F. R. Kreutzwald, Kalevipoeg, translated by Triinu Kartus, 2011. If you don't know, Kalevipoeg is the Estonian national epic poem. Kreutzwald started writing it around 1850, and it had a series of publications beginning in 1853 and ending with the Estonian-language book form publication in Tartu in 1875. It is the foundational text of Estonian … Continue reading Kalevipoeg

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. V. E. Watts, Penguin Classics, 1969. I think I had read this several years ago and didn't really get it. I went through a pretty strong anti-theist phase in my late teens, and I think that's why I wanted to read it. (I was the kind of asshole who … Continue reading Consolation of Philosophy

History of the Peloponnesian War, translated by Rex Warner. There is a lot you could say about Thucydides. There's a reason people have been arguing about him for 2400 years. It was an interesting read, especially after Herodotus. He certainly has a very different style, famously zealously detailed and at the same time "austere," which … Continue reading Thucydides

I'm going to start putting the full info for each book at the beginning of each post. Deep in the Forest: One Hundred Estonian Fairy Tales About the Forest and its People, compiled by Risto Järv, translated by Adam Cullen, 2018. Again I thought these were pretty wonderful. They're actually more diverse than those of … Continue reading More Estonian Fairy Tales

I'm a pretty crap Classics student. Almost 4 years after graduating with a Classics BA I still hadn't read Herodotus until now. Nothing to do about it. Anyway, I probably couldn't have appreciated it in college. That's true of a lot of things I read. I'm definitely more sensitive now. Anyway I suppose the main … Continue reading Herodotus, Histories