(Part 3) Reddit mentions: The best literary criticism books

Don't take that the wrong way, and definitely don't bail on Bone & Ink. I was just saying that 'success' as a writer is hard to measure, but any real amount of it involves much larger audiences. Few people are successful in that way quickly, it takes time to get used to both writing and publishing. Poetry is in a unique place because it sort of walks point for the nation in many ways. One of the main goals of poetry is surprise, and because the white male perspective has been the defacto voice of educated literati for some time, the fertility of new perspectives provides unique interpretations of the world... or, poetry's all about looking at both the macro and the micro with various lenses... sorry to point to something so common, but Wallace Stevens' 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird really is a good way to think of perspective's role in poetry. And to illustrate how different lenses can greatly impact the picture shown.

I mean, my journal acceptances mean next-to-nothing (at least to hiring boards) and I've had well over 100 in some good journals. Don't get caught up on success, is the point. But you should definitely be proud of your accomplishments so far. It's a very good start.

As far as Red Dashboard, it depends. If you're super confident in the poems you could try contacting them and say you've had a change of heart and want to work on the poems more before they're published (never a bad idea), or that you want to publish more of the individual poems first, whatever. Also, you could just dust your hands off and get working harder on more poems. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the book a vanity press publishes, it's the lack of peer review that allows the bad in with the good. If you are happy with what you've sent, work with them to make it the best it can be and buy a bunch of copies for yourself and to sell if you do any readings or anything, but don't expect them to do much with it. You're the PR person when it comes even to a lot of normal small presses.

Going forward the biggest thing I can recommend is to read as much as you can. And only some classic stuff, at least half or more should be literary journals and anthologies of stuff from the last few decades. Read as much as you can and while you're reading, take notes, not like study notes, but when something sticks out underline it or better yet, start a google doc file and type/copy in bits you like with the poet's name and the poem title. I also highly recommend classes. You need to approach them with the right frame of mind, but if you do they can be invaluable. Even adult school/community college classes. A workshop allows you direct feedback from readers who are also writers, often not sugarcoated how others might. You have to understand that your words aren't the golden record of communication and some parts may be unclear to readers who only have the words on the page and their own (often very different from your own) life experience. Because it's easy for young writers to forget that poetry and language in general is a contrivance invented to express our understanding and observations of the world with others in as universally understandable way as possible. It doesn't matter what you mean by words if the reader cannot reach that meaning with the key (words in the poem) that you've given them. Abstractions (non-physical things like love, many, smelly etc) are different to everyone and therefore should be used with caution. But mainly, take all comments with a grain of salt. Take the time to get as out of your own headspace as possible (detach yourself from ownership/creatorship of the piece) and objectively analyse if the change would make the piece better, or, sometimes they'll have a point with making an objection while you want to solve it in an alternative way.

Sorry, I'm meandering a bit because I'm writing this in snippets while working. Here are a couple recommendations that I really think will help:

1. Buy used books. Poets end up owning a lot of books. If money's no issue, go ham, especially on poets' individual collections because that actually affects them personally. But even then, for older books and anthologies, def go used, it's often like 80% or more cheaper, especially for poetry books.
   
   Poetry 180 is a free website with 180 accessible and very good poems. I usually point young writers there because it's almost entirely contemporary work, and it's easy to read and understand without sacrificing quality of writing. And it's relatively ecclectic. Not too much of the 'MFA' poems as I take you to mean. Billy Collins was the US Poet Laureate when he began the project and it's still rolling today. He's a good writer to check out too, and he's all over the internet. But, old white guy perspective trigger warning. haha.
   
   In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop Buy this used for $5.14 with shipping. You won't regret it. It's kinda a DIY poetry workshop. It has themed sections and many poems to illustrate its craft points. Steve Kowit was an amazing poet and teacher and he's sadly missed. Also it's very accessible. Kowit was pretty core in the 'school' of poetry with many names, including "ultra-talk" "stand-up poetry" and a bunch of others, but basically, they use colloquial, often straightforward language and often include elements of humor and pop culture. If that sounds up your alley I cannot more highly recommend the anthology Stand Up Poetry: An Expanded Anthology edited by Charles Harper Webb. It's definitely one of my favorite anthologies. It's a little more expensive at $8.75 with shipping (these quotes may be slightly dif to CAN, but it should be close), but absolutely worth it.
   
   The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry edited by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux. Bother are tremendous poets and their work on this anthology is really really insightful and helpful for young poets. It was for me. This one is about $8.
   
   If you buy those three anthologies for a total of like $23US, and you read them and try the suggested exercises I can all but guarantee you'll become a better poet. Of course there are millions of ways to progress your poetry, I'd never claim this is the only or the absolute best way, but it will definitely improve your writing in a way that just aimless reading and writing will not.
   
   As for publishing, Duotrope is amazing, but has a subscription fee so for the moment you can do most research at free places. I recommend
   
   The Review Review (reviews of journals, lists, interviews with editors and articles regarding publishing)
   
   New Pages (see desc. of TRR)
   
   and
   
   Poets and Writers (great craft articles, a decent journal database and a great contest calendar)
   
   And... don't be afraid of rejection. Even continued rejection. I have pieces that have been rejected upwards of 30 times get accepted at journals much more prestigious than a lot of journals that had already rejected it. Poetry is highly subjective (though, there are metrics, standards of craft that all poems are measured against before subjectivity really comes into play). Reading poetry, even, can be subjective. I once accidentally resubmitted the same poem to a journal 5 years after it had been rejected and it was accepted the second time with very little in way of changes. So yeah, you have to get your writing to a certain place, but once you're beyond that, it's largely a numbers game that you get better and better at managing as you become more intimately familiar with journals and your writing gains nuance and you feel more comfortable in your voice.
   
   If you have any more questions or need more recommendations let me know, always trying to help young poets find their path. I know my own path would've been much different with some earlier direction, but I'm very grateful for what I received eventually.

>I would also like to start 'working' with a higher entity. I'd like to make contact with my HGA, but am not adept enough to perform The Abramelin Operation (seems very scary).

The Abramelin Operation is a bit dated and a lot of people (not all though) use Crowley's Liber Samekh Ritual to establish contact with the HGA. It's supposed to be performed astrally several times a day. Lon Milo Duqette wrote a clearer explanation than Crowley did of how to perform the ritual in his book A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema. However, that's not usually the first step in contacting the HGA. In Crowley's system, a person must :

1. Gain control over the body of light and rising on the planes. This is often assigned due to the fact that, as I already said, the ritual is not suppose to take place on the physical plane, rather in the astral one after rising on the planes.
   
   
2. Master Asana and Pranayama. Asana is being able to sit completely still in a single position without moving a single muscle for a prolonged period of time and Pranayama is breath control. This is because the HGA is often seen as your subconscious mind and these meditative practices are necessary to be able to quiet your conscious mind so that you may better hear and listen to your subconscious. If you'd like to read more about this, I'd recommend Liber ABA
   
   
3. Master ceremonial magick techniques (i.e. Star Ruby, Star Sapphire, lesser rituals of the pentagram and hexagram, greater rituals of the pentagram and hexagram, etc.) and develop a better understanding of ritual. This is obviously assigned due to the fact that in order to successfully perform a ritual to invoke the HGA, you need to have an understanding of ritual and ability to do it.
   
   
4. Perfect the art of Bhakti. Bhakti is complete devotion to a deity. It includes such things as devoting all acts (i.e. eating, drinking, sleeping, working, breathing, etc.) to the chosen deity, developing a mantra for the deity and reciting it constantly in your head every second of the day without stopping, developing an invocation to the deity, performing ritual service for the deity several times in a 24 hour period including the middle of the night, modeling yourself to behave like the chosen deity, etc. This is necessary as it helps develop the one-pointed focus and devotion needed to successful invoke the HGA. If you'd like, you can read more about this in Liber Astarte
   
   >I would love suggestions from you all regarding anything that would help me practice low-level ritual work!
   
   I'd recommend trying out
   
   The Star Sapphire
   
   The Star Ruby
   
   The Greater Ritual of the Hexagram
   
   The Lesser Ritual of the Hexagram
   
   The Solar Adorations
   
   The Threefold Eucharist
   
   The Mass of the Pheonix
   
   The Form of Hoor-pa-kraat
   
   >Are there any other ways to do this? I feel an affinity toward Angelic forces and have a keen interest in Enochian but am unsure where to begin.
   
   If you're looking to get into Enochian magick, (which I would highly recommend; it's one of my favoritae systems of magick) I'd recommend reading Enochian Magick in Theory and Enochian Magick in Practice by Frater Yechidah.
   
   >I have stayed away from Goetia thus far and would like to focus a little more on white magick (not because I think Goetia is 'wrong'; its just not for me right now). However, I am curious if The Key of Solomon would provide any use for someone wanting to learn about white magic? Am I correct in stating that the astrological pentacles are of use for the magus to use at their will?
   
   I wouldn't classify the Goetia as black magick. Demons in the occult are not the same as demons in Abrahramic religion. In fact, I (as well as others I have talked to) have noticed that the Enochian angels are very similar in character and personality to the Goetic demons. I would also not characterize the Key of Solomon pentacles and sigils as black magick.
   
   But to answer your questions; yes, anyone could use the pentacles (with or without conjuring any of the Goetic demons; the consecration rite for them does not include any evocation, just a blessing) and see results.
   
   As for general books I would recommend to a beginner:
   
   The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford by Lon Milo Duquette
   
   the Golden Dawn by Israel Regardie
   
   The Mystical and Magical System of the A .'. A .'. by James A. Eshelman
   
   777 And Other Qabalistic Writings by Aleister Crowley
   
   Gems From the Equinox by Aleister Crowley and edited by Israel Regardie
   
   
   
   

There once existed this philosopher named Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (most people just call him Hegel for short). Hegel was an extremely influential philosopher during his time, and many people considered themselves Hegelian philosophers. The thing about Hegel is that he's very difficult to understand, and his works were interpreted in many different ways. Basically, you had three schools of thought regarding Hegel (we'll call them the Post-Hegelian philosophers): right-wing Hegelians, left-wing Hegelians, and another group that was a reaction towards left-wing Hegelians. The right-wing Hegelians believed that Hegel was saying Christianity is basically true, but that the Bible speaks in metaphors. The left-wing Hegelians believed Hegel was saying Christianity wasn't true at all, and thus he was advocating atheism (Marx fell into this category). The final group believed that the left-wingers were correct, that Hegel was saying Christianity was false, and therefore Hegelianism is an evil fraud (Kierkegaard). The final group did not align themselves with the right-wing group, because they felt that the Bible is literal (doesn't speak in metaphors), and that the right-wingers were misled.

Marx puts forward a theory of alienation, where our internal issues can be fixed via society. Kierkegaard believes you can fix your problems by establishing the right relationship with God. However, Kierkegaard also believes that one must fix themselves before anything else. (Marx believes on must fix society, and the fixing of self will follow from that). So, Kierkegaard focuses on self rather than society.

Now, the thing that's kind of interesting about Kierkegaard is that he's not really a philosopher -- in fact, he despises philosophers. He is a literary figure in Denmark who happens to find himself in a Denmark that becomes very Hegelian -- even the religious establishment goes Hegelian. Kierkegaard makes religion the topic on which he constructs his literature, thus his literature espouses much of his religious beliefs.

