These in-depth, thought-provoking, and often funny posts are the brainchild of The Book Barn's very own Glenn. He never fails to make a great recommendation, useful warning or entertaining suggestion!
#262: GETTING TO NŌ. “The Japanese nō theatre,” Royall Tyler writes, “is one of the great achievements of civilization. No art is more sophisticated than this intricate fusion of music, dance, mask, costume and language, nor does any uphold higher ideals. Nō plays, like those of other theatres, were written to be performed, but some can stand as literature beside any play ever put between the covers of a book. The aim of Japanese Nō Dramas is to demonstrate that this is
#261: THE ONCE AND PRESENT EMPEROR. Charles Allan’s Ashoka: The Search for India’s Lost Emperor (Abacus Books, 2012) is a good book on a great subject. Reading even causally in the history of Buddhism, one encounters the story of Ashoka, who in the third century BCE became India’s first avowedly Buddhist emperor. He promoted Buddhism throughout the subcontinent primarily by carving the precepts and exhortations into rocks and onto standing pillars, a number of which are
