Greece

Adrienne Mayor: The Poison King
Blurb: A National Book Award finalist for this epic work, Adrienne Mayor delivers a gripping account of Mithradates, the ruthless visionary who began to challenge Rome’s power in 120 B.C. Machiavelli praised his military genius. Kings coveted his secret elixir against poison. Poets celebrated his victories, intrigues, and panache. But until now, no one has […]
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June 2021 and Mid-Year Reading Recap
Sigh. Well, I think posting a monthly (and even half-year) reading recap a full three weeks into the next month has to be some sort of record, even for me, but here we are. And I admit that at this point I’d even been contemplating holding off another week so as to combine this with […]
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Gary Corby: The Ionia Sanction
The Ionia Sanction is the second book in Gary Corby’s mystery series set in the Athenian Republic of Pericles and the great philosophers, and I picked it as an introduction to the “actual” book I’d been planning to include in my Summer Games reading project — the series’s third book, which is set during the […]
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Patrick Leigh Fermor: The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos
The third and final part of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s narrative of his three-year trek on foot, begun more or less spontaneously at the tender age of eighteen, from the Hoek of Holland to Constantinople. Unlike the first two parts (A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water), which cover his wanderings in […]
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An Alphabet of My Likes and Dislikes: “J”
This is a post belonging to a new blogging project — the title is pretty much self-explanatory, I think; the project’s introductory post can be found HERE. Credit for the idea: BeetleyPete. As always, the only thing linking the two items mentioned in this post in my mind is that they both start with the […]
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2020 in Facts and Figures
I already posted my main 2020 in Review and Looking Ahead to 2021 posts a while ago — only on my new blog (separate post to come) –, but I held back on my 2020 reading statistics until the year was well and truly over. And for all my good intentions when posting my mid-year […]
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Looking Ahead to 2021
Since I posted my 2020 Year in Review post yesterday, I figured I might as well go ahead and follow up with the preview post for next year — again, taking the relevant “Festive Tasks” items as my cues. So, without further ado: 24 Festive Tasks: Door 19 – Hanukkah, Task 1: Time to […]
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2020: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
We’re still a month away from the end of the year, but my reading will probably consist mainly of Christmas books in December, and I hope and pray that life won’t come up and throw anything else at me in the final month of the year, either. So I might as well post my “Year […]
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W. Stanley Moss: Ill Meet by Moonlight
The book I’ve wanted to read ever since I visited Anógia village, high up in the Cretan Mount Ida (or Psiloritis) massif, several years ago: The first-hand account of the WWII abduction of German Major General Heinrich Kreipe near his home in Heraklion, after which Kreipe was marched all the way up the mountain and, […]
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Halloween Bingo 2020: The Rest of the Game and Wrap-Up
Sooo, that’s another bingo game behind us already! Many thanks to our game hosts for successfully moving the game from BookLikes to a new venue and organizing one heck of a game despite that venue’s built-in limitations. I had a great time and would only have wished I could have participated more throughout the game […]
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Storytelling
24 Festive Tasks: Door 17 – Winter Solstice, Task 4 (Soyal – Zuñi & Hopi / Native American): While systems of written symbols and communication already existed with the Pre-Columbian Native American cultures, to many tribes even today (including the Zuñi and Hopi) the oral tradition is still important. Have you ever had stories told […]
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Plato: Timaeus & Critias
24 Festive Tasks: Door 9 – World Philosphy Day, Book: Read a book about philosophy or a philosopher, or a how-to book about changing your life in a significant way or suggesting a particular lifestyle (Hygge, Marie Kobo, etc. Plato’s cosmology and theory of the human body, and the story of Atlantis; courtesy of a […]
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@BT: Thank you!
… aaand a Books and Beans bookmark as well! Original post: ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/2016090/bt-thank-you
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Royalty Moonlighting as Commoners in Fiction
24 Festive Tasks: Door 10 – Russian Mothers’ Day, Task 2: Towards the end of the 17th century, there was a Russian apprentice carpenter and shipwright going by the name Peter Mikhailov in the Dutch town of Zaandam (and later in Amsterdam), who eventually turned out to be none other than Tsar Peter the Great, […]
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Manuel Vicent: Son de mar / Der Gesang der Wellen
Reading Progress Updates 12%: Finished the first chapter. So far, this is shaping up as a story told with gentle irony — foil rather than epee or broadsword. Several passages had me laughing out loud; I particularly like the juxtaposition of a Spanish seaside town somewhere south of Valencia at the full, exasperating and more […]
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Halloween Bingo 2019 PreParty — Question for 08/04 (Day 4): Favorites from Halloween Bingos Past?
Oh man. So many! Biggest new discoveries: * Fredric Brown: The Fabulous Clipjoint — huge thank you to Tigus, who gifted his Ed & Am Hunter omnibus to me. Where had Brown been all my life until then? * James D. Doss: Charlie Moon series (via books 6 & 7, Grandmother Spider and White Shell […]
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