In Either/Or Kierkegaard puts forward two stages of human existence: the aesthetic stage, and the ethical stage. In order to better understand how Kierkegaard can reconcile his Christianity with his existentialism, it is important to understand these two stages. So, below I go into a very minor amount of detail on them, and in doing so I give you an incomplete picture. This is just scratching the surface, and if you find yourself interested in the subject I highly recommend reading the books I suggest at the end of this post.

The Aesthetic Stage

The aesthete is concerned not with the self, but rather with the world that they live in. They want the world to become a work of art. The aesthete lives for the immediate satisfaction of his senses, which conflicts with the aesthete's ability to reflect on his own life, and the way he in which he lives it. The aesthete moves from one pleasure to another, and enjoys himself, but he lacks introspection. The aesthete is not immoral, but rather pre-moral. Also, aestheticism does not equal hedonism. The aesthete abides by morals insofar as they are not boring or inartistic.

The Ethical Stage

To become an ethical human one first needs to take very seriously the norms of the community. The main thing that distinguishes Kierkegaard from Hegel here is choice. It's not a process of evolution that one becomes moral (Hegel), but rather you choose to be ethical. This means that you also have the choice not to be ethical (existentialism!). There can be no ethical life until you've chosen that there can be a difference between good and bad. In the ethical stage one can reflect on one's life, and thus is accountable for living a moral life (or not). The ethical person no longer sees the world as the most important part of living, but rather he now sees himself as the most important part of the world -- his inner existence is more important than anything else. The ethical person now has the choice to take control of his/her own life, or to not do so. The ethical person works towards being a moral and good person by shaping himself as a moral and good person, thus he is the most important aspect in his being, not society or any other external sources (existentialism!).

The Religious Stage

This is discussed in Fear and Trembling, not Either/Or. This stage is not reached by being ethical or anything else. In fact, it is my interpretation that Kierkegaard actually says the person in the ethical stage cannot reach the religious stage, but that's my spin and I could be wrong -- I didn't mention this, but Kierkegaard thinks that living in the Aesthetic stage leads one to despair, and suicide. However, it is my belief that in the state of despair in the Aesthetic stage, one makes the leap of faith to the religious stage, thus skipping the ethical stage entirely. Again, this could be wrong.

End Stages

So, we are still left with the question, if Kierkegaard looks to the external (i.e., God), then how can he be considered an existentialist? The point that Kierkegaard is making with these stages is that we have a choice in this stages, thus we are responsible for our own lives. We have the choice of being religious, or being an aesthete. We are in control of our own lives, therefore we are responsible for everything that happens to us. It's important to note that these stages are not like Freud's stages of development. An aesthete can choose to be an aesthete for his entire life, and never enter a different stage. An ethical person chooses the ethical stage. Kierkegaard believes deeply in personal reflection, and the fact that we are responsible for our own lives. This is existentialism.

TL;DR (and encapsulated for a 5 year old): It is true that Kierkegaard looks to God, but his work is still existential because he focuses on the fact that we are free to choose our lives, and thus are responsible for how our lives are going. As well, Kierkegaard places a lot of importance on reflecting on ourselves, and the importance of the self rather than the world.

Further Reading

Either/Or

Fear and Trembling

The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard - This book gives you a clear picture of Kierkegaard's religious beliefs. Also, gives a decent understanding of his philosophy, but not great.

Kierkegaard: An Introduction - This book makes things amazingly clear about Kierkegaard's philosophy.

love you man :)

With all due respect to the conclusion you've made - the research I've done leaves me with no doubt that the Catholic Church is the true bride of Christ, the defender of the faith through the ages - and the gates of hell shall not come upon it. It took a long time for me to come to this realization (as an avid conspiracy person), but when I did it was precisely the sort of profound tear-inducing disbelief at my own obliviousness. That not only does God love his children, but that he trusted his weakest apostle with the keys to His kingdom and revealed the purpose of the name he had given him. It is the joy of knowing that through faith this world is not completely lost. This is a collection of people who have and maintain this feeling regularly.

Marshall McLuhan put it best when he said "you can tell when somebody has left the Church, they've stopped praying." Faith is a mode of perception that makes life infinitely more joyful and fulfilling. I have been growing through this faith, thinking twice about my actions before I do them, and always looking for where I may find a hint of God's will for my life.

It is worth noting that the Church has never formally adopted ANY gnostic dogma of self-enlightenment (the chief lie of the Prince of this World, as you rightly point). Though the controversies initially rose within the medieval church among early apocalyptic Franciscans and Cathars after the crusades; Jesuits who stole the patristic education of the trivium and locked it into private life and confidentiality, there is still a staggering amount of holy work that has been done. The Church even officially disbanded the Jesuits, and if it weren't for Catherine the Great's sanctuary for them in Russia in the 19th century, they would've been completely stamped out from the church altogether. Unfortunately they were a large part of Vatican II. The point is, it may not be worth throwing the baby out with the bath water.

History, grammar, the story of continuity to the point in life where we find ourselves is essential to any new learning, or making. We will get much better ideas of where we should go when we can retrace steps and see how we got here. This grammar, this continuity comes tied to our memory. every human is designed with faith of God. We simply have to remember who we are.

For this, I could not recommend ANY more (as I always always do here) Marshall McLuhan's doctorate, which is basically a trivium that winds up being the story of the Catholic Church idealizing holy civilization.

https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Trivium-Place-Thomas-Learning/dp/1584232358

People have been kept from the Truth; because the Truth will set them free. This is why they are called Liberal Arts. When they are not directed inward, as Masons and Jesuits and countless hallucinating others would have it, but instead the arts are directed to God through Christ... it is why we say He is the source of all supernatural gifts.

McLuhan said about the times he lived in: "we've adopted the attitudes of the Renaissance controversialists without ever learning what those controversies were originally about." and "Just why the medieval fourfold-exegesis method of the patristic school slowly faded over the years of the late Renaissance has never been explained and deserves its own study."

If the controversies began within the church, they can be defended against within the church.

The patristic tradition of the Catholic Church from Augustine to Erasmus calls us to live in constant search of new learning. learning various kingdoms, having helpful stories of distant lands & times at the tips of our fingers, and how to arrange them in ways to inspire devotion and true involvement from the free will of the listener, all in service of guiding them towards salvation.

The Gnostics want everybody to live conceptually, that is, stuck in frozen patterns of their own making. Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out to all the best philosophers that by their nature, all of their notions were the OPPOSITE of reality, truth & actuality because it is a still snapshot of a naturally dynamic process. The Gnostics have always feared people who live free from ideas that freeze them. This is only possible for a Christian, because it is this infinite mystery (not mystic, but a sober recollection and expounding of true experience) is precisely why he died for every single one of us.

love and respect my brother. your post will save many souls here.

I agree with most of these points and have a few suggestions for a slightly different style.

Number 2. Alternatively, use an existing campaign setting or shamelessly rip off locations from the Dictionary of Imaginary Places. I've just started running a 5E version of the Planescape setting and it is a blast! And there is SO MUCH CONTENT ready for me to use and expand on. Before this, I had only ever ran games in home-brew settings. It's been nice to spend my time adding depth to content, rather that starting from the ground up. If you are like I was and thought you'd never enjoy using an existing setting, give it a try sometime.

Number 3. NPC lists are so helpful. I have just recently started using the NPC List, NPC Builder, and NPC Cards made by R-N-W.net as a convenient, aesthetically pleasing way to keep track of NPCs. Really I love all of their World-Building Kit items.

• To add on to this one, I also recommend keeping a list of potential NPC names. No matter how well you prepare, your players will always find an NPC that you didn't plan on. Whenever my husband runs a game I always remind him to make a list, because unlike me, he is not a hyper-prepared DM. If he doesn't make a list, we'll end up with multiple Bobs, Jeffs, Freds, and so on.
  
  Number 4. Did you ever play 4th edition? Puzzles can be a great place to use skill challenges, which were one of the best ideas in 4E. Here's a link about using them in 5E.
  
  Number 5. I just say I need a moment to check my notes, and I either flip through my printed pages or scroll for a moment on my laptop.
  
  Number 6. I somewhat disagree with you on this one, more based on my personal style. One thing I've done to keep the story well-paced (and less random) is have the players choose, in general, where they are going to go next at the end of each session. This way I can prepare fully and keep the story beats (and therefore important encounters) on some rails while still allowing for a wide range of choice when it comes to the details of the plot.
  
  I add in quest hooks and clues for them to be interested in a few more specific areas/directions, so it organically feels more story driven than sandbox driven. It also helps create specific end points for each session. Instead of "Well, that's all I have prepared" it's "For next session, where would you like to go?". I add labels to any location they have learned about on the map so they can clearly see distance, general environment, and anything else that might impact their decision that their characters know.
  
  An over-world map really helps with this. It's especially fun when the PCs are in a completely new country/world/plane because they end up picking up on interesting locations the same way humans used to pre-information age: word of mouth, in-game maps, written notices, sign-posts, direct instructions, etc.
  
  This works best for DMs that like to be hyper-prepared and groups that get super into interwoven backstories. If you are more seat-of-your-pants improv style, then this probably isn't for you.
  
  A side effect of running games like this is that I do end up creating a fair amount of content that doesn't get used in a session. Usually means I can recycle it for another though.
  
  Number 7. Absolutely! The stories my players most often tell from my games are either tragedies or overcoming tragedies. Just gotta twist the knife a little bit, even better if it ties into the backstory.
  
  Bonus. Regarding using backstories. I like to go a step further and dedicate entire sessions (or most of a session) to further developing individual backstories. Works best when the campaign is more established and the characters really do care about each other. They're effectively Bioware companion quests.
  
  An Important Addition: FOOD! Always have a plan for food before the day of your session. My players rotate which items they bring. It helps keep the game going instead of having to stop and ask what everyone wants to eat (and saves money).

It's good that you want to expand your reading! And honestly, you'll probably always feel like you're missing something. My reading list has gone out of control since I started college. The more you read the more you'll want to know!

I suppose that's what I meant by range. Being able to sample different and varying bodies of work. That way you learn a little bit, but still open up avenues for finding new information. (Like going to a grocery store and eating all the samples, but then only buying one of the products to take home to fill your tummy until the next shopping day.)

There's a couple ways you can do this: start with a really broad scope and then go specific from there. Or, start with a narrow focus and then go broad.

An example of narrow to broad: I took a class on African American Science Fiction. Which is a pretty narrow field of study. We read lots of different authors whose works were specific to African American literature (e.g. Nalo Hopkins, Octavia Butler), but also situated within the broader genre of sci-fi. So we had to pay attention to not only the African American perspective, but also what was going on in these books that was pertinent to sci-fi writing. After the class was over I got more interested in sci-fi as a genre because it can do some really cool stuff!

Broad to narrow: During the same quarter I also took a literary criticism class and we got this monstrous behemoth as a textbook: http://www.amazon.com/Norton-Anthology-Theory-Criticism-Edition/dp/0393932923 (To this day I can't look at that book without feeling anxious. It's DENSE. Helpful and interesting, but DENSE.) Anyways, for the class we read a lot of different authors with extremely diverse perspectives and focuses (e.g. Saussure, Marx, Haraway etc.). That's the type of writing (i.e. critical essays) that you can apply and find incredibly relevant in other areas. You can take one of those essays and manipulate it and use different perspectives/readings to understand another piece of work more deeply. So for my final essay in this class, I used Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto and applied it to my particular understanding of a short story we read in my African American Science Fiction.

