First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?
Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!
Happy Friday!
I hope everyone has had a good week so far. I started a new book this evening so I thought I would feature it on First Lines Friday.
“Zak Choudary was sitting alone by the window inside a late-night kebab shop on Great Horton Road. It was midnight.
Freedom
After four years of prison”
Get Guessing
Detective Inspector Harry Virdee has a lot on his plate. His team is facing government cuts, tensions are building between Bradford’s two rival drugs gangs and his wife Saima is due to give birth any day now.
So when bodies start turning up in the old industrial district, the pressure is on to get the case wrapped up as quickly as possible, or risk a full-scale gang war.
But the man behind the murders is ruthless and pushy. And things are getting personal. Harry must think fast and bend the rules if he wants to keep his city, and his family, safe . . .
Did anybody guess correctly?
Please drop me a comment with your First Line Friday and I will head over for a visit.
The Greek Myths that Shape the Way We Think by Richard Buxton
Blurb
How do ancient Greek myths find themselves retold and reinterpreted in cultures across the world, several millennia later? In this volume, bestselling author Richard Buxton explores the power that eight iconic Greek myths hold in the modern world. Buxton traces these stories and archetypes from their ancient forms through their transformations over time in literature, art, cinema, psychology, and politics.
Review
I bought this book and started reading it last year but I only read the first chapter then for some reason I stopped reading it. This week I decided to pick the book back up and I will be honest I couldn’t put it down or work out why I stopped reading it in the first place.
As my regular followers will probably know I completed a Masters degree in Classics a couple of years ago and since then I try to regularly read nonfiction about Ancient Greece and Rome. I have never read anything by Buxton before so I was excited to read this book and see what Buxton had to say about some of the myths we know so well.
The first thing I realised about this book was just how accessible it was. You really don’t have to have a background in Classics to understand this book because Buxton explains everything in a way that anybody can understand. He explains the original myth and what texts the myth appears in. He then explains how the myths appear in Ancient Roman texts and plays and goes from there through history right to modern day. There were some films that he mentioned like The Others (2001) starring Nicole Kidman that I hadn’t even associated with an Ancient Greek myth but when Buxton highlighted the fact it all became clear.
The other thing I loved about this book was the clever use of images. It is really clear that Buxton has carefully selected his visual sources to help highlight his examples. The images are of ancient vases, ancient sculptors, medieval paintings and modern day images from movies. The images are mainly black and white but there are also some fantastic colour images.
I will be honest the book only skimmed the edges of the political and psychological aspects of the ancient myths but I suspect that was because Buxton wanted to keep the book as accessible as possible. The focus on the literature, art and cinema definitely makes it more relatable for people. I would have liked a more in-depth look at the political and psychological aspects but I’m not overly disappointed.
I really enjoyed this book and once I started reading it this week I couldn’t put it down. The book is a fantastic introduction for people who are not familiar with the Ancient Greek myths and makes the myths applicable and relevant to modern day thinking. The book is expertly researched and written and a fantastic read. I will definitely be reading more books by Buxton. 5 out of 5 Dragons from me.
(All purchases made using one of the above affiliate links gives a small percentage of money to myself with no extra cost to yourself. All proceeds go towards the upkeep of this blog. Thank you ever so much, your support is gratefully received.)
About the author
Richard Buxton works on ancient Greek literature (especially tragedy), and ancient mythology and religion. One of his main aims is to explore the contexts – for example, social life and the landscape – which can help us to recover the meanings which myths had for their tellers and hearers/readers (see his Imaginary Greece, 1994, and The Complete World of Greek Mythology, 2004).
In 1996 he organized a major international conference at Bristol, whose proceedings appeared as From Myth to Reason? (1999) Since 2003 he has been one of the editors of Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum and since 2006 he has been President of the LIMC Foundation. His book ‘Forms of Astonishment: Greek Myths of Metamorphosis’ was published in 2009. He will next be revising for publication a selection of his papers on Greek myth and tragedy.
