Changes to the AD lit list

I was talking to my husband a couple of days ago and he asked when I was going to do the Volsung saga and the Edda. In response to this I had a look through my list and realised they weren't even on it. Then today he asked if Augustine's The City of God, I told him I was leaving the church fathers of Christianity for a separate list. He informs me that The City of God is a vital link in the development of the novel, so I may have to rethink that decision. Maybe I'll add just the City of God to this list and leave the rest of his works for a church fathers list.
The other thing this has made me think about is whether I need a separate list for the holy books of world religions or whether I should be folding them into this list. Folding them in would require quite a rewrite of the list. Not sure that is worth the trouble when I can just put together a separate list later. Of course this won't effect the BC list as they are already integrate because it is not a typed list, its a list of everything BC.

So that means I have 3 books to add to the AD lit. list and a lot more research to do to make sure there are not other additions needed.
Also I found that I can't get two of Dante's works in English so I'll have to take them off the list so that balances things up a little bit.

Look out for an updated version of the AD lit. list in the next few days!

The Upanishads: Hindu Brahma

It beat me, it totally beat me! It's not often I quit at something.

I had real trouble reading and understanding the Upanishads so, in the end, I didn’t actually finish it. To be fair, it had me stalled for over 2 years on this project, so in the end, it had to be passed over to get moving on the rest of the list. As such, this will be a much shorter post, and I will be using the power of the internet to complete my synopsis.

The Story
In a nutshell, the Upanishads is a Hindu text dealing with the concepts of Brahman, or truth, Atman, or self and the realisation of how these two can be joined into oneness or Bhakti. How this results in Karma, or our deeds, and the striving for Moksha the eternal bliss. It also introduces the concept of Om as the divine sound of cosmic energy.

Reflections
Brahma and Brahman have so many similar but nuanced meanings, you just start to get a handle on one and it changes.
Everything comes back to Brahman or Atman in the end. Every time there is a list of how things go together and what is based on what foundation, the final foundation is always either Brahman or Atman.

Comparisons
I found the Rig Veda easier to comprehend. It had fewer twists and turns. Both the Rig Veda and The Upanishads are collections of writings, that can mean the topic and the specific meanings of terms can vary slightly. And this can happen every time you change Upanishad or hymn in the Rig Veda.

Have you read the The Upanishads? If so what did you think?
Does this inspire you to read the Upanishads and succeed where I have failed? If so tell me what you think when your done!

Buy a copy of The Upanishads

Hesiod, The Shield of Heracles: That's one ornate shield

It is so hot today, its midsummer here in New Zealand. But, it is uncommon to have air conditioning at home, so I'm sitting, typing, with a fan beside me on full. My husband and I also bought a paddling pool to cool off in, even though we don't have kids.
The Shield of Heracles was a nice, short work, maybe 10 or so pages long. In some ways, that meant it was no trouble at all. There is still so much in it, even though it is so short, and even though the description of the shield goes for a couple of pages. I enjoyed seeing a bit of the Heracles myth that doesn't directly include his labors. Heracles, of course, also know as Hercules.


Edition
As I said for Works and Days, I purchased a combined edition that also included Works and Days, Theogony and the Shield of Heracles. This was not a penguin classics edition as that only had Works and Days, and Theogony; I also wanted to look at The Shield of Heracles and I didn’t want to buy two editions.


The Story
The predominance of this text is a description of the shield of Heracles, hence the name. Around that description, though, there is a short story.
In the area of Thessaly, there is a tyrant named Cycnus, who is known for killing his dinner guests as well as pilgrims on their way to sacrifice to Apollo. Heracles is traveling with his nephew Iolaus, the son of his mortal brother Iphicles, when he comes across Cycnus and Ares in a chariot going the other way. Cycnus challenges Heracles to single combat. Heracles, as expected, accepts. At this point in the text. we get a huge and glorious description of the shield of Heracles, a gift from and masterwork of Hephaestus. The shield is made of shining gold and ivory and is uncrushable and unbreakable.
Athena warns Heracles that Ares will attack after the single combat. Heracles fights Cycnus and kills him with a shot to the throat. Ares, as predicted, springs on Heracles but his blow is deflected by the shield and Heracles wounds him in the thigh. Heracles and Iolaus strip Cycnus’ armor and take it as spoils. Cycnus is buried, but the monument is washed away by a storm brought on by Apollo.

