Now I'm wanting to do a chronological version of the International Challenge. Hmmm.

This week I finished Ovid's Amores - Peter Green translation - and am halfway through the Ars Amatoria (for Banned Books Week). (Warning: discussion of rape) So there's plenty to talk about with Ovid's erotic poems, but the part that everybody gets stuck on is the apparent exhortation to rape in Book 1 of the Ars Amatoria. Ovid being Ovid, he goes on to give a list of raped-but-grateful women of mythology. But it's not as simple as that. Reading the Amores (unlike the Ars Amatoria, a collection of short elegiac love poems) shows one of Ovid's favorite techniques to be building up, especially through legendary examples, a grandiose conception of love and lovers, only to deflate it in the last verses to the prosaic nature of everyday Roman life. Likewise here, Ovid quickly explains that the application of all this to his flesh-and-blood reader lies in the need for the man to take the initiative by begging the woman for her favors, and not hoping she will spontaneously ask him. In other words, where Zeus, Achilles, and the ravishers of the Sabines took what they wanted with rough violence, the modern Roman man must work up the courage to say something to the girl, quickly backing off if rejected. This is Ovid's version of witty; and while it certainly is less funny today, it's part of his reliable poetic pattern. Also worth remembering is that Ovid and his readers were of the equites class, and the least actual attempt at sexual violence toward the women of their class (which, Ovid makes clear, are the women he's teaching them to seduce) would have led to immediate social and financial ruin. That lengthy caveat aside, Ovid's erotic poems are fun and worth reading, and Green's translation makes them very accessible. His notes are longer than the collections themselves, but go beyond explanatory notations and are in fact a series of mini-essays on the poems: interesting and readable, not to be skipped. The poetry is unlikely to disturb the most prudish. It wasn't the salacious content that got the Ars Amatoria banned and Ovid banished; it was his scarcely veiled explanations of how to seduce married Roman women - in the face of Augustus' morality laws and Ovid's own disingenuous disclaimer that he was certainly not writing about seducing married women, no no - plus his inability to stop poking at Augustus and his attempts to restore traditional Roman morality. Eventually Augustus, it seems, just got tired of him. Now a quick read of The Magician, and time to pick another book.

... and it reappears! On Middle Girl's dresser. "Oh, I thought that was my Somerset Maugham." Just finishing up the Ovid, then I'll read it. Before it pulls another conjuring trick.

So of course now I can't find the blessed book.

Things we stayed with for 16 years of homeschooling, 3 children: Languages Artes Latinae (Latin) Athenaze (Greek) Foreign Service International (German & French) Science TOPS Science labs Open University general science Math Miquon Math Key To... Math contest problems/ Art of Problem-Solving (dh at first put together his own curriculum from database of old math competitions; then AoPS did it for him) English Reader Rabbit Word Factory/ Reader Rabbit Interactive Reading Journey Rose, Where Did You Get That Red? Teaching Great Poetry To Children Perrine, Sound & Sense Word Wealth/ Word Wealth, Junior Scribner School Paperbacks with Study Guides History & Civics Our Living Constitution (Good Apple) Everyday Law for Young Citizens (Good Apple) Hillyer, A Child's History of the World Religion Our Catholic Faith 100 Great Moments in Catholic History ETA: Having read the thread ... oh my. Is there some kind of award for Least Overlap?

Well that's no good. How about I read it quick and send it to you.

The Sevastopol Sketches (which I haven't read) are set during the Crimean War, during the Siege of Sevastopol, which Tolstoy experienced personally. (Somebody earlier was wondering if he had had actual experience in battle; yes he had). I don't know offhand what else he wrote set in the Crimea, though if I were less lazy I'm sure Google would tell me. The Cossacks (which I have read, and it was quite good) is a short novel set in the Caucasian War. Maybe it counts... both wars were about the same time, and start with 'C'... If we're pre-planning our Spooky Reading, I was going to read Maugham's The Magician, about a fictionalized Aleister Crowley. Jane?

1790s. My avatar makes me look younger.

I'd always assumed the alternative endings were due (crudely speaking) to a British reading of the book as a parable for adolescence, and the American preference for reading it as dystopian fiction.

