Lucas Blogs About Books

Oh, so we're actually doing a blog today? Well, yeah. . . . why wouldn't we? I mean, it's New Year's Eve, I figured after last week you'd find some bullshit excuse to get out of posting for another week. While it would be a lie to say that I hadn't considered it, it was more along the lines of skipping last Monday and this Monday and then posting on the Thursdays. Whatever. Did you have a good Christmas? I did. Thank you. What about you? Well, as a rhetorical device I generally don't observe holidays. With the exception of Isocrates's birthday. Isocrates? He was an ancient Greek rhetorician , I was making a joke. Well, we don't have time for jokes. I'm pretty sure that's a lie. Anyway, we haven't done a Load-Bearing Elements since. . . let me check. . . DECEMBER THIRD! I told you you'd been skimping on the work. Well, it's time to rectify that by talking about characters and, more importantly, Characteri...

Hey! The more sharp-eyed among you may notice that this isn't one of my regular features. How could we miss? Well, that aside, you may also know that today is Christmas Eve. So, I'm taking the week off from updates. Does this have anything to do with the fact that while you were sick you didn't feel like reading or writing enough blog content to maintain a healthy buffer? Does it ever! Anyway, whatever Winter holidays you may or may not observe I hope that they turn out pretty okay. That might be the lamest sentiment that has ever been expressed. Whatevs, updates to resume next Monday, December 31st.

No! Why would I want to talk about Literary Theory? Because you appreciate discussions about books and their place in society. Well, I do appreciate those things, yes. But Theory is more than a little pretentious, don't you think? Yeah, but that doesn't mean we can't talk about it. Fine. Where should we start? Well, maybe with a rough definition. That's easy, Literary Theory is when you take a discussion about Literature and turn it into a discussion of something else. Hmmm. C'mon, tell me I'm wrong. Well, I'd say it's more when you take a discussion of something else and turn it into a discussion about Literature. Hmmm. Are we being too joke-y? Maybe a little. Well, let's be more straightforward and define Theory as a series of analytical frameworks that you can apply to the discussion of literary texts. That's pretty sweeping. Well, you know. So, it's really just about new ways of looking at Literature. Exa...

Wait, math is about more than numbers? So, what's this book's deal? You may be unsurprised to learn that Math with Bad Drawings: Illuminating the Ideas that Shape Our Reality  is an educational book for grown-ups that tries to make mathematical concepts easily accessible to those of us who don't have a background in math. You took AP Calculus BC in high school. For a semester, but this is even more straightforward than that. Rather than trying to teach the reader how to perform complex calculations or solve equations, Orlin presents the reader with real world scenarios and explains the mathematics underpinning them. These practical demonstrations are divided up into five sections that broadly discuss: Mathematical Thinking, Geometry, Probability, Statistics, and Continuous/Discrete variables. Huh, so like a kind of practical guide to mathematical concepts? Yeah, it's not bogged down with a lot of equations (there are some in the endnotes) but instead stri...

I don't want FOP, GODDAMNIT! I'm a Dapper Dan man! Some people like to complain about the inevitable changes that occur when a story is adapted from one medium to another. But let's be honest, sometimes, the less faithful an adaptation is, the more memorable it is. So, in this series I'll be taking a look at adaptations where creators took one look at the source material and said, "FUCK THAT NOISE!" to see how that turned out. Today's Oddaptation: The Odyssey of Homer  (8th Century-ish BCE) by Homer, trans. Richmond Lattimore into O Brother, Where Art Thou? dir. Joel Cohen, written by Ethan and Joel Cohen Sing to me, muse, of those quirky writer-directors who transposed an ancient Greek epic they claim never to have read into one of the most quote-able movies ever made. The Original:  Something is rotten in the state of Ithaca. The king, Odysseus, never returned after the Trojan War (which itself took ten years) ended ten years ago. And now 100+...

Bloggers can do that, right? Right? New post on Thursday, I promise.

Ah, I see we're breaking out the inOpportune cOntent rePlacement proceSs .  You dun goofed! Again. I know, but maybe it was a self-sabotage and I just secretly wanted to talk about another of my hobbies. So, you play the ukulele? Yes. I'm sorry. Wow! That was rude. You're right. I'm actually sorry now. So do you do anything insufferable like pronounce it "oo-koo-lay-lay?" You mean . . . the way it's pronounced in the Hawaiian language? Yeah. No, I pronounce it "yooka-lay-lee." Anyway, the local Parks Department offers ukulele lessons for ages 12+ at the Senior Center for a pretty reasonable price and I thought it would be a fun thing to learn.  I mostly just play chords to accompany myself singing, and I like to think I've become reasonably okay at that. I'm not particularly good at picking out a melody, so I've got some room to grow there. Cool. What sort of instrument do you play? It's a Kala KA-ZCT-T T...

You're not planning to do anything cutesy like spend the whole time discussing something other than Allegory only to reveal that you were actually talking about Allegory the whole time are you? Probably not. Okay, because I don't like Allegories. That's fine, I'm not here to tell you what to like. I'm here to blog about books. And before you say that your dislike of Allegory means that it isn't enough to support an entire work of fiction, let's just agree that whether or not you like it authors have been using it for millennia and we can't just ignore it. Well, we could just ignore it, but I suspect you've got a "because-it's-there" mentality when it comes to discussing literary devices. That's the spirit, Hypothetical Reader. So, what do you know about Allegory? The word itself derives from Ancient Greek and literally means something like "to talk about something else." But I would say most people would think ...