Reflections
Heracles seems to be a braggart in this story. He is so sure of his victory, even before the fight has begun. The fact that he was fighting a son of Ares didn’t seem to phase him - but then he is the son of Zeus. At first glance, he seems to get into the fight rather rashly, only needing a challenge to get his fighting blood up. We do not know if he is aware of the misdeeds of Cycnus. If he is, he has good reason to agree to single combat; if he is not, it is a rash act, but as always it goes Heracles’ way.

We see the anger of Apollo only in the dying breaths of the text, which comes as a bit of a surprise to me. I’m getting used to seeing gods take offence at small slights, but Apollo does nothing about the killing of worshipers on the way to sacrifice to him; and yet we see him call up a storm to blot out Cycnus’ memory by destroying his monument at the end.

Comparisons

The Shield of Heracles borrows from the Iliad in how it describes Heracles’ unbreakable shield. Some lines are alluded to, and others are directly copied, from the earlier text.

Again, here in the Shield of Heracles, we see Athena as the god of providence, whisking away heroes from danger and death. In the Iliad, we see this happen as one of the Trojan heroes gets too close to death.
Apollos involvement with protecting his temple pilgrims seems to be very limited (as I stated earlier) and his revenge is almost retrospective. By comparison, in the Odyssey, we see Poseidon have a long running quarrel with Odysseus and his revenge is wrought over and over again. Or by comparing it with Zeus’ revenge on Prometheus in Theogony which is ongoing torture day after day.

Have you read the The Shield of Heracles? If so what did you think?
Does this inspire you to read the The Shield of Heracles? If so tell me what you think when your done!

Buy a copy of The Shield of Heracles

I'm back for a New year of even more books!

Hello 2019, though it is a little late for new years resolutions, this is my mid January resolution. My goal for 2019 for this blog and for my self education project in general is:
Make it through to the start of Aristophanes by 2020 on the BC List
Now this might be over reaching as it goes beyond the first fifty list that I have posted, but as I have previously stated my total list is over 300 works long, though you have probably noticed by now some of those are very short.
To this end I have put in some serious time into reading Herodotus' Histories as I have been working on that work far too long and need to move on. I'm hoping to be finished reading it tomorrow and to have written its blog post by the end of the week.
I will be posting from here on on Fridays and I will stay in the order of the list.
The first week of the month I want to dedicate to the AD lit list and the other 3 or 4, depending on the month, will be the BC list. In other words my other goal for this project is:
Complete 11 works from the AD lit list by 2020
January is already half over so it will only be fore the rest of the year. This will put me a few works into Chaucer by 2020.
Again this might be over reach but it's work taking a good crack at.
So here is to a productive and focused year!

You might be wondering what happened last year that had this come to a halt, so let me fill you in. I had mentioned that I had a new job and that, optimistically, I would have time to read and write at work as it had a lot of down time. I was working on a newly opened dairy factory and as that had its teething issues and other problems my time got very fragmented and it became hard to read anything longer than an article without having interruptions.
Also the hours being 12 shifts 5 to 6 days a week there was little time outside of work to keep the reading and writing up to date.
I have since had to quit for health reasons, night shifts and I don't go together very well, and then spent December resting and getting back to my normal self.

I did some thinking before recommitting to this, just making sure this is really what I want to do and my previous reasons still stand. I still want to become more than just the Science major that I was in University. I still want to broaden my horizons and learn more about what has come before, to better understand what is now. I want to finish these list so I can move on to writing new AD lists, like Science fiction, Biography or History. This is why I continue to pursue these lists.