That's an example of exactly why I support broad first amendment protections. Apropos of all of this, I've been reading the Areopagitica - Milton's unsurpassed argument for freedom of the press - to Middle Girl as a supplement to our civics unit on the Constitution.

I finished the chunkster 'A Light in the Heavens': The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII. Niche reading of the more significant writings by the brilliant and erudite pope of the Turn of the Century, the most famous and enduring of which is "Rerum Novarum," on the rights of workers. On to Ovid! ETA: And that's the Bingo square for Prime Number in Title. :)

Hurrah! I've been waiting for Banned Books Week to begin reading my copy of Ovid's Ars amatoria (in translation), the world's most banned book. It was banned by Augustus Caesar, burned by Savanarola (who thought the Church too permissive), and was still prohibited for import in the United States as late as 1930.

My girls inherited dh's generously large feet without getting especially tall. Great Girl is 5'6" and wears 9-1/2 wide. Middle Girl is 5'5", women's 8-1/2 wide. They are all thin, but very stable in high winds. :D (I am 5'2", shoe size 7. Nobody wanted my genes.)

Treading lightly here - I prefer to stay out of hot topics - but some U.S. women. Many dismayed and horrified Christian women I knew asked, "Is that really what they think about us?"

After I finished my book this evening and entered it onto my list, I realized this has been a "green" year: besides the Henry Green, I've read two Graham Greenes, Kingsley Amis's The Green Man, and the Scottish classic The House With the Green Shutters. Oh, and can I count the Henry Green as a "Flufferton"? It's set in an Irish country house in the Second World War, and is an upstairs-downstairs novel chiefly about the love affair of the head butler and an under-maid. Do I have the genre right?

LOL, no, nothing in common there ... just thinking along Robin's color lines.

Rose, you and Shannon are fortunate to have each other. Best wishes for steady improvement. Jenn, what are moms for if not to share books in the teeth of a typhoon? Heart-warming indeed. Eliana, after finishing Walden last week I re-read "Civil Disobedience." I admit to lacking the courage to get myself arrested, but I have good friends who have taken civil disobedience to that extreme, and I do admire the courage of conviction required.

If the name of the author counts for the challenge, I'm in. I'm just finishing up the 1945 novel Loving by Henry Green. I'd been meaning to read Green for a while, and a NYRB article on his novels from last month convinced me to give him a try. Apparently he was a great influence on John Updike, whom I haven't read much. ETA: Maybe it's time for a re-read of A Clockwork Orange. Haven't hung out with Alex and his droogies since high school.

So glad to hear from you, and that you've gotten through it safely. I want to hear more about the evacuation and kitty. (I have a hurricane rescue kitty, accordingly named Rita.)

Specific work. Why should you be spared The Shame? ;)

The Shame list yielded up another title: Franz Kafka's The Trial. To think I'd never read it before. It makes me think of both The Good Soldier Sveijk and Alice in Wonderland. And it's just down the rabbit hole for Joseph K. from there.

Congratulations Penguin!

Kathy and Stacia, it's good to hear that you've come through the storm with minimal damage. And I see from TMZ that the Hemingway house in Key West, and the cats, are all fine too. http://www.tmz.com/2017/09/10/hemingway-houses-cats-hurricane-irma-key-west/ I finished Walden and re-read "Civil Disobedience" to round it out. Thoreau has improved much since high school. Let's see what else is here on the Shame list.... Nice to see you pop in, Ellesmere.

Still reading Thoreau & Leo XIII. Aaaaaaaaaaa I don't remember homeschooling high school using up every moment of my time the first time around. Wait, I think that was when I was reading 26 books a year and feeling amazing to accomplish that. Stacia, Great Girl texted that classes are canceled for Monday and Tuesday. Are things really expected to get as bad as that? I though Atlanta was too far inland to be affected. Amy, so fun that your little guy remembered! It was awesome meeting up with your family. Hugs to those coping with hard times. I've been reading posts but on the run without much of a chance to respond.

I have to say, all the time I was in Scotland, people were friendly, considerate, and managed to deftly overlook what I realized later were some significant faux pas on my part. The single unpleasant Scot I encountered was promptly mobbed by bystanders for his rudeness to the Texas visitor. Not to say that I was never laughed at - but being able to take some good-natured ribbing seems to be a cultural requirement in both places.