Library Bookshelf

so_P_bubble · January 07, 2026, 02:38:06 AM

Quote from: MarsGal on January 06, 2026, 10:42:27 AMSo, that is what your friend has been up to, Bubble. I am assuming he was the one who joined us, very briefly, a while back. Congratulations on his newly published book.
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Yes, that is the one. Too busy for participating!

BarbStAubrey · January 10, 2026, 01:42:11 AM

lost my entire post - I'll try another time...

MarsGal · January 12, 2026, 12:01:57 PM

And now on to something different. I am back with Adrian Tchaikovsky's and his book,Service Model. It is described as satirical science fiction. The main character is a "domestic" robot named Charles who, according to the book blurb, accidentally murders his master and then heads outside the house he had been confined to on a journey to discover the wider world and try to understand how he fits into a world where human dominance is in decline and robots are on the rise. Sounds a bit existential.

Which reminds me, I would put McConaughey's philosophy right square in with existentialist philosophy, too.

BarbStAubrey · January 12, 2026, 04:39:52 PM

Wow - you nailed it on McConaughey - but then typical of the average thinker who sees independent action and thinking as the main engine of identity along with pride in something bigger than themselves.

Been reading Pope Benedict's XVI St. Paul - had no idea but in the Roman world Jews were only 3% of the population of which Catholic Jews were less than 1% - interesting read from an historical view of which the book is filled with. Another shock many of the quotes we associate with these early Christians were actually quotes from early philosophers who at the time were associated with other than Christian or Jewish thought.

As usual reading several books at the same time and having the time of my life reading one of a series of 12 about Characters wise and hilarious living ordinary lives in Sicily - each book is up to a dozen short stories and so you can easily pick up a book for a quick laugh or shaking up and down of the head written by Stefania Hartley - I've started with Fresh from the Sea: and other short stories (Sicilian Stories) The kindle versions range in price from .99 to 1.99 and one, the latest is 2.99 - I'm up to story 6 in the one I've started and cannot recommend this series more than any I've read including all the ones about elder women on some sort of lark written by two or three English authors.

MarsGal · January 13, 2026, 05:05:05 PM

I just finished Chapter 3 of Service Module. It is, indeed, heavy with comedic satire. The writing seems a bit simplistic, which may mean he was targeting the younger readers, or more likely, he was trying to convey simple computer logic without getting too complicated. A way to see the feedback loops and errors creeping into the program sequences, maybe. I am not sure I will follow the book the whole way through. So far, though, I think I would like to see it as a good stage production or radio play.

Marilyne · Reply #3455 - Re: Library Bookshelf

Barb and Patricia, I finally got, Celtic Myths that Shape The Way We Think. It's a beautiful looking book, so I'm hoping I'll like the content as much as I like the cover. If either of you have read it yet, let me know what you think?

Mars, I saw in SS, that Shan and Oscar had a "Spa Day" today. We should all be so lucky! I've never had the pleasure of visiting a spa. However, those in the know, say it's a wonderful rejuvenating experience! let us know how they reacted.

Cub Fan, I remember reading Tell Me Your Dreams, by Sidney Sheldon,
and liking it a lot! I had forgotten about it, and may check the library to see if they have it? I'd like read it again. Reminds me to thank you for recommending 100 Places to see After You Die, by Ken Jennings. I really enjoyed reading it.

BarbStAubrey · Reply #3456 - Re: Library Bookshelf

Ouch this is difficult - I know that Welsh and Irish myths were passed along before they were written however this author seems to only give credence to the written word -

First the author... Mark Williams is Associate Professor of Global Medieval Literature at the University of Oxford, specializing in Celtic languages and the medieval literature of Ireland and Wales. He is the author of Fiery Shapes: Celestial Portents and Astrology in Ireland and Wales, 700–1700 and Ireland's Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth.

Then this quote that sets the tone for the book... There are certainly resonances between this anecdote and some details in medieval Irish literature – which has a rather similar strongman figure named Ogma – but they are hard to interpret. In the absence of substantial written evidence from pre-Christian Celtic-speaking cultures about their myths, we are blind. We have material evidence, in the form of objects and ritual deposits, and while these can tell us stories about ancient people's beliefs and behaviour, they cannot give us their myths. For that, we need writing.

As noted above, the writings that may contain some elements of Celtic myth all date from the Middle Ages, and so discussing Celtic mythology intrinsically means discussing medieval literature. One of the most important aims of this book is not only to explore what Celtic mythology is (and is not), but also to introduce and contextualize the medieval literatures of Ireland and Wales, within which that mythology is largely contained. It helps that those literatures are astonishingly rich, packed with vivid characters and dramatic plots.

