- Jon Erickson

HTML 4 for Dummies

MySQL Visual Quickstart Guide - Ullman

Thank you!

Kindle typography and interior art is incredibly insufficient to render the full experience of a physical book.

Two very recent examples:

The Steampunk Bible

The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities (edit: OK, I checked out the Kindle sample for this one, and it actually does a pretty good job on Kindle for PC.)

These are art/photo/fiction/etc. books and while yes, the Kindle version can capture the fiction, a full 2-page spread color photo doesn't exactly come alive on the Kindle.

edit: though I don't have any e-book readers (other than my PC and iPhone, the latter of which I do not find suitable at all for more than short website reading, Facebook, etc.) I am starting to be sold on the idea that for pure text, Kindle/Nook can be sufficient containers. It's still not nearly as easy to bookmark/flip through e-books as it is in a physical book, skip ahead and back particularly in anthologies and collections, etc. If it's a simple, art-free novel, e-books are becoming more and more attractive to me. As DRM problems (its existence, to start with) and re-gifting "used" e-books gets sorted out, I'll be much more interested.

There's a way, sort of, J.R.R.Tolkien has left all his linguistic writings on the Elvish Languages in 7 big boxes, (thousands of pages per box) and Christopher Tolkien has later referred to them naming as Quenya A, B, up to Quenya G, for they can be specifically identified. Yes, not a couple of boxes, but even 7, my mellyn (PE: 22, p. 141).

Be aware, though, that if you do not have a particular background, these pages will be likely not understandable, sadly...

Regarding what you can hear/read online:

In real life it is simple. If you do not follow the rules of English grammar you are not writing or speaking in English. If you don't follow Tolkien's rules you are not writing his elf! Anyone who visits the websites dedicated to Elvish languages (Eldalie, Quenya.101, Ardalambion, etc.) or reads the books dedicated to them (those of David Salo, Ruth S. Noel, Pesch, Comastri, etc.) trying to learn Quenya or Sindarin, will be baffled by the array of many different and conflicting grammar rules. These sites and books never agree with each other. Why?

Because every author has invented his own rules.

We read from many writers (Drout, Pesch) and on the net that there are many “neo-elvish” languages: the neo-quenya and neo-sindarin. But it is not correct, neo-elvish languages do not exist or rather are not languages. Writing: Something wure mi expectatione [sic] does not mean that whoever wrote it is the creator of a neo-english language, the same with: Alaghioru saranno alboro dormirenene [sic] won’t make you the creator of a new neo-italian language. To create a neo-language one must first of all be a linguist, know the rules of a Tolkien elven language well and from there build a new elven language. What a job! Those who build what they call neo-Sindarin and neo-quenya only rarely mention Tolkien's grammars and almost never explain what they do (for example, I change this thing written by Tolkien, because I invented a certain new rule). What they build are not languages. They distort the little of what they understand about Tolkien's logopoeia at will.

I happen to like Lexicon Urthus, which helps organize the material. I happen to hate the Solar Labyrinth, which I think is a lot of silly imagining of things that aren't there.

The truth is that there aren't a lot of straight-forward answers with Gene Wolfe. We want there to be; we want Dr. Talos's play to make perfect sense, if only we had the answer key. But Wolfe's work thrives in ambiguity, and while there are some clues hidden, I think there are far fewer clues, and far fewer real answers, than most people do. The point isn't to understand in a conventional sense; I think it's to experience a kind of wonder.

As for your spoiler question: [Spoiler](/s "The woman wasn't actually ever harmed during the festival, and there's no evidence she was a robot. Actually, this is one of the rare places where Wolfe leaves some pretty credible clues: there's good evidence that that lady is Severian's mother.")

Not exactly a Novel, but The Steampunk Bible is my go to book for inspiration. A truly amazing book.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Steampunk-Bible-Illustrated-Scientists/dp/0810989581

From what I have seen, there are many dictionaries out there you can use. I would recommend going here and checking out the resources. Pretty useful.

Here's another, I find, useful resource for sale on Amazon.

I hope this helped!

I should probably be more clear; I mean it's best to read The Crying Lot of 49 to get an idea of what constitutes heavily-thematic content that Pynchon created based on popular culture (the anarchist in/and Porky Pig, the Trystero play, literalizing Maxwell's Demon) and what constitutes content that Pynchon put in simply referencing popular culture for the fun of it (the mock-british boy-band, Dr. Hilarius' voices). Ultimately, I'm trying to draw a line between so a younger reader (ie, one who does need to hunt down the references) doesn't get bogged down by assuming everything is structural and nothing contingent.

