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!
A Note Before the First. An index of Subjects. The subjects: 1: Kenneth Rexroth’s Classics Revisited. 2: The Tale of Genji. 3: The poetry of Daniel Huws. 4: The novels of Jonis Agee. 5: Five (or twelve) great mysteries. 6: The literature of the Blasket Islands. 7: Zen: Shunryū Suzuki, Robert Aitken, R.H. Blyth, and Brian Victoria’s Zen At War. 8: The letters of Van Gogh, Keats, Helene Hanff, and the Shaw-Terry correspondence. 9: The journals of Pepys, Thoreau and Dorothy Wor
#275: LOVE! VALOUR! COMPASSION! Reading around in classical history, you may well have run across references to a particular military troop of the city-state of Thebes, 300 soldiers—more specifically and unusually, 150 pairs of male lovers. The rationale for this was the notion that no man would want to abandon his lover in the battlefield, or be seen by him in any act of cowardice. The troop’s existence is attested to in Plutarch, in Xenophon and a few others; further evi
