Charles Baudelaire

Edgar Allan Poe and Engineering Poetry

Richard Carroll
There’s no better time than October to revisit Edgar Allan Poe, and since I already covered his short stories last year, this year I thought we’d move on to his poetry. Unfortunately, we risk doing so at some thematic loss. Yes, his short stories are mostly horror, and so is his most famous poem, “The Raven,” but most of his poetry doesn’t really fit that category. Some of it’s still morbid, though, as beautiful young women have the same astonishing mortality rate here as they do in the stories, but to keep things seasonal I’ll focus on his most popular work.

The Bibliophile's Journal

Richard Carroll
It’s been a while since I’ve done a round-up post, but I’ve of course continued to read quite a bit. Here’s the highlight reel. The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien - I’ve been meaning to re-read The Lord of the Rings, since I haven’t read it since shortly before the film trilogy came out ten years ago. I tend to approach long books reluctantly, though, so it’s taken me a long time to get around to it.

Analects of an Autodidact

Richard Carroll
Don’t you hate it when a blogger introduces a post by apologising for only being able to write up something short and quick, because he’s been busy with school? *ahem* Well, anyway, vocational training aside, it’s been an exciting week for me, because I’m in the home stretch of Sandberg and Tatham’s French for Reading, which I’ve mentioned before. All the main lessons are finished, I just need to get through a final section of reading passages, which I’ll probably finish this week.