Both of these classes allowed/forced me to read things I normally wouldn't have. They put me out of my comfort zone.

So long story short, read lots and make connections!

As far as where to start...that's really up to you. Find something that you're interested in and go from there. Like superheros? Read Watchmen by Alan Moore. Like history? Read the actual story of Pocahontas (spoiler: it's nothing like Disney). Like all of the current hullabaloo about the NSA? Read 1984.

Don't read something just because it's a classic. Read it because you're actually interested in what it's about. That being said, it's best to try and keep an open mind. Also, genre writing can get a lot of flack for not being "literary enough." But genre writing has it's own merits, they're just a little different.

If you're looking for more suggestions and are curious about what's being read in academia, try googling a university and their English dept. Often they'll link to course catalog descriptions that may include their required reading lists.

I hope this helps! :)

TL;DR Just keep reading. Really. Even reading the back of a shampoo bottle is better than nothing.

For learning Ancient Greek (as an autodidact), start by signing up for The Great Courses Plus and take the Ancient Greek course, taught by Hans-Friedrich Meuller:

Greek 101: Learning an Ancient Language | The Great Courses Plus

You can sign up for a free trial on The Great Courses, for just long enough to complete the Greek course. But I think it’s totally worth paying for ALL of the content.

I recommend downloading the guidebook and doing ALL of the homework. Copy and paste the exercises into a Word doc and type out the answers/translations. Take the course as many times as you can for mastery.

I’ve created a couple of free courses on Memrise for Ancient Greek verbs that (I hope) people may find helpful. I use (my best attempt at) Modern Greek pronunciation. Audio can be disabled by anyone who has a problem with that. My Memrise account (Diachronix) has some other Modern Greek courses.

Paradigms of Ancient Greek Verbs

Principal Parts of Ancient Greek verbs

Professor Al Duncan produced an excellent series of Ancient Greek videos (on Youtube: Learn Attic Greek with Al Duncan - YouTube), which follows along the exercises in chapters 1–10 and 30–34 of Cynthia Shelmerdine’s Introduction to Greek.

That textbook is a bit error-prone, but it’s still pretty good for beginners. I recommend using it to follow along in Professor Duncan’s videos, at least until they cut off at chapter 10. But you’re on your own between chapters 11 and 29. Again, I recommend typing out ALL of the exercises.

The Athenaze Book 1 and Athenaze Book 2 are good self-study resources for intermediate learners, with a lot of excellent reading material. I also have a Memrise course for the vocabulary in these texbooks.

Athenaze: Book 1

Athenaze: Book 2

Leonard Muellner (Professor Emeritus of Classical Studies at Brandeis University) has a Youtube series on Ancient Greek: Learn Ancient Greek, with Prof. Leonard Muellner - YouTube

Unfortunately the audio throughout most of this series is terrible. But if you manage to listen closely (and not fall asleep), it’s quite edifying. Meullner is a genius. The course follows along the Greek: An Intensive Course textbook by Hansen & Quinn. You could try getting that textbook and following along, but I would recommend this last. I just can’t imagine most people having the patience for it. And I’ve heard mixed reviews on Hansen & Quinn, which professor Meullner criticizes ad nauseam throughout his videos.

Another resource I really like is the online version of ΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΙΚΗ ΤΗΣ ΑΡΧΑΙΑΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗΣ by ΟΙΚΟΝΟΜΟΥ. You can turn the audio in the bottom right and a robot reads it out-loud. It’s helpful to learn the grammatical terminology in Greek and, if you can manage reading demotic Greek, you can experience the way the Greeks approach Ancient Greek (and observe the notable differences). They have interesting grammatical category distinctions that we don’t have in the West, many of which are quite handy. But this textbook doesn’t have any engaging reading material, aside from bland descriptions of the language. So it’s not for everyone.

Most other learning material I could recommend is mentioned in the various links above. But here are some key items for building a collection of self-study material:

*Geoffrey Horrocks’ “Greek - A History of the Language and Its Speakers” (MUST READ)

Plato: A Transitional Reader

Kaegi’s Greek Grammar

Smyth’s Greek Grammar

Plato Apology

Homeric Greek - A Book for Beginners

Rouse’s Greek Boy - A Reader

Basics of Biblical Greek

A Graded Reader of Biblical Greek

Geoffrey Steadman’s Ancient Greek reader SERIES

If you're new and really want a good wide sampling, I heartily endorse a well-edited anthology. Not a shitty anthology of the classics, but a good, well-curated, interesting, broad, informative collection of poems. My first was the Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, which, though it's country specific and leaves out some good poets, is pretty terrific for the relatively recent, American stuff. A different route in the anthology department is The Making of A Poem, which covers formal aspects of poetry without treating you like an infant or talking over your head, and then gives a spectacular, chronologically organized range of examples of those forms.


I think the best way to find out what you like is to read a few issues of Poetry magazine, everything they do is on their website, and find out what clicks with you.


I like to read individual collections, so I'll list some of my all time favorites here. Obviously there are a lot more than this list, and I'm offering here the stuff I think is a bit more accessible, even the moderns and Whitman are pretty lucid, even if Pound is a bit dense and Williams is a bit flightly.


Contemporary/Recent:

Maurice Manning - Bucolics and Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions

Robert Hass - Praise

Donald Justice - Departures

Louise Gluck - Averno and The Wild Iris


Further Back:

Ezra Pound - Personae

Willian Carlos Williams - Al Que Quiere! and Sour Grapes

HD - Sea Garden

Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass


Non-English:

Charles Baudelaire - Fleurs du Mal

Tomas Transtromer - New Collected Poems (tr. Robin Fulton)

So ever since getting into folk metal a few years ago I've been real big on Finnish myth, so much so that I actually give annual guest lectures on it and have done so for I believe five years now. As others have said, Kalevala is your bread and butter for Finnish myth, and is generally referred to as the cradle of Finnish mythology. I would advise you stay far away from the John Martin Crawford translation, as he did a really awkward job of anglicizing some names but not others. If you want something a little more straightforward, I'd recommend the Bosley translation and if you want something a bit more poetical, go for the Kirby translation. All in all its personal preference. Except the Crawford translation, as that's dogshit.

If you want stuff beyond Kalevala, then there are a few more reads worth looking into, namely Kanteletar, which is a book of folk songs, however that one's almost impossible to get a hold of in English.

Something else to take in mind is the Ballad of Bishop Henrik, which gets a bit away from some of the more fantastical elements of Kalevala.

Also, there's a film called The Sampo which is split up into a few parts on Youtube. It's basically an alternate telling of Kalevala which focuses far more on Ilmarinen and Lemminkäinen than the Kalevala's actual protagonist, Väinämöinen.

Aside from literature and film, there's also a bit of art and music which ought to be taken into account. If you want to know about Finnish myth, and if you read the Kalevala, you're going to want to know what a kantele is, and more importantly you should familiarize yourself with this tune as it pops up quite a bit from various sources. Finally, the artwork of Akseli Gallen-Kallela is pretty important to Finnish romantic nationalism, as many of his works depict scenes from Finnish mythology, with the most notable of his paintings being Sammon puolustus/Defense of the Sampo. Anyways, hope that helps. Feel free to PM me if you want more info.

Obviously, reading the entire series several times isn't a practical idea. And, there's far too much breadth and depth to the world to give you a useful crash course in a reddit comment or two. So, here are a few suggestions:

• Ask your friend about the characters they want to play, when relative to the main story, and what part(s) of the world they're most interested in exploring. This will give you some areas to focus on in more detail.
  
• Consider reading a couple of the books if you can make the time. The natural place to start would be The Eye of the World which is full of detail and world-building. However, the plot is very tightly focused and you might not get enough of the big picture to construct a good campaign experience.
  
  • Another option would be to jump ahead to books 3, 4, and 5 (The Dragon Reborn, Shadow Rising, and The Fires of Heaven). The scope is substantially wider and you'll see a lot more of the world, cultures, and different regions. Crucially, you'll get some time in the White Tower, which is the single most important political institution. These earlier books are more accessible, Jordan does more recapping in the narration, and there are fewer minor POV characters than later in the series. Plus, reading some of these will give you a much more nuanced feel for the world than reading synopses and Wiki entries.
    
  • I would also consider reading the New Spring novella. It's considerably shorter than any of the other works and gives you a unique view on the world outside of the context of the main story line. If any of the players is playing an Aes Sedai or a character connected to the White Tower (a warder, expelled novice, etc.) this book is a must read for you.
    
• The audiobooks are truly EXCELLENT. Getting all 15 (induing New Spring) could be somewhat costly, but if you can find some at local libraries and pick up others on audible, it would be a good way to immerse yourself in the world. If I were in your shoes, I would listen to them frequently as you run the campaign, dipping in and out of different books after you finish the series on the first go.
  
  Some other resources for you to consider:
  
  
• The Wiki is OK. It's somewhat mixed in its detail and seems to be more detailed on the individual characters, which is likely less useful for your needs.
  
• Leigh Butler's ReRead of the series on Tor.com is good. She does a brief chapter-by-chapter synopsis of each book, so you'll get all the main plot and character points, although you'll of course miss out on the details of the world building and texture. Plus, it's written for someone who's read the series. Nonetheless, it might be worth checking out for you.
  
• The two published reference books might also be worth getting your hands on.
  
  • I highly recommend reading The World of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time (aka the White Book or the big book of bad art). It's organized thematically and will cover a lot of background detail of the world: Nations, history, some politics, etc. Unfortunately, it's not comprehensive as it was written part way through the series.
    
  • The Wheel of Time Companion was published after the series was finished. It's organized alphabetically and draws from Jordan's notes as well as the published works. You might well find it a good reference for different places, ideas, and items, but for learning about the world overall, I think you'll be better served by starting with the white book.
    
    Hope this helps!
    

Sartre presented a lecture called "Existentialism and Humanism," which can now be found in print as Existentialism is a Humanism. It's almost like an Existentialism manefesto, per se. The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus is a good treatise on existentialism (Absurdism, really, but it'll do).

I would not hesitate to start reading fiction novels that have Existentialist themes. Camus' The Stranger, Sartre's Nausea, and Dostyevsky's Notes From the Underground are just a few that will find your studies well.

As for secondary literature, the only text I can knowledgeably recommend is Existentialism For Dummies, as I'm currently working my way through it. It's actually not as bad as you might think coming from the "For Dummies" series. It doesn't go too in-depth, and ideas are very concise and oftentimes humorous.

I have also heard good things about David Cogswell's Existentialism For Beginners, though I have never read it myself.

If your niece feels comfortable with this level of writing and philosophical examination, it is almost imperative to read Kierkegaard's Either/Or and Fear and Trembling, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, and Sartre's Being and Nothingness, among others. It is good to have some background understanding of Kant and perhaps have a few essays by Schopenhauer under your belt leading up to the more rigorous academics like Heidegger and Hegel.

Good luck, and happy reading!

>The grammar simplifies itself the more people use it.

How are you defining grammar? I would highly recommend cracking a textbook on historical linguistics (Introduction to Historical Linguistics by Crowley and Bowern is great, as is Historical Linguistics by R.L. Trask).

You seem to be specifically referring to the tendency of highly synthetic languages to become more analytic over time -- but seem to be forgetting (or are unaware of) the fact that analytic languages become agglutinating and then synthetic over time. The whole process is referred to as the grammaticalization cycle.