I don't think this is too reductive a method...(feel free to tell me otherwise)

If I'm wrong, or just in any case, OP, there is Pynchonwiki if you're at a loss for research of any stripe. Try to avoid the "Reader's Companions". The only formal Pynchon Study still worth reading is Joseph Slade's.

Also, speaking of technology, have you (/u/winter_mute) ever read Hart Crane's The Bridge? If you are familiar Slade points out some really incredible parallels between them that really struck me...

My first time through the series I just read the books without any special guide to the terminology - just full immersion except maybe for some Google searches here and there. It's a bit like learning a new language by immersion and over time you will figure a lot of it out via context. That said there is a book I picked up which helps a lot as a reference: https://www.amazon.com/Sea-Words-Third-Companion-Seafaring/dp/0805066152 . I think I got this near the end of my first read through or the beginning of the second. It's a great reference book.

As for audiobooks, that's not my thing so others could chime in on that. I hope you enjoy the series!

Also, this book, Man's Search for Meaning, is great and really goes well with Stoicism.

http://streetschool.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Viktor-Emil-Frankl-Mans-Search-for-Meaning.pdf

If any of the stuff I linked to interests you, definitely check out Marcus Aurelius's book Meditations and Inner Citadel. You can probably get the latter book through interlibrary loan.

I've just always been interested in how people psychologically overcome horrible tramas, like surviving concentration camps or prison or stuff. IMHO, the philosophy of Stoicism is a great tool for this and it has helped me in some aspects of my own life. So just throwing it out there.

I can't speak to hardcover editions of LotR as I still haven't committed to those myself, but I would recommend that whatever version you get, get an ebook version too - being able to search the text is absolutely wonderful, particularly if you also have a copy of The Complete Guide To Middle Earth by Robert Foster.

As an aside, this version of the Silmarillion is very nice.

Honestly, it was bugging the daylights out of me too. THANK YOU.

For those who care, and contextually reasonably close to the setting:
http://www.amazon.com/Sea-Words-Third-Edition-Companion/dp/0805066152
Actually fascinating, and you can find them used on Amazon for $1.

I revived my Kindle in mid-March and I've been reading like a fiend!

Enchantment by Orson Scott Card, $7.99 USD

A fantasy romance that won't make you retch, this mashup of Russian folklore features a plucky scholar-athlete, a headstrong princess, Baba Yaga (naturally), a bear-god, and a Boeing 747. A solidly weird, wonderful story, I'd recommend this to anyone who enjoys historical fiction or fantasy and wants a little romance that's not sickly sweet.

Next by Michael Crichton, $7.74 USD

Firmly in the "so bad it's almost good" category, Next is a genetic engineering horror story ripped straight from the headlines... but that's pretty much all the research Crichton did for the book. Featuring a smart-aleck parrot, a potty-mouth orangutan, a human-chimpanzee hybrid (that also talks), and loads of awful people doing awful things, it goes best with a strong drink of your choice and a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 mindset, but I had to read it for class.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, $9.99 USD

This 10 minutes into the future dystopian tale is narrated by a woman who knows the society she lives in is oppressive, but she's too smart and not pissed off enough to come out swinging - after all, dissenters are publicly executed and gibbetted or mysteriously shipped off to "The Colonies" never to be heard from again - so instead she quietly scratches out her own agency, and finds some unexpected allies on the way. A satire on what happens when the line between politics and religion blurs, and maybe more relevant today than it was when it was published in 1985, I'd recommend this for anyone who's ever felt oppressed or threatened by conservatism or gender politics.

I like. Just keep in mind other fantasy influences, and look into what people didn't like about those books. I can see parallels, but as long as you are aware of it, its fine. I write fantasy too, and a good deal of my work is keeping track of that. I'd recommend this book to help with both reading and writing, especially understanding archetypes and reader perception. Have you started writing it yet?

!!! MAPS !!!

I have lots of maps and took pictures. I saw this post earlier but just got home and had time to dig everything up. Note that I'm not an expert and haven't looked at some of this stuff in a while, and haven't actually read much of the 12 books of The History of Middle Earth (yet...).

Here's a picture of Beleriand from The Maps of Tolkien's Middle-Earth.

