A few paragraphs from the children's book I'm translating awkwardly from German, with the help of Google Translate, one semester of German, and squinting a lot at cognates.

( The first four pages )

Taken from the Perseus edition of the Koine, for convenience, and translated more literally than poetically:

( Love and prophecy )

Specifically, I'm looking for advice on this ( Read more... )

Because of a friend's grim read-through of a deeply terrible 'historical' romance set in Roman times, I ended up translating a bit of Apuleius. Or trying to translate it, in any case; without notes, it was darn rough going, as I started in the middle of a sex scene, and it's all dramatic metaphor. Below the cut is...well, sex, I guess. Very ( Read more... )

When I read Lyndsay Faye's new book, Jane Steele, I found it so brilliant I promptly went out and looked up more books by the same author. The Gods Of Gotham is one of her earlier books, and it's not brilliant: it's merely excellent ( Read more... )

So! I'll be attending the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities campus, Classics and Near Eastern Studies program) this fall. I am very excited! I am also anxious as heck. Much paperwork to do, must figure out residence options there and get that set up, more paperwork to do, have to set up things so that the house in Austin can run happily while I' ( Read more... )

Then we didn't say anything. A student passed us, oblivious to the cruel events just south of him. His hat very baggy and his step very hasty and his hose very tight. There was someplace urgent he needed to be, and he wasn't going to make it there on time. It was a gorgeous calamity in scale, I thought. A lovely misfortune. Immediate and ( Read more... )

Daughter of Mystery, by Heather Rose Jones, is a Ruritanian fantasy about inheritance, the formulation of miracles, and falling in love. Or maybe I should say, it's what you get when you take The Goblin Emperor and replace the airships, goblins, and monarchy with lesbians, intrigue, and scholarly inquiry. (Not exactly on a one-to-one basis.) My ( Read more... )

Easter makes me uncertain, every year. There's what I once believed, and what the people around me believe, and I find myself caught somewhat in the middle. It's not easy to dismiss everything I was taught as a child--and frankly, I don't want to dismiss all of it--but it's so damn easy to just not think about it, when I'm surrounded by those who ( Read more... )

Yes, I am totally getting to Ovid! But I felt like doing some Greek while I was out, so I tackled a bit of Acts next. Koine is weird. I don't mean that in a judgmental sort of way--all dialects are equally valid!--but it's very, mm, chatty? Lots of prepositions that don't feel necessary to me, which lead me down rabbit trails as I try to work out ( Read more... )