>Language carries with it a certain amount of entropy; if it's taught properly it can maintain itself, but most people don't have the time or need.

Again, I highly recommend consulting an introductory textbook for historical linguistics.

>So gradually people start playing fast and loose with the syntax and what not.

This is flat-out wrong. Either of the books I mention above will explain why.

>Lexical complexity is only the result of introducing more words though conquest or immigration which is common enough but it doesn't happen on it's own.

This is also wrong. Seriously, both of the above books are great -- both are very readable, and Trask has the excellent quality of being charmingly (and intentionally) hilarious.

You're clearly interested in language, otherwise you wouldn't be posting in this subreddit. I think you'll find the scientific study of language to be incredibly interesting and fun -- and more rewarding than just positing unsubstantiated suppositions.

For fairy tales, I recommend the following:

• The Victorian Fairy Tales Book
  
• Norton's The Classic Fairy Tales
  
• Norton's The Great Fairy Tale Tradition
  
• The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales
  
• My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me
  
• Any and all of Andrew Lang's Colored Fairy Books (the first two focus on collections of well-known tales, but most of them are sort of themed/grouped geographically and have fairy tales from all over the world)
  
• The Complete Fairy Tales of George MacDonald
  
• The Names Upon the Harp: Irish Myth and Legend
  
• I'm a big fan of the various "Annotated" Fairy Tale collections, like the Annotated Brothers Grimm, Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, and Annotated Hans Christen Andersen, though I don't always agree with the editorializing. It's a whole series, so I'm only going to link to a couple.
  
• On that note, look for book collections put together and/or edited by Maria Tatar and Jack Zipes. They're the two most prominent fairy tale scholars at the moment and basically have an unofficial duopoly on the fairy tale academic criticism market.
  
• Also, a special shout-out to P.J. Lynch's illustrated version of East of the Sun and West of the Moon, and really all of the fairy tales books that Lynch illustrates. They're beautiful.
  
  
  For mythology and classical studies, there are a couple that are basically required reading for any Mythology or Classics class. Since several people have already recommended anthologies of Greek myths, I'm going to err more on the "Classics" side of the conversation:
  
  
• Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell
  
• The Odyssey, Homer (I recommend the Fagles translation due to its prominence in academia and its status as one of the best translations of the work)
  
• The Illiad, Homer (again, Fagles translation)
  
• The Aeneid, Virgil (again, Fagles has a translation that's very good). My bias as a Latin student, however, leads me to also recommend Pharr, which has no real use to you if you don't know Latin but it's the most popular all-time textbook version of the Aeneid)
  
• Metamorpheses, Ovid
  
• You also probably want to look at some Greek plays like the Sophoclean Tragedies/Three Thebian Plays

I'm a kind of casual reader these days, but Good Poems, selected by Garrison Keillor played a huge part in me getting into poetry ~10 years ago. Keillor grabs a good range of old classics and newer ones (though he kinda seems to favor beat era writers), and sorts the poems vaguely according to themes, like "Failure," "A Day's Work," "Sons and Daughters." I'd bet I've discovered 80% of my favorite writers due to this book. Props to u/JTK102 for also recommending this!



If that's too entry level, my other go-to anthology is The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, but obviously that one sticks to contemporary American writers. I like this anthology because it also gives some background to the career and cultural significance of the featured writers.


Good luck on your hunt!

If you're really keen to develop your understanding, here are two books on literary theory to digest that will help you with this:

Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction
The Very Short Introduction series is excellent. My wife is a philosophy teacher and we have about a dozen of them on our shelf. Fantastic entry points to building a solid foundation of understanding on just about any academic topic.

Seven Types of Ambiguity
This is one of the seminal works of modern literary criticism, and it's an engaging read.

Good luck! You are on a beautiful path and I hope you keep working at it because a deeper understanding and love of literature is truly a life-enriching pasttime.

Pretty clumsy altogether. There's a bit too many 'half-quotes' and unfounded assertions (McLuhan as fascist? Nope). Here's just one--

>The same man who claimed, in 1963, that our era “is the greatest in human history” had been decrying, only a few years before,

The full quote (unless the article, which doesn't cite a source, is using a different one) is from 1968 in a televised panel interview with Malcolm Muggeridge, Norman Mailer & Robert Fulford:

>McLuhan: Well, for heaven’s sake, this present time we’re moving into, this electric age, is the dawn of much the greatest of all human ages. There’s nothing to even remotely resemble the scope of human
awareness and human –

>Fulford: Now that's a value judgment.

>McLuhan: No, this is quantity. Most people make their judgments in terms of quality. I’m merely saying, quantitatively, this is by far the greatest human age. What further valuations would you wish to make?

>Fulford: Oh, I thought when you said “greatest” you meant the finest, that is –

>McLuhan: No.

Just as Neil Postman, WIRED, Douglas Coupland and the rest of McLuhans 'disciples' (whether they are 'general semanticists' or 'transhumanists') did not understand him one bit, nor do his critics then or now.

Any confusion as to Marshall's intention with his work stemmed from his image. He was, at the heart of it, a Renaissance scholar who desperately sought after a return of Grammar school in the Trivial sense - as the millenium-spanning tradition of learning faded out of fashion in Queen Elizabeth's England.

>“I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change, but I am determined to understand what’s happening. Because I don’t choose just to sit and let the juggernaut roll over me. Many people seem to think that if you talk about something recent, you’re in favor of it. The exact opposite is true in my case. Anything I talk about is almost certainly something I’m resolutely against. And it seems to me the best way to oppose it is to understand it. And then you know where to turn off the buttons.”

Anybody who hopes to seriously understand where Marshall was coming from (still quite saliently) ought to read his PhD thesis, which was just recently published - along with Media & Formal Cause.

https://www.amazon.com/Media-Formal-Cause-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/0983274703

https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Trivium-Place-Thomas-Learning/dp/1584232358/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=QPXK93Q8BM41YR61KNCC

A few more come to mind, less literature but more about stylistic and analytic skills you'll require in your advanced years in the Humanities.

People say to read a good style guide like Strunk & White, which is just okay. But I'd highly recommend Pinker's A Sense of Style--he also unpacks some of the problems with Strunk & White's core edicts.

Stanley Fish is just a great person to read in general. From his op-ed stuff in the NY Times to his class How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One. I'd also highly recommend reading the full introduction of the Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism or the introduction to Rifkin & Ryan's Literary Theory: An Anthology. When it comes to the lit theory stuff there are some good torrents with a lot of anthologies and canonical texts lumped together as PDFs. I also find a lot of good stuff with my Scribd membership.

As far as I know, the most popular introductory textbook is Fromkin's. You can get an older edition for cheaper. I studied with the 5th edition less than 3 years ago and it was fine. For something less unwieldy and more practical to carry around with you, Barry Blake's All About Language is really good. Less than 300 pages and manages to cover a huge amount of stuff clearly.

Personally, I think that historical linguistics is a really fun and relatively easy way to get into Linguistics as a whole so I'd recommend Trask's Historical Linguistics. I know that the Campbell and Crowley textbooks are also very popular, but I don't have personal experience with them. Maybe somebody else can weigh in on which is easiest for a beginner?

I have to plug my professor Kate Burridge here who has written some excellent pop-linguistics books: Gifts of the Gob, Weeds in the Garden of Words and Blooming English. Her more serious books are also written in a highly accessible manner and she is probably one of the world's experts on Euphemism and taboo. Here's a clip of her in action.

Some fun linguistics-related videos:

TED - The Uncanny Science of Linguistic Reconstruction

Pinker on Swearing

David Crystal on British tv

Another fun way to learn would be to listen to this song and look up all the terms used in it.

This website is rather painful to use on a modern web browser, but has clearly written and illustrative definitions of various types of critical theory, as well as descriptions of figures of interest and their work.

If you'd like an introductory overview of the primary genres of critical theory that goes into somewhat more depth and includes suggested readings, I can recommend Lois Tyson's Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. Tyson makes it very accessible by repeatedly analyzing The Great Gatsby through the lens of each theory, which is extremely helpful for understanding the "big picture" of what each tends to focus on.

Welcome to the rabbit hole! :)

I'm so happy to hear that you enjoyed studying Latin so much. Where I live (Canada), classical studies are not valued at all; people honestly don't understand why it would be important to retain some cultural continuity with all of Europe's past, where until just two or three hundred years ago, going to university in Europe meant doing scholarship in Latin. It therefore warms my heart to hear you speaking so fondly of it, and to know that there's a place in the world where even engineers have heard of Vergil.

I do hope you're able to keep reading Latin in your free time. If you like poetry digestible in small chunks, you might enjoy the very user-friendly Catullus. There are other excellent small-scale poets like Propertius, but I find his language rather more difficult. If you can find a book with bite-size excerpts of Ovid, that would be a wonderful way to go as well; Ovid is just stellar.

If you're up for a larger-scale work at any point, there's a fabulous student edition of the first six books of the Aeneid in English where there's an index of the very most common words at the back, then all the other vocabulary is given, with grammatical notes as well, on the same page as the Latin; it saves very, very much time with a dictionary. The book was prepared by an early 20th-century schoolteacher named Clyde Pharr and is available both in paperback and hardback editions.

Isn't Joe Rogan a comedian? (Edit I was thinking of Seth Rogan, but turns out that this guy is, too).

>Dr. Jordan Peterson

I have heard some really bad things about this guy. You might want to stay clear.

>Derrida and Post-Modernism

Just to be clear, Derrida isn't a postmodern. He is most famous for developing "deconstruction," a way of reading texts he takes from Heidegger. He is also closely associated with "Post-Structuralism," a 20th century movement in French philosophy.

As for the difference between Derrida and Postmodernism, here's a thread where I've talked about this before:
https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/5ooiia/what_exactly_is_modernism_is_that_different_from/


Derrida is notoriously difficult. I would recommend having a strong understanding of Heidegger's project before working on Derrida, especially Heidegger's critique of metaphysics of presence and "destruction" of the history of ontology.

The best essay to read to figure out what Derrida is all about is "Differance."

http://projectlamar.com/media/Derrida-Differance.pdf

However, Derrida is incredibly difficult to read, so you might try listening to this relatively easy to follow lecture by him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s8SSilNSXw&t=4s

Another good book to read for an introduction to Derrida's thought is Deconstruction in a Nutshell, an interview with Derrida by John Caputo followed by a commentary on the interview explaining Derrida's philosophy:

https://www.amazon.com/Deconstruction-Nutshell-Conversation-Perspectives-Continental/dp/0823217558

If you are really brave, you could try reading Derrida's Of Grammatology, his seminal work.

Another option would be to read Derrida reading someone else, just to watch him work and have an idea of how he reads texts. A good text to do this with might be "Plato's Pharmacy," Derrida's reading of Plato's Phaedrus.

http://www.ohio.edu/people/hartleyg/authors/derrida/PlatosPharmacy.pdf

P.S. Another highly accessible essay by Derrida that you might look at (especially with your interest in existentialism) is "The Ends of Man."

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil360/20.%20Derrida%20-%20The%20Ends%20of%20Man.pdf

You could read this as Derrida's critique of Sartre and the existentialist reading of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. Towards the end of the essay, he identifies some of the central strategies of deconstruction.

