Read my full review at <a href="http://carstairsconsiders.blogspot.com/2013/06/book-review-battle-of-labyrinth-by-rick.html">Carstairs Considers</a>.
The New Testament for Everyone
Book
The text of the New Testament, drawn from the New Testament for Everyone series, fully integrated to...
Carving Classical Styles in Wood
Book
This book explains the principles of classical ornamentation and how the motifs evolved through the...
300: Rise of an Empire (2014)
Movie Watch
Greek warrior Themistokles uses his forces to war wage war against the powerful Xerxes and his...
Betty Fussell recommended The Odyssey in Books (curated)
Smuggling Hendrix (2018)
Movie
Yiannis, a faded musician who is about to leave Cyprus for a better life abroad, sees his plans...
The Power of God: Dynamis in Gregory of Nyssa's Trinitarian Theology
Book
Gregory of Nyssa is widely regarded as the most substantial thinker and theologian among the three...
Murder on the Acropolis
Book
What happens on the Acropolis of Athens when a wealthy young English woman is murdered on it? How...
The book reads as a quasi-novel, from the birth of the universe to the third and fourth generations of immortals (this includes the creators, the titans, the gods, and mythical creatures/characters, spawns of titans and gods, gods and creatures, gods and men and all sorts.) and their adventures, each following on from the other.
I have always had an interest in the Greek myths and gods, and as I suggested above the really interesting part of these stories, beyond the very human nature of the immortals (jealousy, unreasonableness, duplicity, rage, deceit and pride) which makes for so much more of a believable creation theory, is the myriad ways they have influenced English language (any many others I'm sure). To give an example (I'm showing my own ignorance flagrantly here) a simple thing, the alphabet. It never occurred to me, in my own self centered existence, this simply come from the first and second letters of the Greek alphabet. Alpha and Beta. So simple, so obvious, yet I never made this connection.
The stories themselves are wonderful, and the best thing about them is they all tie in with a creation theory. Something, whatever it is, is learned, or created. Some paradigm is set, some moral conundrum is answered, or something in the world is explained by the end of every story told (the tides, the moon, wine, love, soul, war, sex, the seasons, humanity itself just to name a few). It's such an entertaining read, and I find myself telling anyone who will listen some of the revelations I find in this book page on page on page.
As an end note, don't be overwhelmed by the prospect of reading about these stories, this installment ONLY covers from creation, to the establishment of the twelve Greek gods, and their children. It stops before the even greater amount of legends stemming from human demigods (Hercules, Perseus etc) and these are picked up in Fry's most recent offering, Heroes (which I am yet to read).
If you have any interest in the Greek mythology, or etymology, or even history as a whole, this is absolutely one for you.
- Rob
To Save the Phenomena: An Essay on the Idea of Physical Theory from Plato to Galileo
Pierre Duhem, Edmund Dolan and Chaninah Maschler
Book
Duhem's 1908 essay questions the relation between physical theory and metaphysics and, more...