--> Beleriand

This is pretty much the map in the back of The Silmarillion. You can see there's basically a big desert at the top. To the north of that is the Iron Mountains behind which are Angband and Utumno. Middle Earth is to the south (or kinda south east I think) of this whole thing, and as others have said this was all destroyed long before the events in LOTR. If you look at any map of Middle Earth, eg. the one at the back of FOTR, you'll see some mountains, Ered Luin, at the top left. These are visible at the bottom right of the above map of Beleriand, so you can see where Beleriand and Middle Earth used to connect.

Here's a picture from The Shaping of Middle Earth which is the 4th volume in the 12 volume The History of Middle Earth.

--> Beleriand north showing Angband

This is a draft by Tolkien and is similar to the above map from the Silmarillion but it extends farther north, and you can see the Iron Mountains (called Mts. of Iron in red print near the top), above which is Angband.

This last one is from the same book but is poor quality but I found a better version online. It's from the Ambarkanta section. It was also by Tolkien and I think is even more preliminary than the above map.

--> Ambarkanta map IV showing Utumno

To get you oriented, Valinor is on the left over the sea (the liney/squiggly bits are water). The middle section is Middle Earth (a rough draft of it anyways). At the very top is the Iron Mountains and above that is Utunmo, though it's hard to read. This may not match perfectly what's in the text as Tolkien may have changed in his head where things are in relation to each other without redrawing maps. There is some text in the book that says Tolkien's original idea was that Melkor rebuilt his fortress of Angband on the same site as Utumno which is why the sites seem so close in the 2nd two maps above. It says that Tolkien later revised this idea so that Angband was at a separate location, which I think is why the 2nd map above (Beleriand north) which is more complete than the Ambarkanta map shows Angband near the Iron Mountains but not Utumno.

A lot of The History of Middle Earth contain a lot of this type of stuff that describes how Tolkien's ideas about Middle Earth and such changed over time.

And lastly, just because, here's the map I have on my living room wall. It's a Middle Earth foil map that I got at a campus poster sale about 7 years ago then got framed and put behind glass (which cost significantly more than the map itself, but was so worth it :) ).

I just happened to end up at a university that had a professor of Old Norse. Modern Icelandic and Faroese are pretty close and there is an Old Norse dictionary (Zoega's concise dictionary - it's concise because he was going to make a larger one but died before he could). My old norse professor has two textbooks you can get on amazon (textbook 1 and textbook 2) but I don't know how good those are because he was writing them while I was taking his courses. There's also this textbook which I've never used but has good reviews.

You can also learn modern Icelandic and then study Old Norse because they very similar. It may be easier to do it that way. We also read the sagas in the original Old Norse which was very interesting.

Wow, History subredditors really do their homework... Kudos! (It was my first submission to this subreddit)

FYI, I also own [this book][1].

PS: yes, I read the whole article before submitting; yes, I know it's completely misleading; yes, that was intentionally provocative

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Talk-About-Books-Havent-Read/dp/1596915439/ "But I haven't read it yet, either... ;-)"

:)

>dogma- n. a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true

Ok, got it.

> "If you don't read a book, you can't review a book."

https://www.amazon.com/Talk-About-Books-Havent-Read/dp/1596915439

That's whole book about talking about books that you haven't read.

> "If you don't look both ways, then you're going to get hit and you won't be able to cross streets at all."

I've done this many times, and STILL I LIVE.

Both of those things are principles of yours that you have laid down as incontrovertibly true.

Come on, buddy. You're a smart guy.

John Howe's maps of Middle-earth (available in a big box set) are pretty good, and his map of Middle-earth is definitive as far as I'm concerned.

Jonathan Roberts created a set of maps for A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones called The Lands of Ice and Fire which are excellent. I have the big map of the entire world on my wall.

Terry Pratchett has a whole set of maps for his Discworld books, including the entire Discworld itself and the city of Ankh-Morpork (both twice, in fact, in The Streets of Ankh-Morpork, The Compleat Ankh-Morpork, The Discworld Mapp and The Compleat Discworld Atlas).

You can buy a map of Roshar from Brandon Sanderson's website and one of Temerant from the Worldbuilders Store.

I already posted link to The Handmaid's Tale being on Kindle Unlimited but I found some more links for these books so I thought I would just make a comment here!

Here is an "extended preview" of The Girl with All the Gifts by M. R. Carey.
Here is A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf on Australia's Project Gutenburg.
And again, here is The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood through Kindle Unlimited, which you can get a 30-day free trial to.
Couldn't find anything for The Complete Persepolis, but I'm sure you can find it at your library :)

For other tips for reading Wolfe, and general theories and whatnot, there are a few books well worth picking up.