I came across this event happening in DC next month which is raising some red flags for me:

Together 2016

Other than being a large outdoor (soft target) event aiming for attendance of one million people (holy shit), bringing them under the banner of Jesus (besides gays, the fictitious ISIS cult purports to exist to destroy this ideology), with the Pope in attendance, some things are bothering me as I look at this:

• Date of 7/16/16 = 7/7/7 ... As we know 777 is an extremely important set of numbers in occult numerology, see here. So 7/7, 7/16, or 7/25 should already be on your list of dates to watch. 7/25 is the Dem convention, and 7/7 appears to be the opening date of a “massive Noah’s ark” in Kentucky. To that point, $90+ million was spent building the symbolic harbinger of the biblical apocalypse in rural Kentucky…why exactly?
  
  
• The "reset" theme of the "reset movement" which it appears is the entity making this event happen. Lots of phrases alluding to big things like “propelling a massive cultural shift” with this event.
  
  
• What is the "reset movement" and who is behind it? Info is limited and the answers given under the FAQ are elusive. There is this sprawling web of 43 Christian NGO groups, which feel pretty much indistinguishable from one another in form and substance. One of the first listed NGO sponsors listed is called “Awakening America”, pushing the fraudulent 9/11 narrative front and center, holding a “Cry for America” on 9/11/16 as its premier event, so we can infer a possible covert government link to this whole thing (besides the obvious fact the event is taking place at the National Mall in DC).
  
  
• The only name given in the FAQ is that of Nick Hall. Nick Hall founded the "Reset movement”, but seems to be more prominently linked to founding the "Pulse movement", which holds some symbolic significance after last weekend. The very first sentence of his biography makes a point to say "At age 33" (33 being the number of freemasonry).
  
  
• Lots of links to Billy Graham, the controversial evangelist who has been accused of satanic ritual abuse at Bohemian Grove (see "Billy Graham likes to rape drugged little girls"), and of being a Luciferian 33rd degree freemason. I believe the "Billy Lee Tuttle" character from True Detective S1 may have been at least partially influenced by Billy Graham. The first paragraph in Nick Hall’s book (7 reviews which seem to all be paid for) describes Billy Graham asking him a question, at which point Hall nearly “passes out like a fangirl at a Justin Bieber concert”.
  
  
• Trying to sort out the NGO hierarchy, we see that this is considered a “Pulse” event
  
  
• 33 days between Pulse shooting (6/12/16) and this event 7/16/16
  
  
• The last Pope to die suspiciously was John Paul I on 9/28/78, 33 days after his papal election
  
  
• Pope Francis was elected on 3/13/13 (more 3s...), or 1221 days before 7/16/16, a palindrome equating to 33. 1221 is also the product of 111 multiplied by 11, so just more weird numerology. Interestingly the 111th congress is the one which brought in Obama, and check this out from their first session, nothing more than a salute to freemasonry.
  
  
• The official hashtag appears to be #JesusChangesEverything…”this changes everything” is the slogan used by Avaaz, the shadow government’s “millennial” social engineering firm. The web layout is also nearly identical to the Avaaz NGO template, even though Avaaz seemingly isn’t associated with this so called movement.
  
  
• The color scheme of red and blue blending into purple has some very esoteric significance. Not going to go into that, its pretty weird.
  
  
• Double 666 hand sign graphic (also 3 and 3 = 33) in the lower right corner of the page. WTF?
  
  
• The design of the letter "O" in the word together looks styled after the ouroboros. The snake eating its own tail is found throughout occult history within mystery religion/serpent worship contexts and esoteric illuminati symbolism, including a super bowl commercial this year. More on this commercial in a minute.
  
  Now the predictions:
  
  The economist 2016 cover shows a cartoon guy with a backwards strapback hat (depicting his youth? we see here that the event is clearly targeted at millennials) and a unicorn (unicorn is the symbol for Jesus) on his head. This backwards hat man with a unicorn/Jesus has a gun pointed at his head, connecting him to the image of Osama Bin Laden (the face of Islamic false flag terror). Remember that “Together 2016” is all about bringing members of the “millennial generation” from different creeds to “come together around Jesus” (not Christianity per se). Further adding to the intrigue of this image, the man’s head is in closest proximity to two numbers in the “world population spiral”: 8.1 and 8.6. If we add the 8s we get 16, add the 1 and the 6 and we get 7… 7/16. Similar numerology predicted the 11/13/15 date of the Paris attack in the 2015 cover. Ignoring everything else I mentioned this economist cover alone is very concerning. We've already seen the backwards rainbow flag play out in the Orlando false flag combat situation.
  
  More from the economist cover…we see that the sun face appears to be staring down at Pope Francis almost lustfully. We see that a dark colored butterfly is fluttering right next to the sun face (the sun may be looking at the butterfly, but not sure that matters given the next point). And we see that a religious cartoon figure, who is clearly Patriarch Kirill, is looking up nervously/suspiciously at the sun face. What is interesting is that Francis and Kirill met for the first time ever in February, which was the first such meeting between the Roman/Russian faith leadership in almost a thousand years.. There are theories out there regarding what they met to discuss (or physically exchange), but at the very least I do not buy the official story that they met to simply hug it out. Especially where Kirill left the meeting and immediately went to Antarctica for some kind of ritual. With the all of the occult sun worship out there and ancient history of human sacrifice to the “sun god”, could this be hinting that something will happen to the Pope? If we also take into account the butterfly symbolism, meaning death and metamorphosis, I think it should be considered (butterflies were actually sacrificed to Quetzalcoatl, the “feathered serpent” or black sun, in ancient culture). Further, we see that the Pope is the highest person in the image, parallel to a statue of the deceased Karl Marx. Will the Pope be “ascending” to join Marx in the afterlife? See here where the Pope is given a hammer and sickle as a “gift”, or here where “Pope Francis channels Marx in manifesto”.
  
  One last point on the economist cover, tying it back to the super bowl commercial I linked to earlier. The first thing Liam Neeson says is “There is a revolution coming. The future is staring back at us.”…Take another look at the economist cover. There is someone holding a giant book called THE FUTURE, and this book has glasses with eyes staring back at us. This image is positioned just below the unicorn hat man and numerology population stuff. Neeson again says “the future is staring back at you” as the last line of the commercial. We see the ouroboros tattooed on his hand and he flicks the ouroboros playing card at the glass. The fact that both “clues” were given twice probably relates to the duality concept where things of masonic importance are done in pairs.
  
  Jesus shown on a ceremonial Egyptian funeral boat only a few seconds after what may have been a reference to the Orlando Pulse shooting in the short film I Pet Goat II. After he is shown, Osama Bin Laden (with a CIA patch, indicating his role as a puppet) appears to be "orchestrating" in front of an army of black and white clad soldiers (note that this video was made before ISIS even existed, and note the Bin Laden/Jesus parallel with the economist cover).
  
  
  

Not sure what facility you’re referring to, but 34 is NOT too old! Consistency is your best friend; you don’t need to practice a lot everyday, but you DO need to practice everyday. I’ve been using Learn to Read Greek, but I’ve also heard good things about Athenaze. Good luck to you!

I don't usually do writing exercises because it feels like carving out time away from my WIP. But there are two things I do. I use the process in How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One by Stanley Fish. Save great sentences and write your own using the same constructs. I publish them on Medium with an anonymous account so they are out there, but not really.

​

The other thing I do is get the fingers moving before a writing session by typing a great work out, I like typing out an epic poem by Coleridge because it is so meta to do so. He relates in his biography that in school he would copy out his favorite poet's books to give to friends because he could not afford to purchase them.

On the basis of Indian Creek Chronicles, I'd say there's a good chance you'd get a great deal out of The Outermost House, one of the classics of modern American naturalist non-fiction. The premise if very simple -- the author, Henry Beston, spent a year living in virtual solitude on the easternmost house on the American coast, keeping notes on what he observed. The result is a brief, zen-like meditation on nature's movement through a single place over a single cycle of the seasons. Highly influential.

Since it looks like you're interested in the cultural conflict between modernity and tradition, I'd suggest The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, which follows the treatment of a young Hmong girl whose immigrant parents struggle with the California health care system in dealing with her undiagnosed seizures.

Great to see John McPhee on your list -- hands down one of my favorite non-fiction writers. Just about anything he's written will be compulsively informative and shift the way you think about his chosen topic. Levels of the Game is a brilliant depiction of a single game between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner, that delves into the way in which personal biography informs how an athlete plays and ultimately contributes to the meaning of the game.

Along similar lines, Yusanari Kawabata's The Master of Go deals with damn near close to all of the themes at heart in the books listed above, and will likely teach you a little about the ancient game of Go, if you have any interest in that. An idiosyncratic pick, perhaps, but it's one of my favorite novels.

One of my favorite books on sentence structure is Stanley Fish's "How to Write a Sentence." He's a lively writer and there are a lot of good examples.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Sentence-And-Read/dp/006184053X

Another sentence master is Nabokov. Check out sentences in Lolita. So many of them are amazing.

But really, I think both paragraphs read fine. I wouldn't worry about varying structure for the sake of making each one different. Just try to make everything simple and clear. Meanwhile read a lot, copy down sentences you like to get ideas, and keep writing. You'll get better.

It's hard to suggest a single text, but there are many histories of the different strands of literary criticism available. There are some written by practicing specialists, and others by historians of literature. There is a multi volume work published by Cambridge UP that deals with the history of lit-crit that is very valuable, but not easily accessible, or very concise.

My suggestion would be to break down your time-frame to maybe 50 year chunks and read some of the seminal works on the major movements in lit crit during those times. This is one that's used a lot in Universities, though I must admit it wouldn't be one of my favourites (though I can absolutely support it as an introductory work). http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beginning-theory-third-introduction-Beginnings/dp/0719079276/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1410136722&sr=8-8&keywords=literary+criticism

Otherwise, there's the text based approach--where you read different texts from the history of lit crit, using an anthology. The uber-bible of this sort is the http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Norton-Anthology-Theory-Criticism/dp/0393932923/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1410136722&sr=8-4&keywords=literary+criticism. There are smaller, more specific (and probably overall more helpful in a non-reference way) ones too, like this one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Criticism-Theory-A-Reader/dp/0582784549/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1410136722&sr=8-11&keywords=literary+criticism.

Hope that might be of some help.
M_G

Hey OP, hope this doesn't get lost in the thread...this is a great collection of American poetry that I've used both in and out of the classroom. Amazing variety of styles and content, all in one neat little package. If you ever want advice on poetry appreciation/interpretation, just let me know - I'd be happy to help!

edit: Thought I'd tell you to check out Howard Nemerov ("Storm Windows" is a favorite). Bump for Roethke too ("Root Cellar" is breathtaking).

in the medieval period it was widely understood that every single word, except the word word, is a metaphor (that is, a carrying across)

grammar is much more than acquiring knowledge - it is context & structure as an art & science. the early stoics referred to it as the "logos spermatikos" (or the seed of a word). if you're looking for something's etymology or order (questions like who said it?, what was said?, under what premises?) -- you're dealing with grammar.

grammar & rhetoric working together in "sacred eloquence" (through well-proportioned analogy) became the charter for Christian education from st. augustine up through the renaissance. at this point, the printing press set grammar (or letters) in a brand new context that many took for granted, leading to much confusion in the west. . .

opposed to this method throughout time were those who believed that the book-of-the-world was best interpreted directly through logic or dialectics - trying to nail words down into translatable forms (like number for instance). . .

marshall mcluhan wrote about all this for his phd, which outlines these controversies between the ancients (grammar & rhetoric) and moderns (dialectic) through different periods in western history -- very much worth a read if you're interested in the trivium.

https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Trivium-Place-Thomas-Learning/dp/1584232358

i'm pretty interested in grammar, so i'm interested in the fact that aristotle never said the quote in the sidebar (and curious how it got there . . .)

