Geeking Out for Greek

-
Ermagerd it's a Gerk teshberk!!!

My latest preciousssssss research text, The Letters of Psellos: Cultural Networks and Historical Realities, has arrived! The editors and contributors seem to be passionately confused, emphatically giddy, and desperately impatient for the world to more deeply understand the personal correspondence of Michael Psellos. God bless the geeks for Greek. I think it's going to be worth the $140 that everyone thinks I was crazy to pay for a textbook when I am not in school for credit. But I have an 11th century thriller to write, and that's more fun than a degree, so there.

Although editor Marc Lauxtermann has worked hard to create this resource for English readers, he implores us in his preface to, "for heaven's sake, learn Greek."

But I will not. At least, not yet. First of all, that would take a long time, and my novel is already taking long enough. Second, it is my God-given right as an American to remain ignorant of non-English languages. If I learned any Greek at all, I could no longer use high quality recordings of Yanis Varoufakis giving economic lectures in Greek as my ASMR stimulus, and I'm still enjoying that way too much.


So. What are YOU reading this summer?

Comments

  1. Victoria M. SolomonJune 17, 2018 at 6:24 PM

    Well, Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia's in my purse. A bunch of YA books are on my nightstand, and I've got my phone loaded up with romance novels about black princesses, Bollywood playboys, and regency dames with vinegar blood.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jean Michelle MiernikJune 20, 2018 at 9:32 AM

      That is one hot and spicy reading list! In so many ways.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

35 Great Things About Turning 35

-
Image
The prime of life starts at 35! It's the best-kept secret from younger people, but your 35th birthday is a major cause for celebration. For mine, I have made my own listicle of 35 reasons why experts agree that 35 is the best age to be: You get to say, "I'm 35." The number 35 carries so much more gravitas than 30, but you're only a few years older. At 34, I've started fudging my age--by adding a year. People automatically take me seriously, and if they don't, at least they tell me I look young for my age. (Eye roll, hair toss, "whatever.")  35-year-olds DGAF. Inner chill reaches new heights at 35. Despite its #2 status on this list, it's the #1 response I hear about what's best about hitting 35. My gorgeous friend Nerlie was beautiful and resilient and wise beyond her years in high school, but now, at age 35, she gets to fully enjoy being herself on her own terms. She writes,  "I've survived so much that I don't waste time on…
Read more

TBT: Tandoori-Style Cooking With or Without Electricity

-
Image
Rolling blackouts! Mass unemployment and utility shutoffs! Shuttered restaurants and cafes! Social panic! This is not the 2020 I wanted, but I guess it's the apocalyptic time my husband and I have been preparing for since our mid-20s. I don't mean that we adopted "prepping" culture as seen on TV; rather, we studied climate change and sociology and did our best to brace ourselves for when we couldn't rely upon the comforts and conveniences of a reliable electrical grid. We shared a few experiences in countries where you can't take electricity for granted, and we practiced confronting power outages in the United States as adventures rather than catastrophes.
It was all fun and games back in our child-free "extended adolescence." Then we became parents and survived an epic two-week power outage during a cold-record-breaking ice storm that spanned Christmas and the New Year, while caring for a three-year-old. It was tough, but we managed to keep our wood…
Read more

TBT: How the Patriarchy Infantilizes Men; or, Notes on Arthur Miller's Notes on The Bicycle Thief

-
Image
I finally got around to reading Min Jin Lee's family saga novel Pachinko, and it reminded me just how far patriarchy extends around the world as well as how far back it goes in time. In the scheme of human evolution, the dominance of patriarchy is new and unusual, but for us individual humans with lifespans that max out in about a century or less, patriarchy has come to feel like human nature. That's unfortunate, especially for men. The patriarchy works to transform most people into slobbering, dumb dogs trained to lie submissively at the feet of kings and oligarch masters, and ordinary men suffer the worst of that burden. While women are at least free to build resilience in the face of their oppression, men are tricked into believing that the skills that build true inner strength are for girls, which ironically makes them fragile, infantile, and dependent upon the constant approval and support of an employer. In many White and Asian cultures, in particular, men are taught tha…
Read more

TBT: Backyard Goats

-
Image
Ah, youth, when all the world is a buffet of dreams and you can just as vividly imagine yourself running your own organic farm as inhabiting a high-rise apartment in a glittering city with rent as high as your Manolos. Last night, from the snug warmth of my fluffy bed nested inside my humble but cozy house within a spectacularly October-festooned Michigan woodsy suburb, I dreamed of stepping onto a plane to Australia, about the longest trip I could possibly take on a flight. I remember the thrill of flying itself and the excitement of visiting a place I have never seen, smelled, or tasted. Then I woke up and remembered that we're in a pandemic and Australia is now pretty much constantly on fire like California, and I am very, very lucky to have a healthy little family in a humble little house in this sleepy Great Lakes suburb during what feels like an apocalyptic time to raise a child.I also have a more realistic understanding of what it takes to raise livestock responsibly. Backy…
Read more

