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Review of Everything Beautiful Began After, by Simon Van Booy

Van Booy has created a masterful piece of fiction, although it is not an easy read. I found it disorienting at times, and sometimes the masterful demanded I take notice of the author’s skill rather than lose myself in his characters and their world. At the core of Everything Beautiful Began After are three very flawed characters whose emotional crippling as children leads them to unusual relationships as adults. Love and grief take extreme forms that enlighten and intrigue the reader. Click on title to read review.

Review of Ransom, by David Malouf

Ransom focuses on the moment in the Iliad when King Priam retrieves his son Hector’s body from Achilles. In twenty years of teaching that part of the epic, I never survived a class without having to wipe away tears. For me, it is the single most revealing moment in literature about what it means to be human. Nothing tops it. To choose that moment for a book’s primary subject! —audacious and, it turns out, wise.

Two Ruins, Two Lessons

Two sets of ancient ruins—the graceful temple columns rising against the backdrop of shimmering desert sands in honor of the Mesopotamian god Bel, and a Persian mountain fortress containing a possible Zoroastrian fire altar—these disparate places, one in modern Syria and one in northern Afghanistan, reveal two sides of modern archaeology: the allure of beautiful and exotic locations that connect us to the past and the dangers archaeologists face while digging in the midst of wars and conflict.

Review of Waiting for Robert Capa by Susana Fortes

Waiting for Robert Capa is both a puzzling book and an alluring one. It contains gorgeous, vivid descriptions of life in Paris and Spain in the ‘30s, but we never lose ourselves in Fortes’s imagined semi-fictional world because she tells Robert and Gerda’s story with the all-knowing voice of historical retrospective.

A Plan or a Mystical Journey?

A blog post about Judith Starkston’s writing projects and a discussion of whether it’s better to work from a planned outline as a writer or go on a magical mystery tour into unknown territory. Also a link to an eloquent discussion of the subject by Alex Shakar.

Introduction to Hittites & Chicago Hittite Dictionary by Theo van den Hout

An excerpted article from the Oriental Institute gives an overview of the Hittite Empire, its modern discovery, and the central role the Chicago Hittite Dictionary plays in Hittitology today.

Writing Fiction: Truth in Imagined Things

The process of writing fiction is an elusive process. The Wall Street Journal’s “Word Craft” column has once again delivered some excellent pearls about the layered truth and the unpredictable force of imagination in writing.

Review of Naughty in Nice by Rhys Bowen

Rhys Bowen’s latest offering in her Royal Spyness series, Naughty in Nice, is pure fun. The French Riviera in 1933, Coco Chanel, Mrs. Simpson and the Duke of Windsor lurking on the sidelines, handsome scoundrels and clever thieves, gorgeous gowns and too much champagne, not to mention a dark, handsome lover and a clever if somewhat naïve young Lady Georgiana (cousin to Queen Mary) out to solve all the puzzles even if it puts her life in danger.

Interview with Elizabeth Speller, author of The Return of Captain John Emmett

An engaging interview with Elizabeth Speller, author of The Return of Captain John Emmett: what led her to write about the aftermath of WWI, her choice of shellshock (PTSD) and the execution of an officer as foci for the book, and what she discovered along the way of writing it.

“Digging the Hits of Yesteryear”: The Archaeology of Ancient Music

Have you ever wondered what ancient music sounded like–Stone Age or a Greek bard? An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education reveals a hot new field in archaeology and some amazing discoveries you’ll even be able to listen to.