Lexicon Urthus

Solar Labyrinth

The Long and the Short of It

The first book here is by Michael Andre-Driussi and has a foreword by Wolfe. This is mostly a dictionary and etymology-tracer of the words and names and theories in BotNS. Considering Wolfe's endorsement, it feels fairly official, even borderline cannon.

The last two are by Robert Borski and are absolutely great reads. Very imaginative, even if some of his theories seem too wild to be true.

Have you checked out "A Gravity's Rainbow Companion" by Steven Weisenburger? The book does a great job of providing line-by-line references of the many obscurities of the book. If you are interested in the Qabalistic elements of GR something like Aleister Crowley's Liber 777 might be helpful.

Your best bet is to pick up something like The Norton Anthology of Poetry which is basically a collection of a thousand years worth of poetry with analysis. This volume is a little pricey ($30 used), but if you look around you might find some older editions for cheaper. Once you get an inkling of what you like then you can start getting collections of poetry from specific periods/poets. Hope this helps!

Be sure to check out some of the volumes (yes volumes) of literary review written about A Book of the New Sun.

I recommend Lexicon Urthus and Solar Labyrinth.

The essays therein really helped me reach a new appreciation for Wolfe's work and let me enjoy them on a new level.

Morthy demands:

1. Item which would most make you seem like an old posh Englishman: This book.
   
2. Most "oh god, I would never be seen with this in public" looking item: Well I mean...NSFW
   
3. Most phallic looking item: WELL I MEAN...NSFW
   
   Akeleie demands:
   
   
4. Most geeky item: This might be more nerdy, honestly.
   
5. Item which would most help you achieve a goal: Organizing!
   
6. Best item to bring to a deserted island: Yum.

Once my interest was piqued I read this book and found it a great starting point. Also look for steampunk meetups and groups in your area. Most of all, have fun!

If one starts reading those novels, I'd recommend getting some guides to aid in the lubber's understanding:

• A Sea of Words, lexical guide. Trust me, even if you're something of a sailor, you won't understand a good bit of what goes on in the books. Well, you'll probably get the general idea, but there's a lot of nautical nuance that will be utterly lost. Good even for seasoned fans of the series.
  
  
• Harbors and High Seas, geographical guide.
  
  C.S. Forester's Hornblower series is also great.
  
  I haven't tried the sci-fi RCN series, which was influenced by O'Brian, but I should give it a shot.

If i may suggest something.

Elderly people need to make peace with their ageing process (both physical and mental) and a study of philosophy is the only way. This gives you the big picture in the "grand scheme" of things and you realize that everything is just natural and as they should be. Thus one learns to adapt themselves to the situation instead of being miserable over it. Obviously, this is easier said then done and hence the need for life lessons from a teacher via philosophical study. I have found the following books helpful in this regard;

• On Life and Death by Cicero - Contains the essay "On Old Age".
  
  
• Dialogues and Essays by Seneca - Contains the essays "On the Shortness of Life", "On the Happy Life" and "On the Tranquility of the Mind".
  
  
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by Gregory Hays

The estimated premiere is April 2018, similar to last year. The filming starts soon if it hasn't already. Moss stated that it will begin in September. It will be 13 episodes instead of 10 if the rumors are to be believed.

I assume they'll film primarily in Toronto, but since the world is expanding considerably - according to the showrunner - they may film in other locations as well. Here are some of the locations they filmed at last year.

Enjoy the rest of the show! (Also make sure to read the book, if you haven't!)

:D :D :D I would love a USED copy of this book--there's a "like new" copy for $7.28 including shipping! Thanks for the contest!!

Dressed All Over and Zesty Mordant :D

There are Tolkien encyclopedias which I find helpful whenever I forget who certain characters are. Here's the best one in my opinion. It is also useful for lord of the rings, and when you just want to check up on some facts about the world of tolkien.

I've got a lot of benefit from reading 'parallel texts' (par example https://www.amazon.com/Short-Stories-French-Penguin-Parallel/dp/0140265430 ) - I don't know your exact level but I really enjoy it and the translations on the other side of the page are accurate and helpful.