$Monday: Pandemic Holiday Shopping

-
Image
It's pandemic holiday shopping season! Yeah, already. I'm not usually an early holiday shopper, but this year I don't trust that supply chains, markets, and shipping systems will stay reliable over the next few months. We have a president who is fighting the United States Postal Service, and Santa Claus has multiple co-morbidities for Covid-19. I am not taking any chances with timing or with my finances.As a mom, my first priority is taking care of my child. Almost all of her gifts this year will be practical things that she needs to get through a winter of isolation at home--like clothes, books, and cozy blankets. My husband and I have agreed to buy a few books as family gifts, and that's about it. All three of us have birthdays that cluster with the holiday season as well--November, December, and January. We will shift the focus from wrapped gifts to experiences such as cookie baking and meal prep, fall color hiking, playing games by the fireplace, tree decorating, s…
Read more

Bye 2017, Hello 2018

-
Image
It's the end of 2017, and I feel fine. How could 2018 not be better? There might even be a Rammstein album drop.

2017 was a year of natural and unnatural disasters. It was a whole four seasons of shock, rage, loss, and grief.

2018 will be a year to take stock of what we have left and rebuild, stronger than before. If Elon Musk succeeds at turning Puerto Rico into a world leader in sustainable energy, that will be inspiring.

Last year, I didn't make any resolutions. The whole idea of self-improvement felt absurd after Russian and Macedonian hackers exploited white Americans' self-righteous narcissism to get a dumpster fire elected president and bring back the Nazis.

I'm not sorry I didn't make resolutions last year. I was too busy anyway, keeping track of each domestic terrorist attack and whether I knew anyone who might have been nearby. Also I was busy watching innocent people get murdered by police on Facebook Live. Also I was busy learning how to advocate for o…
Read more

$Monday: Take a Holiday from the Holidays

-
Image
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to skip all the obligatory family gatherings and parties associated with the fall and winter holidays? This is your year to NOT shine! Know that you are not alone in your wish to be left alone through the end of the year--and that this is the chance of a lifetime to try out opting out. The United States is under siege by a mishandled, uncontrolled pandemic, which is a perfect excuse--because it's actually a very good reason--to pull in the welcome mat and lock yourself inside.
Don't feel like celebrating? Then don't! Shut all your lights off on Halloween and bury yourself in a sleeping bag shaped like a shark. Eat a bag of candy and watch the scariest movie you can find, to slash through the numb despair of 2020 and feel alive again for the length of a jump scare. I recommend making sure your viewing experience is ad-free, even if you have to resort to dusting off the old DVD player and rifling through the selections that various…
Read more

TBT: The Home Library of Books, Music, and Films

-
Image
I wonder whatever happened to that Borat DVD I mention at the end of the old post below! I sure don't have it anymore; we've gone through several purges of old media since Borat times. These days, most entertainment is accomplished via streaming services. I listen to Eclectic24 Online, and I regularly stream movies, sometimes podcasts. But I still prefer books on paper, and I don't think that will ever change. My bookshelves packed with old beloveds have been a great comfort to me in quarantine. And I've had fun going through my old CDs and DVDs lately. Have you rediscovered any #ThrowBackThursday gems in your home collections?

During a stay-at-home order, multimedia home entertainment has increased in importance somewhat, and I find it useful to have access to a combination of streaming services (none of which I pay for, more out of concern about data breeches than because of cost) and old-fashioned physical books and discs. I've had fun rediscovering old DVDs and…
Read more

The Tiny Tweens

-
Image
Girls really do grow up faster than they used to! My baby has just started third grade. Here she is looking like a tiny tween. Some of the girls in her class are bigger, taller, and older looking than she is. This is the new reality of girls in elementary school.

My daughter has given away nearly all of her toys and set up a neat and tidy homework desk stocked with notebooks and pens. She's more interested in Minecraft than My Little Pony now, but she still prefers to run around and play with other kids outside than to sit with a device.

Sometimes people ask me if I'm sad that my child is growing up so quickly. So far, not really. She was a very cute baby, but every year older is easier and more fun for me! We haven't yet hit peak enjoy-it-while-it-lasts.

She gets herself ready for the day. She can help with more chores. She sleeps in until about 7:00 a.m. (It used to be 5:00.) She still wants me to read to her at bedtime, but now it's horror chapter books rather than…
Read more

"Let the River Run" in the High School Musical of My Novel

-
Image
Matka Danu Miklagarth is a twisted story of murderers and degenerates, but if it were a high school musical, the uplifting song "Let the River Run" would be in it. Please note that this is not that hideous Eminem track you may have heard on the Top 40 station; it's a pop song written by Carly Simon in the late '80s for the movie Working Girl.

Matka is set on the Danube River long before the European colonization of the Americas, and its main characters impersonate regional mythological wilderness-dwelling creatures such as the Leshy, rusalki, and various kinds of sirens or mermaids. Thematically, it deals with values and ideas that interest contemporary Americans like myself (and, presumably, my future readers) in a way that is mindful. After all, America today is a nation of immigrants with ancestry from many deep-rooted cultures, including those portrayed in Matka.

The Danube (and my characters sailing down it) end up in the Black Sea, which connects them to the mos…
Read more