He also says a bit further in the chapter... The two most crucial cultures for the purposes of this book are those of the medieval Irish and Welsh. This is absolutely not to deny that Gaelic Scotland, Brittany, Cornwall and the Isle of Man have important traditions of their own, but the literatures of Wales and Ireland are so rich that I cannot treat even those as fully as I might wish in a short book such as this. They are also early, as these things go: the earliest Irish 'mythological' material, for example, probably dates to the 700s AD. But it must be remembered that the Irish and Welsh traditions are essentially separate: there are certainly points of contact, and the older forms of the Irish and Welsh languages benefit from being studied comparatively (this is in fact the foundation of the academic discipline of Celtic Studies), but they are not the same. We should really therefore be speaking of Celtic mythologies, in the plural.

The third reason why the term 'Celtic mythology' is tricky is that, for more than two centuries, many writers and artists have found the idea of a wellspring of Celtic legend and tradition deeply appealing, and in some cases profitable. The English-speaking world undergoes occasional spasms of enthusiasm for Celtic things, and writers in English have repeatedly turned to the medieval sources and reimagined them in ways that suited their own creative purposes. This means that Celtic mythology is especially rich in what scholarly jargon terms 'afterlife', and here a comparison with classical myth may be helpful. Most classical myths – let's choose the story of the poet Orpheus's loss of his wife, Eurydice – also have a rich afterlife. That story, of the poet who rescues his dead spouse from the world below only to lose her again at the last moment, has been adapted and retold in countless different languages and in many different media, from medieval romance (Sir Orfeo) to comic opera (Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld) to cinema (Cocteau's Orphée). But in each case a direct line of connection can be traced back to the ancient world, and to a canonical original text: in this case the Georgics by the Roman poet Virgil.

The situation is different in relation to the Celtic material. Latin and Greek were part of the intellectual patrimony of the whole of Europe for many centuries...

BarbStAubrey · Reply #3457 - Re: Library Bookshelf

He goes on to cite that St. Brigit was given a title as a Fire Goddess that cannot be proven ---

A medieval glossary from the turn of the 10th century describes her in triplicate as the goddess of poetry, medicine and smithcraft, and this is probably solid. But there is no explicit mention of fire; this comes in with the suggestion, no older than the late 19th century, that her namesake St Brigit, Ireland's most important female saint, was a Christianized form of the ancient goddess. Certainly St Brigit's earliest biographies feature lots of fire miracles, but so do those of St Columba and St Patrick; such miracles are a common feature of the genre of the saint's life. And then from the 12th century we have a description of a custom at St Brigit's monastic foundation at Kildare, where the nuns were supposed to tend a fire that was never allowed to go out. But it is not certain that this ritual was especially old, as no earlier source about St Brigit (of which there are several) mentions it. So a popular narrative has now been built up according to which the beloved Brigit, goddess of fire, was retained by the Irish after conversion by being transformed into the Christian saint, her ancient worship maintained by nuns instead of priestesses. Aside from the assertion that the ancient Irish probably did have a goddess called Brigit, which is almost certainly true, all of these details are at best arguable and at worst most unlikely. But Brigit-the-Irish-fire-goddess is now a familiar figure, and any handbook of Celtic myth will describe her in those terms as though they were settled facts.

Just do not like to bring up controversy however sharing the contents of this book is not matching what several of us have understood - hope these quotes help to sort out what this book is saying and therefore what any of us reading The Celtic Myths That Shape the Way We Think will be sharing...

MarsGal · Reply #3458 - Re: Library Bookshelf

After all this time it is still difficult to truly know the Druids and the early myths. I still have trouble with Druid origins pointing to Ireland. My first encounters had been of the Medieval representations and those were mostly on the Continent. The main source of written info about the Druids and the Celtic culture in Western Europe came from Julius Caesar although there are a few others who wrote of them before him. Most of these were related to the continental Druids. Caesar, himself, didn't spend a whole lot of time in Britain and never made it to Ireland. I got the distinct impression that Caesar did not like the Druids at all, especially their habit of human sacrifice. The last bastion of the Druids ended up on the Isle of Anglesey. Over the centuries, the Romans had a habit of incorporating more localized religious beliefs or traditions, where possible, from those they conquered into their own religious traditions. That may have been a more political maneuver to help smooth over the incorporation of those newly conquered into Roman ways.

As far the Welsh and the Irish, they were what we might call "frenemies". They had a back and forth history of being sometimes allies and sometimes enemies. The Irish, I think, were a bit ahead of the Welsh regarding modernizing their lives for some reason. Oh and another thought, keep in mind that the Welsh territories went up into what is now Southern Scotland very early. It is one of the reasons you see some references to King Arthur being Welsh or Scottish.

PS: My opinion of Caesar is that if he hadn't been a general and politically ambitious, he could have been an historian, anthropologist, and or a travel writer. You can see glimpses of this in his writings.

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