This is probably the best-Robert Foster's guide was even approved by Tolkien:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0345449762?pc_redir=1413709814&robot_redir=1

Also this is probably the second best by J.E.A. Tyler:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0312339127?pc_redir=1413174325&robot_redir=1

Hope this helps

If you want a more general introduction into philosophy there's a Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy by Simon Blackburn and the older What Does It All Mean?: A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy by Thomas Nagel. A more academic introduction (the last two books are more aimed at a general audience) is Fundamentals of Philosophy edited by John Shand. If you're willing to sit through it there also Russel's classic A History of Western Philosophy, which is a sort of introduction to philosophy through the history of the field (the audiobook is on youtube btw), and there also his Problems of Philosophy

I'm not that familiar with eastern philosophy, but a classic introduction to Existentialism is Walter Kaufmann's Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre and it should go nicely with Existentialism is a Humanism.

Hope this helps :)

It's not from Pynchon but THIS is a fantastic guide to the book which provides an overwhelming wealth of detail. In some ways this guide is as dense and as heady as GR itself.

off the top of my head:

Meditations, with The Inner Citadel as a reader

Letters from a Stoic

A Guide to the Good Life by Irvine

Do The Work by Pressfield as well as The War of Art by Pressfield

Managing Oneself by Ducker

Man's Search for Meaning by Frankl

What Predicts Divorce by Gottman

Nicomachean Ethics

Models by Manson seems to be popular on reddit

So Good They Can't Ignore You by Newport, as well

I'm currently reading Triumphs of Experience by Vaillant and find it insightful.

The concordance /u/spewner got me is awesome. It's really in depth. Tells you the page numbers and everything. I would highly recommend it. I'm loving it so far, not many refrences to his other books so far, but I'll be patient :)

http://www.amazon.ca/Stephen-Kings-The-Dark-Tower/dp/1451694873

I just finished reading Contagious: Why Things Catch On and really enjoyed it. I started How to Read Literature Like a Professor the other day and am enjoying it so far.

Penguin books does side-by-side short stories (New Penguin Parallel Text, in French...I have the Japanese one), and personally I'd say French first.

The parallel text makes it easier to go sentence by sentence, so I'll read the Japanese side first, and go back and read the English side so I can practice picking up the Japanese first, instead of going in knowing what it says. It's also a good test to see if you remember this or that word from when you looked it up last time, and maybe by the 5th time you'll have it down pat. This is totally unfounded personal opinion so take it with a grain of salt, but I feel like reading the language you're trying to learn first helps you learn more.

I don't think any of these really matter. They don't make me heartsick. I get that it's just a series. I have no problem accepting that there's a lot of mistakes and plot holes, and I don't mean to suggest that JK thought through the economic, philosophical, and political implications of her world. But she did create a world that, by necessity, provides valid grounds on which to address those issues-- and address them I shall.

The really goddamned awesome thing about HP, for me, is that it has such a depth, and such a fan base, that in a very real sense it's a new universe. I like thinking about how economics would function in the HP universe, or the implications that it holds for philosophy. As the author of the first suggests (I'm stuck behind a firewall, so forgive me for paraphrasing), there's a lot to learn about economics, philosophy, and political science (along with many others) in Harry Potter for the sole reason that so many people care in the first place. What exactly is it about an HP society that makes people view it as simultaneously realistic and utopic?

I'm utterly unapologetic about my fandom. It's something I love, that I'm good at, and that I use to stimulate my brain. I refuse to find anything embarrassing about that.

Maybe try crossposting with r/druidism. On there when this came up, there were a lot of recomendations, but this stood out. From what I can tell, it's way different than other pantheons in that most of the deities were worshipped in their local enclaves, as Celtic land wasn't united back then. This also lead to much of the info we have on their religion being lost (also because they didn't have a writing system). Then there were the Christian poets that came later who did have writing but also used oral tradition a lot too. They created the Mabinogion myths, which is definitely worth looking into, though it isn't centred on just deities.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Steampunk-Bible-Illustrated-Scientists/dp/0810989581/ref=wl_it_dp_v_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=1FABDSFSGERJM&coliid=I3B53H3ZWY5H6Z

That is what you should get yourself. Cause I mean steampunk and you seem like an artist so this would be prefect and if it wasn't higher than 10 it'd be my item too (though it's now on my wishlist as well). For me the closest thing that I could find was this:

http://www.amazon.com/Kikkerland-Casino-Cubes-Cube-Trays/dp/B004RBJR9I/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=3R8RM38IHOWPY&coliid=I57H78GSLQGQ9

I know playing cards and those sorts of things have a lot to do with steampunk so I feel like they'd fit well together. Either that or my batman knife that I want.....hmmm. Yeah I know it's not very funny......but I tried right?