He has taken part in a number of radio programs about myth. His work has been translated into nine languages.
The rules are answer the questions below and share a link to your blog in the comments section of Sam’s blog.
What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you will read next?
Hello!
I hope everyone is having a good week so far. I saw a lovely thing today whilst at school. Children were outside during first break with their books reading together, apparently they have set up their own little bookclub and it was just wonderful to see a group of children enjoying reading together and talking about what they were reading.
What I am Currently Reading
I am only 15 pages into this so far as I started it during my lunch break at school today.
What I have Recently Finished Reading
I must admit I didn’t really enjoy Who Killed Jerusalem? that much. It was one of those books that felt too much like hard work. Here is the review. I just finished The Greek Myths by Richard Buxton and I absolutely loved it! Review will follow shortly.
What I Think I will Read Next
I think I will definitely read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius in February as that is my next ancient text I want to read but I’m not sure what other books I will read In February.
Please drop me a comment with your WWW Wednesday and I will head over for a visit.
Now you might have noticed that Persephone Books in Bath is one of my all time favourite book shops. I love the books that Persephone Books produce because they have introduced me to authors I have never come across before. After a few trips to Bath I have a growing collection of Persephone Books to read and this year I have decided to really make an effort to read the books I own and also increase my collection of Persephone Books.
So lets see how many of the Persephone Books I can read…
William – an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton
Mariana by Monica Dickens
Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple
Fidelity by Susan Glaspell
An Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum 1941-42 by Etty Hillesum
Goodreads Monday is now hosted by Budget Tales Book Club. All you have to do is show off a book from your TBR that you’re looking forward to reading.
Happy Monday!
I hope everyone has had a good start to the week. I had an unexpected early finish today at school which was nice and I have a quiet day work wise tomorrow so I am hoping to go on a nice walk and catch up on some jobs.
This week I have chosen another book off my Classics Club list. I sadly didn’t read as many classics off my list as I had planned last year so this year I am really going to try and catch up and get a good load of books ticked off the list.
Candide is the story of a gentle man who, though pummelled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in “the best of all possible worlds.” On the surface a witty, bantering tale, this eighteenth-century classic is actually a savage, satiric thrust at the philosophical optimism that proclaims that all disaster and human suffering is part of a benevolent cosmic plan. Fast, funny, often outrageous, the French philosopher’s immortal narrative takes Candide around the world to discover that — contrary to the teachings of his distinguished tutor Dr. Pangloss — all is not always for the best. Alive with wit, brilliance, and graceful storytelling, Candide has become Voltaire’s most celebrated work.
Please drop me a comment if you have taken part in Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit.
I hope everyone has had a nice weekend so far. I am still on track with my reading goals and my book reviews so I am quite pleased. I’m not sure if it will last but I will keep trying.
I have been really enjoying The Greek Myths by Richard Buxton and I have been really enjoying it. I am still reading a chapter a day of The Count of Monte Cristo.
In 1977, Ickey Jerusalem, San Francisco’s golden-boy poet laureate, is found dead in a locked, first-class toilet on an arriving red-eye flight.
Ded Smith, a desperately unhappy, intelligent philistine with a highly developed philosophy to match, is called in to investigate the poet’s death. Thus begins a series of hilarious encounters with the members of Jerusalem’s coterie.
Ded soon realizes that to find out what happened, he must not only collect his usual detective’s clues but also, despite his own poetically challenged outlook, get into the dead poet’s mind. Fighting his way through blasphemous funerals, drug-induced dreams, poetry-charged love-making, offbeat philosophical discussions, and much, much more, he begins to piece together Jerusalem’s seductive, all-encompassing metaphysics.
But by then, the attempts to kill Ded and the others have begun.
Before Ded’s death-dodging luck runs out, will he be able to solve the case, and perhaps in the process, develop a new way of looking at the world that might allow him to replace his unhappiness with joy?
