Rebecca Reads

I’m excited to delve into the world of Really Old Classics. By the end of next July, I hope to read five works. I don’t know what the others will be, but I intend for three of them to be:

The Illiad by Homer
The Odyssey by Homer
The Aeneid by Virgil

Yes, the basics.
Want to read some too? [...]

If you would like to share your reviews for the Really Old Classics Challenge, please leave a link to your post in the comments to this post.
If you do not have a blog, feel free to share your thoughts to the works you’ve read in the comments as well.
Thanks, and enjoy!

Children 2,000 years ago read and memorized Virgil and Homer, and Aesop’s Fables were common knowledge. Even 200 years ago these classics were widely read. Now, there are thousands of new books published each year. But what about those really old ones? Have we read those yet? Any of them?
That’s why I’ve decided to host [...]

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Hemingway’s stories are poetry: that is my first and lasting impression of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories. In his short stories, Hemingway treats words as sparsely as do poets.
I don’t usually understand or enjoy poetry because it feels so much must be inferred or interpreted. (After I finish reading the HTR&W short stories, [...]

I’ve been thinking a lot about challenges in the book blogging community.  At some point, I may want to host a challenge, so I’m curious about preferences in the book blogging community when it comes to challenges.

It’s not Maupassant’s fault, but I have a grudge against him already: his book stinks.
The librarian had to retrieve it from The Stacks. The first thing I noticed as she returned was its size. At more than 1300 pages, it thudded on the counter. Then, as she swiped my library card and pushed the [...]

Today I have a winner and another giveaway. (My budget won’t let me do this every week, though.)

I’m giving away a copy of How to Read and Why to someone joining my personal challenge. Read my discussion of the preface for more information.
This is a very long post; I’m breaking my own rules of length because I spent a long time reading and pondering Bloom’s prologue, and I have a lot of [...]

Weekly Geeks this week is about Challenges.
I have been hesitant to sign up for challenges because I’m a perfectionist. While I know there are no “challenge police” coming to check that I’ve finished my reading, I can’t bring myself to say “I’ll read these books” if I don’t think I’m going to have time. (And [...]

Katharine Graham was most well-known to me for being publisher of The Washington Post during the newspaper’s reporting of Watergate. However, her life extended far beyond the walls of the Washington Post city room. In a sense, her life was a life of contrasts and similarities. After reading Katharine Graham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography, Personal History, [...]