I don't think The Hobbit won't help a whole lot with that. You could read The Silmarillion but that's even harder to read than The Lord of the Rings. If you really want to read The Lord of the Rings a companion book like this might be more helpful so you can lookup stuff as it's mentioned.

Or just don't worry about understanding everything. A lot of the stuff that gets mentioned isn't that important.

I know he wrote it on engineering graph paper and was supposedly working on it in the late sixties and early seventies. Tons of Academic papers and books have information on his sources, but probably the easiest and most accessible for this type of information is The Gravity's Rainbow Companion https://www.amazon.com/Gravitys-Rainbow-Companion-Contexts-Pynchons/dp/0820328073/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519580469&sr=8-1&keywords=gravity%27s+rainbow+companion

Enjoy the read!

Or you can just read this one! Haha, I found this book at one of those giant library book sales a while ago, it is pretty amusing.

Oh no, I don't mean to dismiss them, just to repeat what I've heard around this subreddit about the (possibly mistaken) perception of readability in Hays and Staniforth. I've only read Hays in its entirety.

Also, there is an original translation in Pierre Hadot's The Inner Citadel (2002). In the preface he said he was planning on publishing it, but Hadot died in 2010. I've been looking for it and don't know if it was ever finished. He also originally wrote it in French, but Michael Chase does (I think) a great job of translating French to English. The Inner Citadel is scholarly and I'm interested in the translation, so if you know anything about it I'd appreciate it.

Unfinished Tales.

Also, I really recommend Robert Foster's Complete Guide to Middle-Earth. It's nice to have as a supplemental resource. It's essentially a handy encyclopedia of LotR/Hobbit/Silmarillion. Very easy to pick up and read a section here or there if you come across a name or place you can't quite recall

Those are common suffixes and prefixes. Nothing in that rule saying there aren't other suffixes or prefixes, or that some common suffixes can be uncommon prefixes and vice versa. Don't read too much into this.

Unless you have a desire to be super strict about naming conventions, just do something that sounds about right. My Rohirrim Cappie has the name of "Eorsplittr Addldottr". If, on the other hand, you wish to be absolutely faithful to the lore, grab a copy of Ruth Noel's "The Languages of Middle-Earth". (Crazy prices for new copies, but cheap for used).

https://www.amazon.com/Languages-Tolkiens-Middle-Earth-Complete-Fourteen/dp/0395291305

Yep that's perfectly normal, just go with the flow and at some point it will start making (some) sense. The first part is a bit rough, it gets easier to follow (and more entertaining) from the second part on. Though honestly most things only clicked for me on the second read-through.

People often recommend the companion guide, and you can also use the page annotations on the Pynchon wiki. Haven't used either of them yet, but I'm due for another re-read anyway so I think next time I'll get the companion.

There's a book about it The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-Earth. It's an interesting read and it includes a pretty cool dicitonary and stuff.

It should be noted that the laguages spoken in the movies are modernized attempts at a complete laguage with proper grammar and everything, seeing as Tolkien never got around to fully fleshing out his languages.

This book Is quite good and covers several of Tolkens languages, it's not a comprehensive guide but is a brilliant starting point.

To my knowledge there isn't an online translation tool for Old English. UToronto has a dictionary/corpus that may interest you.

If you can get it, the Mitchell and Robinson Guide to Old English is a great book for learning translation (though they do standardize the OE texts substantially).

I bought this book for my boyfriend because we love the series. It may help you.

http://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Kings-The-Dark-Tower/dp/1451694873

https://www.etsy.com/market/stephen_king

Has plenty of gift ideas.

This book is good for fans as well:

http://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Kings-The-Dark-Tower/dp/1451694873/ref=pd_sim_14_4?ie=UTF8&dpID=51P2JRHHcSL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR107%2C160_&refRID=0C6XDDCQBNJ1XMHJ9GWA

Yes, I just reread the books a couple weeks ago and he's made a baron, given a knighthood and made a Colonel of the Marines (a sinecures or ceremonial position). Thus putting him the peerage and entitling him to the honorific "Lord".

And I also third the Patrick O'Brien recommendation and I would add to that a hearty recommendation that you pick up a copy of Sea of Words which is a sort of lexicon/companion book that has entries for all the words, concepts and Biblical/literary references in O'Brien's writing. He's a wordier and less... accessible writer in that he just assumes you understand the references and nautical terms. If you don't, you end up missing some important bits. Anyway, I found reading the series a second time through after finding Sea of Words was really enjoyable.

