Latest news with #MadelineMiller
Wall Street Journal
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘Penelope's Bones' Review: Queens of the Bronze Age
Novels that explore Greek mythology from the point of view of 'silenced' women now constitute their own popular genre: Madeline Miller's 'Circe' (2018), Natalie Haynes's 'A Thousand Ships' (2019) and Jennifer Saint's 'Atalanta' (2023), to name but a few. Emily Hauser, a lecturer in classics and ancient history at the University of Exeter, has also contributed to this trend, but her latest work, 'Penelope's Bones: A New History of Homer's World Through the Women Written Out of It' is something else altogether: a riveting narrative of the female figures of Homer's 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' that draws on recent scholarship and archaeological discoveries. The author explores the roles and personalities of Homer's characters—the Greek beauty Helen, the enslaved girl Briseis, the Trojan royal Hecuba, the witch Circe, Odysseus' patient wife, Penelope, and so on—by examining real women of the Bronze Age archaeological and historical record. The result is a close study of the epic poems, a meditation on the lives of women then and now, an engaging history of scholarship, and an overview of the archaeology of the Bronze Age Aegean and beyond. Written with a novelist's flare, 'Penelope's Bones,' with its linked chapters, makes for a surprising page-turner. The bones of the title refer to the remains of a woman 'known to the researchers, somewhat unromantically, as I9033,' found in a royal burial site in the Peloponnese in Greece. Radiocarbon dating places the deceased at around the 14th century B.C., and she is buried with a queen's paraphernalia: 'gold leaf, beads of gold and semiprecious stones.' Ms. Hauser is not making the argument that this skeleton is actually the Penelope of the 'Odyssey' (her death, in any case, predates the traditional time of the Trojan War by a good century or two). The author is not, in other words, like the adventurer-cum-archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann (1822-90), who conducted excavations to prove the literal veracity of the epic poems. Rather, she is digging for the deeper truths in the poems, the real Bronze Age women affected by the violent deeds of men. Many other Mycenaean palaces and burials of the Greek Bronze Age, as well as countless artifacts and skeletal remains, have come to light since Schliemann's time. Ms. Hauser has the benefit not only of archaeological hindsight but of advances in science such as DNA testing. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the assumptions of early (usually male) archaeologists skewed their readings of excavations.
Business Insider
12-05-2025
- General
- Business Insider
I spent over a decade tracking my reading habits and goals. Now that I've stopped, I love books more than ever.
My past self would never believe it, but I couldn't tell you how many books I've read this year. After all, I've been hooked on reading since I was 7 years old, and for most of my life, I've kept track of all the books I've finished. It started in middle school with reading logs and journals I completed for homework. Then, I took it a step further and started keeping track of books I borrowed from the library, and later developed a reading diary. I loved that I could look back on different versions of myself and see how my reading preferences and taste in books changed over time. My love for book tracking only intensified when I discovered Goodreads in 2014. The website (and app) allowed me to more easily track my books, reviews, and reading habits from my computer or phone. Years later, I still read a lot. If I were to guess, I'd say I finish an average of 30 to 40 books a year, but I have no way of knowing the exact number because I no longer track the books I read. Tracking my reading habits made the experience less about fun and more about meeting a metric After many years of tracking the books I'd read, I began to lose some of the joy that came with reading. I became obsessed with hitting the reading goals I'd set for myself on Goodreads every January. Whenever I fell into a reading slump, I'd force myself to read books I didn't even want to read yet just to achieve an arbitrary metric. Last year, I spent a whole week trying to determine if finishing Madeline Miller's short story"Galatea" should count toward my reading goal for the year. Why did it matter so much? I was overthinking and missing the point of reading in the first place. All in all, actively tracking the books I read was making me unhappy, so I decided to stop. Ditching the metrics and goals have been freeing in many ways Of course, some of this is my fault. Setting reading goals is optional, and book tracking doesn't need to be as rigid as I'd defined it. Many people find happiness and satisfaction in all of the metrics and digital shelves, but stepping away from them has been great for me. Now, I read because I want to enjoy the content, go on adventures, and learn more about myself, not because I'm trying to achieve something. I no longer feel pressured to keep up with new books or stress over whether re-reading old favorites "counts" toward a goal — I just enjoy the hobby I'd always loved so much. I've given myself the freedom to branch out and read more than just books, too. I've expanded my interests to enjoy articles, think pieces, and poems I previously wouldn't have read because they weren't things I felt like I could easily track. Now that I've removed book tracking from my life, I don't see myself ever going back. After all, what good is reading so much if it doesn't bring me joy?