I can only speak for hist ling, but I've loved Trask's - detailed and the exercises can be challenging. I used Crowley/Bowern's in a class and found it a bit slower with not all the information you might want, though there are tons of examples from non-IE languages which is nice. Judging by Amazon another favorite seems to be Campbell's, though I don't have experience with it. I think all of these books would require some prior work in phonology/phonetics, though nothing you couldn't pick soon enough (they might even have a refresher sections, I can't recall).

/u/savdec449 is right - you ask a tough question. One little (literally) resource that I've found helpful is the Oxford Very Short Introduction to Literary Theory, which sketches out some of the big 'moves' over the history of theory, and has a decent Further Reading section for whatever takes your fancy.

I find it quite difficult to keep straight how the different schools and traditions relate to one another, and I don't really think it's the kind of thing you can totalize without years of experience or, I suppose, living through one of the sea changes in its epicentre (which I haven't done, but I imagine would be rather intense, and possibly not very pleasant in terms of day-to-day collegiality when Old and New crash together).

One strategy that you could use to combat the overwhelming nature of All of the Theory is to pay attention to your own scholarly disposition: what are you, personally, interested in when you read texts? Is it their structure, their nuts-and-bolts, and how they keep the illusion of mimesis alive? Maybe focus on structuralism or narratology. Are you interested in why certain texts arose when they did? Check out the history (ha!) of New Historicism, or maybe print culture studies or even materialist criticism. Are you into how the words sound, and how they create images and arguments? Look into poetics, rhetoric, and aesthetic theory. Are you interested in how certain key aspects of the human condition are represented and dealt with? Check out memory studies, posthumanism and animal studies, or ecocriticism. Are you drawn to certain genres of texts? Genre criticism!

Remember, it's easiest to figure out how a puzzle comes together when you have a little section done first. Work within your preferences and likes to develop some knowledge on a piece of the puzzle that you enjoy, and then build out from there towards things that are wheelhouse-adjacent, and then beyond.

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)

That is true, in a sense, but not wholly accurate.

The idea that Ahti Saarelainen (his epithet means of the Island, the Island being a locale in Finnish mythology) is the same character as Lemminkäinen is for the most part a 19th-century literary invention. (A few poems suggest this, but it's evidently a late addition.) It is mostly the handiwork of a certain Elias Lönnrot, who, at the middle of the 19th century, compiled a number of Finnish and Karelian poems to create a Finnish national epic, the Kalevala (Finnish for "the land of Kaleva".)

In actual Finnish mythology, Lemminkäinen is a character who appears uninvited at to the feast of the gods, is killed by the host, thrown to the river of the Underworld (Tuonelan joki) and then resurrected by his mother. Since this myth includes the motif of death and rebirth and the name Lemminkäinen bears an similarity to the name Lempo and the Finnish word lempi or "love", some researchers have surmised that Lemminkäinen was actually a male god of fertility and love, somewhat akin to Freyr (or Baldr, considering the manner of his demise).

Ahti, on the other hand, is not a mythic character, but a mortal hero. Ahti is a warrior and a raider - a Viking, if you will - who swears a double oath with his newlywed wife Kyllikki that he should never again go to war, while she vows to never visit another man. A long poetic passage describes Ahti's ship lamenting its fate, having to lie on the shore while other ships bring home gold and silver. Kyllikki breaks her oath, and as a result, Ahti breaks out his weapons, assembles his old warband and sails off. He first goes to Finland to fetch Teuri, a skilled navigator. The ending of the poem is not known, since it usually trails off or merges into another narrative, such as the story of Lemminkäinen.

I hope this is helpful to you. Very little in general is known about Finnish mythology - we don't have any written pre-Christian sources for Finnish myths like we have for Norse ones, just oral poems. If you're interested in Finnish mythology, the best source is probably Wikipedia, although the quality of the articles varies heavily. There's also this paperback translation of the Kalevala, if you're willing to have a go at that.

Otherwise, English sources are practically nonexistent, which is a shame, really.




^This ^recontruction ^is ^the ^courtesy ^of ^the ^Finnish ^folklorist ^Matti ^Kuusi. ^The ^original ^poems ^are ^fragmentary ^and ^contain ^conflicting ^information, ^but ^this ^reconstructed ^version ^holds ^water ^reasonably ^well.

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.

There's a book my my shelf that my grandfather got me many years ago called The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. If you don't already have it, I think you'd love it. 😊😊


https://www.amazon.com/dp/0156008726/

While it isn't exactly Norse Mythology, the Finnish national epic, The Kalevala, was an important catalyst for inspiring Tolkien to create what would eventually become Arda. I'm currently about 1/3 through and while certain cantos are quite dull, overall my experience with it is very positive. If you're the least bit interested in Finnish culture, I definitely recommend reading it.

I mean... what you claimed is analogous to:

1. Favorite colors are subjective
   
2. There are no favorite colors.
   
   > Please go ahead and link me to the literature claiming that objective morality exists.
   
   Have you heard of Kant? The vast majority of moral philosophy since Kant is positivist. Consequentialism, utilitarianism, realism, cognitivism, humanism, etc.
   
   

• Kant http://strangebeautiful.com/other-texts/kant-prolegomena-cambridge.pdf
  
  
• Nagel https://books.google.com/books/about/What_Does_It_All_Mean_A_Very_Short_Intro.html?id=Nz_XMrjBQEUC
  
  
• Harris https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Values/dp/143917122X
  
  
• Aristotle https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=DChcSEwi15MyouJ3lAhUReIYKHegkBy0YABADGgJ2dQ&sig=AOD64_21788sEwZMxKR6XQV75vb2z30EeA&ctype=5&q=&ved=0ahUKEwjVyMOouJ3lAhXnwVkKHfmUCPoQwg8IPw&adurl=
  
  
• Plato https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChcSEwilgKC6uJ3lAhUZh4YKHYblBf4YABAEGgJ2dQ&sig=AOD64_3YfFiJI7vTwB33w_dRIJD3gqWUDw&ctype=5&q=&ved=0ahUKEwi1ipa6uJ3lAhUl01kKHe0pDs4Qwg8IOg&adurl=
  
  
• https://books.google.com/books/about/Critique_of_Pure_Reason.html?id=7bRychF0y0EC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button
  
  
• Kagan https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Morality-Oxford-Ethics/dp/0198239165
  
  
• Bentham https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChcSEwjh7M3Mt53lAhWahVoFHb0wAKUYABABGgJ2dQ&sig=AOD64_3mWpjrlKMHHZMoM__CmFus8jO4xw&ctype=5&q=&ved=0ahUKEwjB5sXMt53lAhWpq1kKHQJaDPkQwg8IOA&adurl=
  
  
• Kierkegaard https://www.amazon.com/Either-Fragment-Life-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140445773
  
  
  > I refer you back to my last comment. An individual can believe that something is moral but not be obligated by it. I am certain that you are not obligated to do every single thing that you believe to be moral.
  
  Then you aren’t a moral agent right? And if you are a moral agent, then to be a rational actor you’d have to act rationally. To be a rational actor, are you obligated to act rationally?
  
  PS do you want me to write a summary of why moral realism is so prevalent so you don’t have to read them all? It’s super straightforward logically.

In my experience, thinkers like Derrida can really throw you for a loop on your first few tries. One professor described the process as being re-reading over and over until you figure out the questions they're asking, at which point you're ready to read them. For me, the thing that smooths out the process is secondary sources. They explain terms, themes and ideas, as well as contextualizing them in the thinkers larger context. Oxford Very Short Introductions are cheap, accessible, well-written, and have "For further reading" sections that will help you go deeper. I've got a growing collection of them, and it's generally my favorite place to start when trying to learn about something new. I'd also recommend John Caputo's Deconstruction in a Nutshell, which is a Q/A session with Derrida, followed by commentary by Caputo explaining Derrida's answers and pointing towards where in Derrida's work particular ideas and themes can be found.

I have this edition, but interestingly, it seems to lack "Hermes Trismegistus, His First Book". The Copenhaver edition begins with "(Discourse) of Hermes Trismegistus: Poimandres". The edition which includes The First Book is called "The Divine Pymander". Both of these can be bought on Amazon.


"The Divine Pymander"
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B002ECE6GQ/internetsacredte


"Hermetica"
(Copenhaver Translation)
https://www.amazon.com/Hermetica-Hermeticum-Asclepius-Translation-Introduction-dp-0521425433/dp/0521425433/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1537562450

I missed the whole two souls thing on my first read through as well. Slayer was a very confusing character.

As for a “history” there is the Wheel of Time Companion book which has a loooot of really cool info. It’s basically an encyclopedia but it has stuff like all the old tongue words translated and it mentions the power levels of every Aes Sedai.

There’s also the World of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time which might be closer to what you’re looking for. It doesn’t include as much info, and it came out before the series was finished I think. But it gives a really good overview of Randland and the past. It breaks down the different nations, factions, age of legends, etc. i highly recommend both if you love WoT (though the artwork in the latter book is... questionable. I do like some of it, but some is horrendous imo).

Edit: I have both btw so feel free to ask any questions or if you want a little sneak peak I can pm you some pics of them.

As an English major in college, I've been inundated with fiction for years. Now I'm on a big non-fiction and essay kick.

At present I would recommend Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, a marvelous piece of literary non-fiction set in the slums of Mumbai, and a tidy selection of Foucault that I like to take chunks out of between other books.

Sturrock does a very good job, he's been recommended to me as a secondary source quite a few times. I'd consider grabbing a book on 'deconstruction,' however - as it is an interesting response to structuralism. Deconstruction in a Nutshell, edited and annotated by John Caputo, is a pretty good place to begin.

If you believe your words are gospel, then just accept the feedback and move on with your life. If you want to start down the road of legitimately writing poetry that someone who actually reads poetry can appreciate, it's time to get to fucking work.

Of course, you think your "words" are special, but they aren't. This is the same thing every beginner churns out. It's cliché abstraction and it's not worth sharing with anyone. You can call it "poetry" and say it's your "art" and that poetry can't be "defined" -- whatever.

But anyone who actually reads poetry will recognize your "words" immediately for what they are and turn the page.

Read some poetry, man. Read some books about writing poetry and the tools poets use to craft their poems. If you need recommendations, I can give you some, but you'll have to do some fucking work. You might have missed the memo, but writing poetry is hard work.

***

Edit: Here some recommendations to get you started.

• A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver
  
• The Poetry Home Repair Manual by Ted Kooser
  
• In the Palm of Your Hand by Steve Kowit
  
• The Poet's Companion by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux
  
  And if you insist on trying to use end rhymes:
  
  
• Rules for the Dance by Mary Oliver
  
  And please, please pick up a good book of poems from multiple authors so you can get some exposure, such as the Norton Anthology of Poetry or the compilation Good Poems by Garrison Keillor. One of my favorites is A Book of Luminous Things by Czeslaw Milosz.

I would highly recommend buying a copy of this book.

