100 Followers
65 Following
arbieroo

Arbie's Unoriginally Titled Book Blog

It's a blog! Mainly of book reviews.

Currently reading

Station Zero
Philip Reeve
Progress: 220/282 pages
The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition
Ursula K. Le Guin, Charles Vess
Progress: 749/997 pages
The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry
Robert Chandler
The Uncertain Land and Other Poems
Patrick O'Brian
Progress: 8/160 pages
The Heptameron (Penguin Classics)
Marguerite de Navarre
Progress: 152/544 pages
The Poems and Plays of John Masefield
John Masefield
Progress: 78/534 pages
Poems Selected
Emily Dickinson, Ted Hughes
Progress: 4/50 pages
Selected Poems
U A Fanthorpe
Progress: 18/160 pages
The Penguin Book of Scottish Verse
Mick Imlah, Robert Crawford
Hainish Novels & Stories, Vol. 2
Ursula K. Le Guin
Progress: 133/789 pages

Reading progress update: I've read 218 out of 288 pages.

Early Irish Myths and Sagas - Various Authors, Jeffrey Gantz

The Intoxication of the Ulaid: In which the warriors of Ulster feast; get drunk; boast; argue; fight - and that's jsut what happens before they decide to all go over to Cu Chulaind's place for more feasting and get lost on the way. The boozing isn't even the Intoxication of the title - that happens later, too. Unfortunately both extant versions of this story are incomplete and somewhat inconsistent with each other. Fortunately one picks up roughly where the other leaves off but one never finds out how the Ulstermen get out of the very specific pickle they are trapped in at the end of the Leinster version. Some suggest this is a late parody of the Ulster Cycle of pagan Irish stories because of its comedic nature but I find many of the extant Celtic myths and legends comicly preposterous, anyway.