I have some new followers, so thought I might mention that this book is now out, has had positive reviews in TLS, The Spectator, and The Wall Street Journal, and I think would be a good summer read, if I do say so myself:
Dear Tourists to Greece: It is very hot. It is hotter than you think it is. Do not take hikes in the middle of the day. Do not hike by yourself. Wear a hat. Bring water. (4 people have died and one is missing so far and it is only June.)
Rereading The Secret Garden (slowly), and am appreciating how perfectly pitched it is to a child. The garden has been left a wilderness for 10 years. Not 50 years or 100 years. Seems like very little to me, but it is Mary Lennox's whole lifetime, from the beginning of the world.
The Pamela Anderson Netflix documentary is eye-opening--she is smart and self-aware, and it turns out she is a "writer"--that is, she has kept diaries and notes her whole life. And the parts she reads are good prose--direct, observant, moving.
More than 20 African countries have joined together to plant a giant wall of trees that will run across the continent to stop the spread of the Sahara Desert. The Great Green Wall of Africa will stretch for 7,000 kilometres, from coast to coast right across the continent.
This was the translation that jumpstarted Penguin Classics. A generation who had experienced war firsthand read this clear prose version with new eyes. And Rieu began it to distract his family in London during the Blitz, reading them new episodes as the bombs fell.
TIL that for some weeks in 1946, the bestselling book in Britain was an edition of The Odyssey. Was that the last time a Classical work was *the* top bestseller?