This is a great tool for beginners and pros alike. It provides structured exercises that help to get your creative juices flowing.

I personally enjoy reading Aristotle and he's pretty foundational to a lot of medieval and renaissance criticism so there's no good reason not to start with him. The thing about criticism (like most philosophy) is that it rapidly became a series of responses to other critics/philosophers which can be hard to follow. Like jumping into a story halfway through. So it's best to start with the greeks. Plato's got some interesting thoughts too, but more on the philosophical purpose of literature in a society so that might not be germane to your interests. On the other hand, I can't think of a good reason anyone shouldn't read The Republic at some point in their life.

If you're largely unfamiliar with literary criticism, then I would recommend this book

That's Clyde Pharr's edition (usually known as the Purple Vergil). It's a great help. The old Ad Usum Delphini are great, too. They usually have a prose rewording of the text, so you can decode the poetry without going into English too much (this site has some Ovid, Horace, and Lucretius editions)

Thank you for posting this! A short note on bibliography: Mead's translation of Corpus Hermeticum is nice because it is free (link), but one of the best modern translations is the (non-free) one of Copenhaver (link) .

I took a course on him in college (I was a French major), and our professor thankfully suggested that we ready this book alongside the many Foucaults we were studying. It helps put everything in context and explain a bit better what he's talking about.

I studied Intro to Old English at uni, and we used Peter Baker's Intro to Old English:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Introduction-Old-English-Peter-Baker/dp/047065984X

If you buy it new it also comes with online resources like worksheets which are super helpful for learning the grammar and sentence structure!

Regardless of individual opinions of Crowley the man, when it comes to Crowley the magician you'd find it hard to find a more comprehensive work on correspondences than his '777 And Other Qabalistic Writings Of Aleister Crowley, Including Gemetria & Sepher Sephiroth' https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0877286701/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_tI-BCb9K7YCF8.

This was further researched expounded on & expanded by Dr Stephen Skinner in his excellent 2008 work 'The Complete Magician's Tables'
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0738711640/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_4K-BCbS9R4B0G

There should be plenty of info in these two volumes alone to get you where you want to be correspondence-wise. I find them both invaluable. Good luck 👍

I would love for you to message me when it's out.

As for books you should read, I would start with the three most commonly recomended books for writing. Believe me, these are gold printed on paper.

How To Write a Sentence

The Elements of Style

On Writing

and here's a great reference book: The Little, Brown Compact Handbook. Don't be turned off by the price, just search for a much cheaper older addition, it will have the same information.

For one of my literary theory classes in undergrad, we used this book. The author analyzes 'The Great Gatsby' through the lens of 10 or 12 critical frameworks. It was really illuminating, clear, and enjoyable to read. Lit theory is the focus, but it also provided a lot of insight into the fundamental ideas of the various critical perspectives that were highlighted. Definitely recommended.

Critical theory does tend to be cryptic, deliberately so in a lot of cases. You might enjoy Baudrillard's America. It's fairly accessible as far as his stuff goes, if you have a rudimentary understanding of his Hyperreal idea.

More interesting coincidences / examples of synchronicity:

777 = "Order out of Chaos" in Gematria (source)

The document "The Celestial Sanctum" from the he AMORC, a Rosicrucian order, is also entitled "Liber 777" (pdf) (reading by Grand Master Julie Scott)


Aleister Crowley's compilation of work on gematria and hermetic qabalah was entitled "777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley" also containing his own "Liber 777". (wiki) (amazon link) (online version)

Here is the textbook I used for my Critical Theory Class at UCLA. It's called the Norton Anthology of Critical Theory. While this is a good introduction to many theorists, I also suggest you to research supplemental materials on databases - ie. JSTOR - to understand movements/concepts.

There is also a comic book series that's descent depending on what you pick. While I enjoyed Foucault for Beginners, I hated Derrida for Beginners.

Lastly, Jonathan Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction is an excellent entry point. I actually met Culler when I visited Cornell. He's an awesome guy. Anyways, I think Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction should also be an excellent resource, although I haven't read it myself.

Book.
https://smile.amazon.com/Wheel-Time-Companion-History-Bestselling/dp/0765314622/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2TISOVRPQVWMO&keywords=the+wheel+of+time+companion&qid=1570485976&s=books&sprefix=the+wheel+of+time+companion%2Caps%2C308&sr=1-1
The paperback is the large size, not the small mass market pprbk. And if you're a fan of Daniel Greene's you tube channel, he has it in his Amazon store and will help support his channel.

Congratulations! Check out The Wheel of Time Companion, The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, and the canonical (and non-canonical) short stories! And if you haven't already, peruse http://www.encyclopaedia-wot.org/ - it has good chapter synopses and links between parts of the story.

Have you tried The Dictionary of Imaginary Places? That's fun.

Technically reference, I suppose, but amazing.

Basso is phenomenal. I also always recommend The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Both superb ethnographies.

You can find the AS Chronicle here.
If you’d like to get into poetry (which is generally a bit easier to translate than prose), McGillivray has a very useful site.

I’m not sure how much of a beginner you are, but if you’re just starting out, I also highly recommend Peter Baker’s Introduction to Old English. The textbook has a free-access companion website with loads of exercises.

Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek + its workbook is kind of a standard at seminaries, and the one I used. I think its okay, but I don't really like the limited number of sentence translations.

Athenaze is one I'm currently trying out to better my Greek skillz. So far I really like this one, it teaches you Greek by making you read through it, along with a continuous story.

The unabridged Norton Anthology of Poetry has been my poetry bible since I bought it probably a decade ago.

The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry is a great collection if you're more interested in "newer" (post-WWII) poetry.

A good popular anthropology book for summer reading is 1491: New Revelations About the Americas before Columbus.

A good medical anthropology-like book is The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down about epilepsy in recent Hmong immigrants to the U.S.

I'm a little tired and that is all I've got right now.

If you're interested in the Hmong, read The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Fantastic book and discusses the plight of the Hmongs in detail.

Once you start researching Esoteric interpretations, and secret societies, you won't turn back.

I suggest you start with "The Kybalion", and "Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius" http://www.amazon.com/Hermetica-Hermeticum-Asclepius-Translation-Introduction/dp/0521425433. This will give you a good base of understanding the source of mystery religions.

After reading these books you are going to need to decide on what your morals are, and what are your goals for learning the material? Are you learning to be wiser, and closer to God? Or to serve yourself? There are many schools and societies for both.

My best advice is to try the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (it's expensive but you can get it from the library or buy it used - https://www.amazon.com/Norton-Anthology-Theory-Criticism/dp/0393932923). It takes the most important canonical excerpts from the most important canonical texts of theory and criticism starting basically with Plato. One advantage, as well, is that it has succinct, practical introductions to each author and text, contextualizing them, and also providing a decent bibliography for further reading. One really helpful thing for beginners is that it provides several ways of indexing/organizing the texts -- chronologically, but also by area of inquiry. Most theory beginners use this in their first Problems and Methods course.

Take a look at the book's Introduction on Amazon where actually it states this!


-

I found a few on my first go through—the most famous is 'Bela' which is deliberate!(it was kind of a tongue in cheek joke for the fans)—but I did not bother to make a list of them.

-

Though it is very far from the thoroughness of the extravagant 'Tolkien's World from A to Z: The Complete Guide to Middle-Earth', as a lot of stuff is left out—Aiel 'bridal wreath' for example—of tWoT's version, while Tolkien's includes—everything—including the kitchen sink.

-

I say that it is still worth getting. But, like pointed out, some entries need to be taken with a grain of salt.

As a follow-up to this, I found this 17 minutes long video to be a great introduction to his thought. It certainly helped me when I started reading Deconstruction in a Nutshell

Camus was both an essay writer and a fiction author, so reading a piece of each is a good idea. The Stranger would be his best work of fiction to read, and "The Myth of Sisyphus" his best essay. It really lays out his ideas regarding the absurd. It usually appears in a book called The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Both books, especially the first, are in most libraries.
I haven't read Kierkegaard, but I've heard that Either/Or is both a simple read and puts his ideas on display. If you'd prefer to read it online, here's a link that I found.

It's included here, along with many other discourses. I highly recommend it :)

I don't think that's a 177 either, it looks more like a 777, with the first 7 being slightly written over by "google". If that is the case, it may be related to Aleister Crowley's book: "777 And Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley: Including Gematria & Sepher Sephiroth". The book can be found on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Other-Qabalistic-Writings-Aleister-Crowley/dp/0877286701.

Edit: Looking more into this book, it appears to be a collection of various occult writings and various religious holy books, along with studies on numerology and cabalistic magic. I wonder why this would be in a UFOlogy book, of all things. Is there any writing like this anywhere else in the book that you've seen?

Edit: In particular it may be related to his portion of the book named "Liber 777".

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.

For Norse sagas, Penguin classics has some fantastic editions:

• The Saga of Icelanders
  
  
• Njals Saga
  
  
• Prose Edda
  
  
• Volsungs saga
  
  
• Kalevala
  
  For eastern mythology, you'll want:
  
  
• Bhagavad Gita
  
  
• The Epic of Gilgamesh
  
  
• The Arabaian Nights Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3
  
  
• Journey to the West Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4
  
  For Celtic mythology:
  
  
• The Mabinogion
  
  
• Arthurian Romances
  
  
• Early Irish Myths and Sagas

Mark Durie and Malcolm Ross' book on the comparative method is good, and Trask's Historical Linguistics is a good intro text.

Pharr's commentary on the first 6 books of the Aeneid is a classic go-to for intermediate students. The best part is that the comprehensive vocab notes and commentary are at the bottom of the page so there's no constant flipping back and forth. The only bad thing is that Pharr wrote this essentially as a job application and got the job so he never wrote a second edition for the rest of the Aeneid lol.


https://www.amazon.com/Vergils-Aeneid-Books-Latin-English/dp/0865164215

I like Lois Tyson's Critical Theory Today. Also, if you're interested in online resources, this professor's website for a critical theory class has tons and tons of links to interesting stuff - even though the website is hard to navigate sometimes. Check out the syllabus and online resources (linked at the bottom.)

Gotta give credit where credit is due.

Just some basic suggestions, you can do with it what you will :)

https://www.amazon.com/Mythic-Bestiary-Illustrated-Fantastical-Creatures/dp/1844834840

https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Imaginary-Places-Updated-Expanded/dp/0156008726/ref=pd_sim_14_6?ie=UTF8&dpID=518h-D4AR8L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR123%2C160_&psc=1&refRID=8C817F7QAQJ2BTBRMV4H

https://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Guide-Mythical-Creatures/dp/B006QS5XAC

https://www.amazon.com/Giants-Monsters-Dragons-Encyclopedia-Folklore/dp/0393322114/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=51mZJ7gzjvL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR122%2C160_&psc=1&refRID=8C817F7QAQJ2BTBRMV4H

https://www.amazon.com/Monsterology-Complete-Book-Monstrous-Beasts/dp/0763639400/ref=pd_sim_14_4?ie=UTF8&dpID=61GBdkOSy3L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR136%2C160_&psc=1&refRID=8C817F7QAQJ2BTBRMV4H

https://www.amazon.com/Spirits-Fairies-Leprechauns-Goblins-Encyclopedia/dp/0393317927/ref=pd_sim_14_5?ie=UTF8&dpID=61H%2BqteBZML&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR123%2C160_&psc=1&refRID=8C817F7QAQJ2BTBRMV4H

Are you reading an annotated text or just straight Latin? If you don't already have a copy I highly recommend [Pharr's version](Vergil's Aeneid, Books I-VI (Latin Edition) (Bks. 1-6) (English and Latin Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0865164215/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_RcStDb8RST3Z9) for its grammar notes!

