Phew! I feel a little better, pumped out 5 book reviews today! Now I want to get back to
She by H. Rider Haggard. I have a feeling this book's going to be an adventure! So far, a dying man has entrusted his 5 year old boy to a school friend telling him that he must train his boy in Ancient Greek, advanced maths and Arabic. On the boy's 25th birthday he is to give him the key to open a casket whose contents will present the boy with a challenge. This dying man insists that his sixty-fifth or sixty-sixth lineal ancestor was an Egyptian priest of Isis of Grecian extraction, named Kallikrates. This priest breaks his vows of celibacy and flees from Egypt with a Princess of royal blood. Sounds exciting!
I've just gotten to the part where Leo Vincey has opened the casket and among pieces of translated parchment was a pottery sherd with a Greek inscription, a miniature of his mother, a letter from his father and a scarab bearing the words '(royal) Son of Ra': bit of a mistranslation here actually, the scarab bears the -sw plant, a duck and a sun disc. Normally for son of Ra just the duck and sun disc would be necessary, transliterated as s3-rc or sa-re. Being that this is an epithet used only for royalty the -sw plant is unnecessary. Besides to use the -sw plant to mean royal or king you would need to transliterate it as nsw - but this was written in the 1800s so I'll cut him some slack. Ha!
I believe this adventure is going to lead him to Africa where according to the back of the book Leo will have to endure shipwreck, fever and cannibal attacks, before coming face to face with Ayesha, She-who-must-be-obeyed: the beautiful, tyrannical ruler of a lost civilization. She's been waiting hundreds of years for the true descendant of her dead lover to arrive. Fabulous! And a 1001!
I have a meeting tomorrow at noon with my new supervisor to break the news of my departure! Wish me luck!
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posted by Ashleigh @ 23:39,
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random field notes
ashleigh (ash'lė) n.
1: egyptologist; currently living in the uk attempting to
obtain a phd
in egyptology, hoping in the end there will be a job.
2: literary; reading to escape reality, to improve
conversation, for
inspiration.
3: crafter; crocheting and needlework, creating heirlooms,
keeping the
world warm.
4: dreamer; head in the clouds, full of fantasies, wishing
to be someone
else, somewhere else.
:: reading ::
: Ivanhoe . Walter Scott
: Schindler's Ark . Thomas Keneally
: The Amber Spyglass . Philip Pullman
: The Red Queen . Margaret Drabble
: Un Lun Dun . China Miéville
: A Handful of Dust . Evelyn Waugh
: Adjunct: An Undigest . Peter Manson
: A Kestral for a Knave . Barry Hines
:: recently finished ::
: Falling Man . Don DeLillo
: Written on the Body . Jeanette Winterson
: The Bell Jar . Sylvia Plath
: No One Writes to the Colonel . Gabriel García Márquez
: The Subtle Knife . Philip Pullman
:: book rating ::
5 : True Love
4 : Like
3 : Good
2 : Ok
1 : Why did I read this?
:: challenges ::
: 1% Well Read
: 888 Challenge
: Chunkster Challenge
: Decades Challenge 2008
: Novella Challenge
: Once Upon A Time II
: The Parisian Underworld
: The Pub
:: creating ::
: sadly nothing at the moment
:: recent posts ::
: the prime of miss jean brodie
: the yellow wallpaper
: the diary of a nobody
: the ladies of grace adieu
: middlemarch
: it's still friday right?
: crash
: a passage to india
: you knew it, i knew it...
: a bookish affair
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01
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:: crafty
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