Then and Now #18 (1/24/22 - 1/30/22)

Happy Sunday and Monday (in advance)! End of one week, start of the next one and there is still so much to do! I've kind of slipped from these posts, but I hope to get into it again, especially because I'll need the structure as I write my thesis!

The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted @ Caffeinated Reviewer. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme. Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week.  It is hosted weekly over at Mailbox Monday and every Friday they do a round-up of some of their favourite, shared reads!

Last Week:

It's another Sunday and it's been quite a week! We've had a loosening of restrictions this week, which means I finally managed to get my new tattoo! I've got a picture of it below, it's a quote from Seneca's play Medea and basically translates to 'I will storm the gods and shake all things'. Yesss, I'm morphing into my "angry woman" mode for my thesis, since it's all about angry women in medieval literature. I also had a few other assignments to hand in and there is still a whole lot to do next week. But I also decided to actually take the weekend off from the library and enjoy myself! So I helped a housemate get her booster (since she was a bit nervous about it) and then we watched Eternals and had pizza as a house, which was lovely!

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Posted:

• Mailbox Monday
• Review: The Philosophers' Library by Adam Ferner & Chris Meyns
• Friday Friyay: Longing and Other Stories by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, trans. by Anthony H. Chambers and Paul McCarthy

Recommendation:

Today I'm recommending Letterkenny, which is an amazing Canadian series that has some of the best banter and physical comedy I have seen in recent years. Warning, some of this language is probably NSFW and a tad vulgar.

Mailbox Monday:

I got three rather interesting books from NetGalley this week!

Persia: Ancient Iraq and the Ancient World by Jeffrey Spiers, Timothy Potts and Sara E. Cole (eds) (Getty Publications; 5/17/2022)

A fascinating study of Persia’s interactions and exchanges of influence with ancient Greece and the Roman Empire.
 
The founding of the first Persian Empire by the Achaemenid king Cyrus the Great in the sixth century BCE established one of the greatest world powers of antiquity. Extending from the borders of Greece to northern India, Persia was seen by the Greeks as a vastly wealthy and powerful rival and often as an existential threat. When the Macedonian king Alexander the Great finally conquered the Achaemenid Empire in 330 BCE, Greek culture spread throughout the Near East, but local dynasties—first the Parthian (247 BCE–224 CE) and then the Sasanian (224–651 CE)—reestablished themselves. The rise of the Roman Empire as a world power quickly brought it, too, into conflict with Persia, despite the common trade that flowed through their territories.
 
Persia addresses the political, intellectual, religious, and artistic relations between Persia, Greece, and Rome from the seventh century BCE to the Arab conquest of 651 CE. Essays by international scholars trace interactions and exchanges of influence. With more than three hundred images, this richly illustrated volume features sculpture, jewelry, silver luxury vessels, coins, gems, and inscriptions that reflect the Persian ideology of empire and its impact throughout Persia’s own diverse lands and the Greek and Roman spheres.
 
This volume is published to accompany an exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa from April 6 to August 8, 2022.

I've been fascinated by the Ancient World since I can remember, but Persia never received as much attention in the documentaries I watched or the books I read. I'm doing my best now to fill that gap and I can't wait to read the papers collected in this book!

Stravaging "Strange" by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, trans. Joanne Turnbull w. Nikolai Formozov (Columbia University Press; 9/6/2022)

“I’m not on good terms with the present day,” Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky once mused, “but posterity loves me.” Virtually unknown during his lifetime and unpublishable under Stalin, he now draws comparisons to Beckett, Borges, Gogol, and Swift. This book presents three tales that encapsulate Krzhizhanovsky’s gift for creating philosophical, satirical, and lyrical phantasmagorias.

“Stravaging ‘Strange’” details the darkly comic adventures of an apprentice magus: lovesick, he imbibes a magic tincture to reduce himself to the size of a dust mote, the better to observe the young lady in question. He stumbles across a talkative king of hearts, a gallant flea, a coven of vindictive house imps, and his romantic rival along the way to a cinematic dénouement. “Catastrophe” wryly parodies Kant’s philosophy: An old sage decides to extract the essence from all things and beings in a ruthless attempt to understand reality—and chaos ensues. “Material for a Life of Gorgis Katafalaki,” set in Berlin, Paris, London, and Moscow, recounts the absurd trials of an otherworldly outsider of uncertain nationality and unfixed profession with boundless curiosity but scant means.

This book also includes excerpts from Krzhizhanovsky’s notebooks—aphoristic glimpses of his worldview, moods, humor, and writing methods—and reminiscences of Krzhizhanovsky by his lifelong companion, Anna Bovshek, beginning with their first meeting in Kiev in 1920 and ending with his death in Moscow in 1950.

I'm loving all the Russian literature that CUP is publishing lately. But it was really the opening line of the blurb that really got me, this idea of being at odds with your own time but knowing the future will be kinder. I'd love some of that energy!

An Explorer's Guide to John Calvin by Yudha Thianti (Intervarsity Press; 7/12/2022)

Creation is the theater of God's glory. Scripture is like a pair of glasses that clarifies our vision of God. Justification is the hinge on which religion turns. These and other affirmations are often associated with John Calvin, the 16th-century French Protestant Reformer best known for his ministry in Geneva and his authorship of the Institutes of the Christian Religion. Over the course of his lifetime and through several editions, Calvin expanded the Institutes from a brief study to a four-volume book that covers the main doctrines of the Christian faith and continues to shape the theology of the Reformed tradition. In this volume, Reformed theologian Yudha Thianto guides readers through a careful study of Calvin's Institutes. After setting Calvin and his writing in their historical context, he outlines the most significant aspects of Calvin's theology, guiding those who would know more about his work and, through it, the God who inspired him.

As a Christian I lean more towards my father's Calvinism than my mother's Lutheran leanings. But we're stubborn Protestants who demand to make up their mind themselves about everything, so I figured it was time to get into Calvin a little bit more and see how I align with him, what my own ideas on pre-destination are, etc.

So that's me! How was your week? And what's new in your library?