A slightly belated entry this month, due to chaos.

Books

• Paperbacks From Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction, Grady Hendrix: ever wondered about all those incredible 80’s horror novels with amazing covers? Wonder no more!
• The Learned Banqueters: Books 13.594b-14, Athenaeus of Naucratis, S. Douglas Olson: now only one volume away from my long slow quest to read all of Athenaeus, a task I would strongly recommend to anyone interested in Ancient Greek literature, language, and culture.
• How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Jenny Odell: no, the book really isn’t as extreme as the title might suggest, but it is excellent, pragmatic, and refreshing in these times.
• Ancient Rome: From Romulus to Justinian, Thomas R. Martin: after finishing Martin’s survey of Ancient Greece, I decided to follow it up with his take on Ancient Rome, which is good if necessarily a bit uneven due to the large timespan involved.
• Sparta, Melvin Cooley (ed.): this is part of the LACTOR (London Association of Classical Teachers - Original Records) series of sourcebooks, and provides a wide variety of ancient sources on Sparta in translation organized in various ways and with some modern editorial commentary. But as a book on Sparta, this is really quite outstanding, since many of the sources are scattered or need contextualization. If you want to actually be knowledgable about Ancient Sparta, read this book.
• Xenophon’s Anabasis Book 1: Greek Text with Facing Vocabulary and Commentary, Geoffrey D. Steadman: also freely available online, this was February’s reading for the Steadman Reading Group - I found it quite enjoyable, and plan on trying to read books two and three before we loop back around to book four in September. Though I already badly need to catch up on my Odyssey 6-8 reading…
• Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey, Elena Ferrante: an excellent insight into Ferrante’s thinking and writing if you’re already a fan of it, and familiar with her earlier novels.

Articles

• How to de-Google-ify your site to make it faster and visitor friendly
• Athenaeus Was a Confident Clown
• Tolkien, Sonnenschein and Language Learning
• Podcast Idea: Improvtymology
• Solving Ancient Puzzles
• It’s high time we electrocute some hot dogs and see what happens
• Is It Still “Too Soon” To Tell the Truth About Julius Caesar?
• Trial begins for archaeologist accused of forging earliest portrayal of Jesus’ crucifixion
• All the Reasons I Became a Classicist That Are Difficult to Justify