English major here- I have found Lois Tyson's textbook Critical Theory Today very clear and helpful!

http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Theory-Today-User-Friendly-Guide/dp/0415974100

I was assigned The Foucault Reader in a class last year - it is a collection of chapters from his books along with some other sources (an interview, for example), which gives a good overview of his work.

Edit: https://www.amazon.ca/Foucault-Reader-Michel/dp/0394713400
Link to the book on Amazon. I forgot that it was edited by Rabinow!

I went in basically unprepared while still a third-year undergrad and did fine.

There is definitely a little old and middle english to be aware of, so it might help to at least glance at that.

If you know your basic poetry rules, that will help a lot. Simple to look up. I only point it out because I know a couple people who went in without knowing sonnet forms. That seems to show up regularly.

Make sure you know some of the bigger names/categories in theory. Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction is more than enough.

The biggest thing is just being well read. When I took the test, I had a good two pages full of nothing but Henry Fielding questions that could be answered by anybody who had read the first couple books of Tom Jones but that would have tanked the score of anybody who hadn't.

Think about it like Jeopardy. You're taking a test on trivia knowledge, not applied skills. Skim everything you're unsure of so that you have a sense of the style. Read summaries of anything you can think of that might be on the test but that you don't have time to read. Memorize some dates associated with periods, major authors, etc. There just isn't much else that you can do.

There are two standard texts that most universities use to teach literary theory to undergrads, there is a lot of overlap between the two so you really only need one or the other, but they are the most comprehensive books you will find on the subject if you want to get a broad but complete overview.

1.) The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism

2.) Critical Theory Since 1965

You can get a used copy of the latter for only a couple bucks.

Edit: In case this matters, I teach theory at an R1 university.

I have Keith Bosley's translation, which seems to follow the meaning more than the rhythm. This isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I'm not a fan of the free versions I have seen online. They are quite dated.

Beginning Theory: Introduction to Literary Culture and Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction were two helpful supplemental texts from a literary criticism class I took in graduate school.


This is more theory of literature, though, and wouldn't speak to style necessarily, but would give you some idea of the lenses that many folks out there use to look at literature.

I also recommend reading around /r/AskLiteraryStudies for some ideas, too.

The purpose of the modern state is to promote and manage life as to provide human resources for capitalism to thrive. Drugs like MDMA/LSD/Shrooms deconstruct the disciplinary/regulatory mental constructs that keep us working hard and docile. Widespread use of these drugs are would lead to a downturn in the economy and/or political revolt, so they are illegal.

It's not a conspiracy, its just how our system works. Focault's a smart dude, he figured out these techniques of power by charting their development in the 17th and 18th century.

My ubiquitous recommendation for medical anthropology is The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, about a Hmong family in California whose newborn daughter has epilepsy. It's well-written and engaging.

My go-to resource: http://www.oldenglishaerobics.net/

Companion book: Introduction to Old English https://smile.amazon.com/dp/047065984X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_9sR4Bb0CWZR0P

If you want familiar reading material: Æðelgyðe Ellendæda on Wundorlande: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in Old English (Old English Edition) https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1782011129/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_twR4Bb5EWXJZY

https://www.amazon.com/Wheel-Time-Companion-History-Bestselling/dp/0765314622

​

Something like this?

https://www.amazon.com/Vintage-Book-Contemporary-American-Poetry/dp/1400030935

You could just go with an anthology and see what you like.

Miguel de Unamuno "Tragic Sense of Life"

Paulo Freire "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"

John Ruskin "Unto This Last"

William Morris "News From Nowhere"

Marge Piercy "Woman on the Edge of Time"

Aristotle "Nicomachean Ethics"

Tommaso Campanella "City of the Sun" / Michel de Montaigne "Of Cannibals"

Habermas "Philosophical Discourse of Modernity"

Soren Kierkegaard "Either/Or"

Kafka "The Castle"

Lewis Carroll "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There"

Of each, I would do as the King says: start at the beginning, and go on until you reach the end: then stop.

Is this the second book you mentioned? How do you like it? I have a Norton Anthology of literature, but I haven't used it much.

93 - I would look in Book of Thoth for a lot of symbolism as well as, of course, 777. I can tell you that the Vesica Piscis is understood to be a feminine symbol, composed of two intersecting circles, forming the Yoni. It is usually 'balanced' by various 'masculine' symbols, often those of the cross or some form thereof, in or around it. That one is fairly obvious.

I mean, Element Encyclopedia has books on everything for that. Not my particular favorite brand (mostly because I am a huge mythology nerd and have better books on monsters) but their selection should work for you.

But my two personal recomendations for any fantasy are

[Giants, Monsters and Dragons] (https://www.amazon.com/Giants-Monsters-Dragons-Encyclopedia-Folklore/dp/0393322114)

and

The Dictionary of Imaginary Places

>I wouldn't recommend any single source in the first place.

I'll recommend a single source for hermetic philosophy: the Corpus Hermeticum.

First off, thank you responding so quickly, when I searched this in english I came across this (640 pages) and also this (702 pages) and this (536 pages), but when I try to find the turkish translation I can only find this (117 pages, seems to be about Johannes Climacus?).

According to The Wheel of Time Companion she actually survived the Last Battle.

Okay, fair point, I have not seen any actual data on the portion of radical vs non-radical feminists (though the word "radical" itself implies that group is the minority). That impression comes from the fact that, out of all the people who claim to be feminists, and all the websites claiming to be about feminism (either predominantly or incidentally), nearly all of the ones I've come across (via random links, StumbleUpon, and school research, over the course of 5+ years) are strongly pro-equality, and are vocal about not just women's rights, but men's rights, LGBT rights, and racial equality.

That's not to say those groups aren't without flaws. They're often very quick to shut down dissent and can be hostile towards honest questions (usually on the basis that they get asked the same questions all the time and the person asking should just google it). They also frequently seem to prefer only talking about men's issues independently and don't always react well when they're brought up in an existing discussion on women's issues, even though in most cases addressing minority and LGBT issues is always welcome/expected (any failure to acknowledge the existence of gay or transgender people--for instance, by talking about pregnancy as a women's issue without mentioning that trans men can also get pregnant--is usually quickly corrected, not always nicely).

But they do talk about things that affect men pretty regularly, especially traditional gender roles and how they relate to stay-at-home dads and men and boys who like traditionally "female" things, media portrayal (like the "bumbling husband" stereotype you see in almost every sitcom and commercial), child custody, and the idea that men as more suited to dangerous jobs and how this makes them seem expendable.

The only strongly anti-male feminists I've come across that were in any position of influence were the authors of the essays we read in a class on literary criticism, and those were from the 1960s. I wasn't alive then, so I have no idea what mainstream feminism was like at the time, but every example of feminist literature in the book we used (or at least every one we read, but the professor didn't seem like the type of guy to cherry pick those) was like that.

That is purely based on my own experience, though. It could be that the percentage who are anti-men is larger than it seems, but I haven't seen them because I haven't ventured to that portion of the internet.

Whichever you choose just try and find a "reader" style book that includes vocab and notes on the same page. It's a huge quality of life boost. E.g. for Vergil ( https://www.amazon.com/Vergils-Aeneid-Books-Latin-English/dp/0865164215 ) and the Vulgate (a quick search gave me this: https://www.amazon.com/Vulgate-Old-Testament-Reader/dp/1593332157 ). Vergil is going to be more complicated though, so if you go for Classical Latin, as others have suggested, go with Caesar's Gallic Wars.

Hello, French person. You might want to try reading up on another French person named Michel Foucault. His academic career has been dissecting power structures and the effects institutions have on society.

https://www.amazon.com/Foucault-Reader-Michel/dp/0394713400

you could consider this book from 2000 (you can peek inside on Amz): https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Imaginary-Places-Updated-Expanded/dp/0156008726/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484468189&sr=8-1&keywords=imaginary+places

I suggest this.

Get yourself a purple Virgil. Industry standard for students at your level.

Yes

http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirit-Catches-Fall-Down/dp/0374525641

I read that book. It is a biography/history of one family of Hmong, and the Hmong in general. One of the stories is that since they are so used to farming, they tend to plant crops in their house in the US or whatever country they are moved too.

John Berger's Ways of Seeing (absolutely brilliant)

Ron Carlson Writes a Story

Critical Theory Today

Wilhelm Reich-The Mass Psychology of Fascism

Amy Bloom-Normal

Tom Stoppard-Arcadia

Sara Marcus-Girls to the Front

Might be Pharr's Aeneid-- I used it too.

http://www.amazon.com/Vergils-Aeneid-Books-Edition-English/dp/0865164215

There's literally a whole book for that.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0765314622/

http://www.amazon.com/Other-Qabalistic-Writings-Aleister-Crowley/dp/0877286701/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1368850921&sr=8-2&keywords=777

Everything I would advise against in poetry you use in this piece.

If you can't find a creative writing class to take, check this out: http://www.amazon.com/Palm-Your-Hand-Portable-Workshop/dp/0884481492

No so but this book is incredible.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Sentence-Read-One/dp/006184053X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501842758&sr=8-1&keywords=How+to+write+a+sentence

I actually just started by reading a textbook that covered most major critical theories http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Theory-Today-User-Friendly-Guide/dp/0415974100

Paul Fry's OYC lecture series: https://oyc.yale.edu/english/engl-300#sessions

Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism: https://www.amazon.com/Norton-Anthology-Theory-Criticism/dp/0393932923

Can get an used copy of the above for 15 bucks or so.

'The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism' is my go-to as an introductory anthology source. I think that warrants inclusion.

https://www.amazon.com/Norton-Anthology-Theory-Criticism/dp/0393932923

Maybe not what you're looking for, but the Norton Anthology of Critical Theory has an alternate table of contents within it that categorizes the readings not chronologically but by field.

You definitely should!

Pick up the recently published Wheel of Time Compendium and it will make researching everything you need to know as easy as reading 10 little entries and 10 big entries (which looks like a lot but really isn't, especially since you've already made the time comittment to DMing and Homebrewing all this).

The Trolloc Wars setting gives lots of room for deviation from "official history" because it led to a near-collapse of civilization 2000 years before the books, and there was also the Hawkwing era 1000 years before so history could have been confused in countless ways even after that. Your players might know roughly what happens but throw in a Foretelling NPC to give them confused-prophesies of one-half red herrings (but maybe things they could MAKE happen) and other-half confirmations of what they know and they'll be uncertain all over again.

The Trolloc Wars were the greatest and most widespread use of the Power for martial purposes since the Breaking of the World, and really the biggest until the books themselves. The fact that Ishamael is working for the Dark means they might know any "forgotten" weave or talent you want to include--in a VERY limited elite group--and same for Aes Sedai, who would naturally be secretive as they grow to suspect that there are Darkfriends among them... It was during this "wandering the world" time that Ishamael founded the Black Ajah. Even without millions of Trollocs rampage across the land and the Ways becoming corrupt and whole civilizations which had very nearly regained the heights of the Age of Legends falling into ruin, that would be plenty of campaign material.

I bet there were more than a few False Dragons too.