wednesday books are epic fantasy bricks

[landofnowhere]

I haven't been on top of book posts because Wednesdays are my busiest day; possibly I should move to another day of the week.

The Clouds, Aristophanes. Readaloud. I'm glad I read this, but I didn't find it as much fun as Lysistrata. Partly I'm just uptight about bathroom humor. But also the plot is basically: father sends his son to Socrates's Thinkery to get an education, and the son comes back apparently brainwashed, with weird ideas about about (grammatical) gender, liking all sorts of inappropriate literature, and generally lacking respect for his elders, and the father burns down the Thinkery in revenge. Which is certainly relevant to the present moment, but not in a fun way.

Wind and Truth, Brandon Sanderson. I finished Stormlight Arc 1! This book generally provided a solid conclusion to that arc while setting things up for the second half of the series, but it wasn't my favorite of the series. I am interested enough to keep reading this series but probably won't reread any of the Arc 1 books.

The Shadow Rising, Robert Jordan. I prefer the Wheel of Time show to the books, because I only have so much tolerance for Jordan's weird gender politics and his male POV characters thinking about how women are inscrutable/being annoyingly and unnecessarily chivalrous. But I'm also the sort of person who prefers to read the book before watching. I most recently set aside the series in the middle of book 4, but the show has now almost caught up to the point where I was in the books, so I took this book along on a recent trip and finished it. There are things I liked, and I'm glad I read this in preparation for the show, but I expect I'll enjoy the show more.

Comments

[lunabee34]

Aristophanes did not like Socrates, that's for sure LOL.

I have only read Lysistrata; I am not surprised that his other work is full of bathroom humor.

[landofnowhere]

The two of them seemed to get along OK in The Symposium! Though one can never trust Plato as a narrator. And the first half of The Clouds seemed more like the sort of good-hearted mockery of a friend that I'd have expected from the Aristophanes in Symposium, but the second half particularly felt more mean-spirited (especially knowing what went down with Socrates, but I think it would read that way even without that context).

And yes, having read Lysistrata I wasn't surprised by the crudeness! But also the crude humor worked better for me there.

[lunabee34]

All I know about Aristophanes I learned from the introduction to Lysistrata in the Norton Anthology of Literature LOL. I know that I've read Plato before but it's been years and years. "The Allegory of the Cave" is frequently anthologized, so I've read that more than anything else. I think I read The Dialogues. I don't remember.

[landofnowhere]

The Symposium is incredibly fun and quite different from the other dialogues (though even The Republic) has funny bits). It's a report on a drinking party attended by all the intellectuals of Athens, where they all have to give speeches on what love is -- and of course Socrates gives the last and best speech (though he credits his wisdom on the topic to a woman, Diotima), and also we get some dirt on Socrates/Alcibiades. Aristophanes is one of the characters in the dialogue, and his speech on love is the most entertaining. I recommend!

[lunabee34]

I'll keep that in mind. That sounds really fun!