For the sake of some differentiation on the list:

The Languages of Middle-Earth" for the Scifi leaning people or vaguely interested folks who enjoyed the movies. Tolkien was a language fiend and created some extensive lexicons, syntactic systems, and phonology for every language in his universe.

"In the Land of Invented Languages" All on manufactured languages and the weird people who make them. Klingon, Elvish, Esperanto, etc.

William S Burroughs "Electronic Revolution" (a bit occult, though) on the power of language as a transmittable virus

From what I'm told, this is one of the best books to start with: https://smile.amazon.com/Viking-Language-Learn-Norse-Icelandic/dp/1480216445/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483301517&sr=8-1&keywords=learn+old+norse

I'm currently learning as well so definitely curious as to what resources you find!

Viking Language 1 and 2 by Jesse L. Byock. Here's the first one:

https://www.amazon.com/Viking-Language-Learn-Norse-Icelandic/dp/1480216445

You can get audio recordings for the lessons on Amazon or iTunes as well.

The courses are by far the most modernized, user-friendly courses available. A close second would be 'A New Introduction to Old Norse,' which can be purchased here:

https://acmrs.org/publications/catalog/new-introduction-old-norse-part-i-ii-and-iii-discount-set

The first book is a bit difficult to get into, but is essential in the development of the relationship between Maturin and Aubrey. My brother bought me this for my birthday before college. The range of things discussed and themes portrayed are immense. I don't think anyone can come anywhere near O'Brian's brilliance when it comes to naval warfare in the time period of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A Sea of Words is also helpful in understanding some of the finer points that the book goes into.

Are the underlined th and sh meant to be vocalized, like dh and zh?

edit: Also, if you don't already own it, I recommend this book. It looks like something you might enjoy.

I'm not a fan of Irvine's book, generally. It makes a major departure from the tradition of Stoicism as virtue being the telos of philosophy for tranquility. It's okay for a first look into Stoicism, but not much beyond that.

As a companion to Meditations, I like "The Inner Citadel" by Pierre Hadot.

If you are really intrigued, there is always, Lexicon Urthus and The Solar Labyrinth both of which explain many of the terms used and have a great deal of in depth analysis. Both are available as ebooks as well.

The maps included here are pretty good.

https://www.amazon.com/Languages-Tolkiens-Middle-Earth-Complete-Fourteen/dp/0395291305

I had this book years ago and it's really good! Very comprehensive.

>I remember a long time ago I read about the analogy of a "mental garden", a place where you cultivate your thoughts and always keep as a place where you can mentally retreat.

I think you mean the concept of the "Inner Citadel", coined by P. Hadot, based on principles from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations:

>People try to get away from it all—to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you want. By going within. Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions—than your own soul.

>-Marcus Aurelius, IV, 3

The "inner citadel" is used to illustrate the discipline of assent (sunkatathesis), comprising the field of logic and virtue of wisdom, which, in short, is about not being deceived by imaginations and judgements (phantasia) of external events (the indifferents) but seeing things as they really are (indifferent). Whenever your mind creates an automatic value judgement (hypolepsis), you have the power to agree to it or deny it (inner discourse). It is essential in order to gain tranquility of mind (ataraxia).

>If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

>-Marcus Aurelius, VIII, 47

The main idea here is that not things trouble us, but the automatically created representations (imaginations, judgements) we make about them. An inner citadel is a sort of "fortification" around your reasoning faculty (hegemonikon) which essentially is realizing that external events (things outside of you control) never had power over you. Things cause suffering because you allow them to cause trouble in your mind.

>Things Cannot Touch the Soul

>Things cannot touch the soul.

>They have no access to the soul.

>They cannot produce our judgments.

>They are outside of us.

>They themselves know nothing, and by themselves they affirm
nothing.

> -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 3 , ro; V, r 9 ; VI, 5 2 ; IX, r 5

I have A Guide to Old English, Introduction to Old English and Old English: Grammar and Reader at home and they all are pretty useful if you are interested in the language (plus Clark-Hall's dictionary). I've never tried to study it as a live language - I just wanted to read some old texts :)

There is also Complete Old English - not sure how good it is but you may want to look at it.

mhmm. u cn buy a copy of this for $26 USD, it's got all kinds of poems in there. otherwise just torrent a copy and read through it, real easy. gl

Some examples:

The Norton Anthology of Poetry

The Best Poems of the English Language: From Chaucer Through Robert Frost

The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry

Awesome, thanks for the info and props for including the Tolkien! I'm ashamed I didn't recognize it, I actually spent a few years learning Elvish from this book when I was a kid.

