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Salammbô (1862) is a historical novel by Gustave Flaubert.[1] It is set in Carthage during the 3rd century BC,[1] immediately …
Reading this it has become clear that the graphic novel/film 300 was about the wrong band of 300. The Sacred Band is much more interesting!
I am finished all 12 volumes of Phoenix. It took nearly a month and it has left me emotionally drained and exhausted.
The last volume was a nice and light(er) departure that wove in through Ancient Egypt, Greece (with the Trojan War), and Rome. The whole series jumps a lot through history and the future, jumping around in genre and style as well. The only constant is the phoenix, who appears in every volume in some important way. Most volumes are self-contained, except for the big stories that take two volumes to complete. Sometimes characters appear in different incarnations -- reincarnation and being cursed to live out the same fate in different forms is a big theme.
This is a life, love, the universe, and everything type series -- Tezuka's life's work. It gets pretty dark at times and is quite critical of humanity. But it is also cute, sweet, …
I am finished all 12 volumes of Phoenix. It took nearly a month and it has left me emotionally drained and exhausted.
The last volume was a nice and light(er) departure that wove in through Ancient Egypt, Greece (with the Trojan War), and Rome. The whole series jumps a lot through history and the future, jumping around in genre and style as well. The only constant is the phoenix, who appears in every volume in some important way. Most volumes are self-contained, except for the big stories that take two volumes to complete. Sometimes characters appear in different incarnations -- reincarnation and being cursed to live out the same fate in different forms is a big theme.
This is a life, love, the universe, and everything type series -- Tezuka's life's work. It gets pretty dark at times and is quite critical of humanity. But it is also cute, sweet, and heartwarming at other times. And also very sad at points. He never completed it, but every story has closure on its own, the real pleasure isn't try to synthesize and make sense of it as a whole, each story is satisfying and different. He worked on it from 1954 to 1988. Imagine waiting years between the publication of stories? And the elation when a new one was published? I don't think I will binge read it ever again but I will definitely go back over the years and revisit my favorite stories.
Whatever my book count will be at the end of 2024, add 11 to it since all of the books in this series are somehow associated with the first volume in the bookwyrm metadata.
And I still have a lot more Tezuka to go...
I always approach history with the notion that "history is always about the historian and the time that the historian lived in". This historian produced these in the late 90s and he is a capitalist. So it is not surprising to "learn" that ancient Greece was all about competition, and there is a lot of focus on liberal democracy as a thing. I already know a lot of what is covered so this not terribly useful but I will finish it soon and dig into deeper/better sources.
The thing I didn't expect to learn about/from was the initial discussion in the lectures about Philhellenism in the 19th century, especially the German form of it, which has turned out terribly. The War of Greek Independence is a rabbit-hole I will have to explore later, but that's taking me way off the path. I am really looking for grounding to the stuff …
I always approach history with the notion that "history is always about the historian and the time that the historian lived in". This historian produced these in the late 90s and he is a capitalist. So it is not surprising to "learn" that ancient Greece was all about competition, and there is a lot of focus on liberal democracy as a thing. I already know a lot of what is covered so this not terribly useful but I will finish it soon and dig into deeper/better sources.
The thing I didn't expect to learn about/from was the initial discussion in the lectures about Philhellenism in the 19th century, especially the German form of it, which has turned out terribly. The War of Greek Independence is a rabbit-hole I will have to explore later, but that's taking me way off the path. I am really looking for grounding to the stuff I am reading about Greek myth and drama.
The lecturer is not full "clash of civilizations" -- but who knows what 9/11 would have done to their brain. They give some time to the problem of centering a "west" and an "east" starting in Ancient Greece, which is better than I expected, but this is not the focus of these lectures nor the sort of discourse I am seeking when listening to them. It is just to say that things could be worse (and I have encountered it when learning about history). I will probably rate this at 2 stars unless something really blows my mind though.