Review
Firstly, I would like to say a massive thank you to Mindbuck Media Book Publicity for sending me an advance copy of this book.
I was really excited to get the opportunity to read this book because I went through a massive William Blake phase when I was at University. I even composed a four part choral piece to Blake’s poem The Tyger and went to several exhibitions of his art work. This knowledge did help me whilst reading this book but I will be honest even at times I had to do some research to make sense of certain things which makes me worry that people with no experience of Blake’s work and his metaphysics would struggle with this book.
There are some great characters within this book and some characters that I really did not get along with. Sadly, the one character I really did not like was Ded. Ded is rather a sad character who has not had a very happy life so far. His childhood was sheltered and not happy and he has basically been just going through life working and just existing. Although I felt sorry for Ded I really did not like how he acted and found him painfully socially awkward. I also did not like his sexual habits very much. The other character I did not particularly like was Beulah. I found Beulah to be rather childish and very naive. At times I felt sorry for her but at the same time I just wanted her to get angry and react to things.
Most of the members of Jerusalem’s coterie were hilarious and were the reason I kept reading the book. Ghostflea the chauffeur was definitely my favourite character. Ghostflea had an interesting upbringing and I love how he learnt to drive by reading a book. The image of an erratic driver who really can’t drive driving like a drunk person around San Fransisco in an English hearse was hilarious and had me laughing a great deal.
The other character that had me laughing was Tharmas. Tharmas basically spends his life as high as a kite and going from one sexual encounter to the next. It was hard to imagine him as a business manager for Jerusalem.
I will be honest I did find this book a hard slog and what made it worse was that I guessed who the killer was very early on and when I was right it felt like rather a let down and extremely predictable. The ending where Ded explains all his theories in the plane was in my opinion not needed and it felt like Brown was trying to imitate a Poirot book but not as successfully as Christie. Overall, if this book had been shorter I think I would have enjoyed it more but from about half way through it was becoming too much like hard work. I give this book 3 out of 5 Dragons.
(All purchases made using one of the above affiliate links gives a small percentage of money to myself with no extra cost to yourself. All proceeds go towards the upkeep of this blog. Thank you ever so much, your support is gratefully received.)
About the author
George Albert Brown, a graduate of Yale University and Stanford Law, started as a hippie in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury and retired at the age of 40 after having co-founded a successful international finance company. Following stints thereafter as a humorous author (The Airline Passenger’s Guerrilla Handbook) and an angel investor in over a score of high-tech university spinouts, he built a catamaran in Chile and for more than a decade, cruised it across the globe with his significant other. Today, as a father of three grown children, a grandfather of four not-yet-grown children, and an involuntary lover of stray cats, he continues her peripatetic lifestyle by other means.
I hope everyone has some fab books to read over the weekend.
My chosen poem this week is by the Jamaican- American poet and writer Claude McKay (1890-1948). McKay studied in the United States and became a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance.
After the Winter
Some day, when trees have shed their leaves
And against the morning's white
The shivering birds beneath the eaves
Have sheltered for the night,
We'll turn our faces southward, love,
Toward the summer isle
Where bamboos spire the shafted grove
And wide-mouthed orchids smile.
And we will seek the quiet hill
Where towers the cotton tree,
And leaps the laughing crystal rill,
And works the droning bee,
And we will build a cottage there
Beside an open glade,
With black-ribbed blue-bells blowing near,
And ferns that never fade.
Claude McKay
I thought it was time for another Etsy update as I have been quite busy putting new products on the website. I also have a 10% discount code available for my book bloggers. LADYBOOKDRAGON10.
This Valentine’s edition Blind Date with a Book contains a heart themed chocolate lollipop and a brand new paperback book of a genre of your choice plus a lotus biscuit. There is also the option to send a personal message on a book themed postcard in the parcel. There is also an everyday themed Blind Date with a Book available.
Lady Book Dragon 