It's not a scholarly article, but Steven Weisenburger's A Gravity's Rainbow Companion is definitely something you'd want by your side.

http://www.amazon.com/Talk-About-Books-Havent-Read/dp/1596915439/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417075572&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+talk+about+books+you+haven%27t+read

I feel like we're like these people, except with anime.

This will help a lot.

Here's a book of theories. Some are probably crazy, but some of the stuff in here is surely correct, such as how to tell if a character is human, robot, or alien from their names.

​

But to assume it's a plot hole and not dig deeper is to miss out on the depth and detail of Wolfe's writing. I highly recommend reading Borski's "The Solar Labyrinth" ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0595317294 ) to help see some of these deeper connections and hidden details.

You might look for a copy of this or of this. The Fonstad book is very good. The "Composite Pathways" map on pg 172-173 is exactly what you want.

This book is excellent:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Guide-Old-English-Bruce-Mitchell/dp/0470671076/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369787220&sr=8-1&keywords=guide+to+old+english

How to talk about books you haven't read, by Pierre Bayard.

French lit prof., excellent read which taught me not to read every book in order to talk about them - he even confesses his not reading Proust while teaching it in university courses, and explains why it doesn't affect the quality of his teaching.

Have you seen these three books (1, 2, 3)? I haven't read them, so I can't tell you which is best, but even just looking at the table of contents might give you some ideas.

You absolutely, positively, without question, must... must! Get the Stephen Weisenberger book that explains all the references to you and read it along with the book. Otherwise it sounds like meaningless ramble (which some of it is)...

http://www.amazon.com/Gravitys-Rainbow-Companion-Contexts-Pynchons/dp/0820328073/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324691753&sr=8-1

Clearly you haven't seen the mocking you got for trying that path. I don't think you have any real knowledge of what you're bitching about, and it sounds to me like you're rehashing someone's argument that you imperfectly understand. For instance, you mention Homer and The Illiad. The Illiad covers only a two week period of what is a much larger conflict. It is extremely 'repetitive, cluttered and long-winded' because it was originally an entirely verbal document. Like the Bible, there was an entire cycle of works built around the larger conflict, but the rest of the 'books' in that 'bible' are lost to us and known only by extracts from the latin 'cliff notes' that survived. My comment does not reinforce your central argument. Indeed I haven't seen an argument from you except that 'the bible is boring, herp/derp'. The reality is, the bible and Shakespeare together are pretty much all of English literature. The rest is commentary. I'd recommend you read this book if you're confused on that point. Don't worry. It only has words of few syllables and isn't that taxing to read.

His characters and settings appear interwoven throughout his books. There are a large number of them that relate to the Dark Tower series, in either direction (the book makes reference to the Tower, or the Tower series makes reference to the book). The world of The Stand, for example, makes a pretty heavy footprint on one of the DT books. I don't have time to do a complete concordance (and it would fill a book if I did), so suffice it to say this kind of thing is EVERYWHERE in his books.

This book changed the way I read literature and I actually began to enjoy it--as an investigator enjoys solving a murder!

I am by no means an expert, I admittedly know little on this subject.

When I was interested in this in high school, I read the following book:
http://www.amazon.com/Existentialism-Dostoevsky-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/0452009308/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

I thought the selections were quite good, but I would probably skip Kaufmann's commentary. I'm told his interpretations of these thinkers are controversial, to say the least.

If you read something you like from this book, I would read the texts the selections are from.

1. I know I could just use reparo, but I'd rather my wine glasses not break in the first place. Plus, there's no putting wine back in a broken glass, and we can't have that! If I drop it, I'll just use wingardium leviosa, and the wine will be saved!

2. Whenever I put my dog on the back of my broomstick, he's always trying to chew off the handle. Maybe this item will fool him.

3. I'm not sure I can afford my own, but I have three friends who might let me borrow theirs. I might have to dust them off a bit.

4. This would help me understand the magic of the mind, and the mind magic behind the magic!

5. I have a feeling my school trunk would just be full of dirty clothes.

6. Cape! I'd really like to find a cape like this guy has. Practical AND fashionable. I think he really epitomizes those two qualities.

I've read about 90% of King's work.

If you just want a quick rundown on King's universe without reading an entire library full of books, someone made a pretty handy guidebook for reference:

https://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Kings-Dark-Tower-Concordance/dp/1451694873

WARNING! This books is pretty much nothing BUT spoilers, so if you think you might read any of his books in the future you're probably better off avoiding this.