Steven鈥檚 Year in Books

What did you read this year?

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2024

3,200

pages read

books read

Steven Rodriguez

Shortest Book

pages

Longest Book

694

pages

Average book length in 2024

228

pages

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

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1,239,633

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[ Beowulf[ BEOWULF ] By Donaldson, E. Talbot ( Author )Jan-01... by E. Talbot Donaldson

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Steven鈥檚 average rating for 2024

3.9

Highest Rated on 欧宝娱乐

4.48 average

Steven鈥檚 first review of the year

it was ok

Trigger warning: This review talks about sexual assault.

What a mess. How did this poem come to be a central part of the Western Civ canon? It's disgusting. Congrats, Virgil, you figured out a way to be disturbing and boring at the same time. It felt like an ancient version of Captain America: Winter Soldier, with its mind-numbingly stupid blend of uber-patriotism and gratuitous fight scenes. Supposedly its antiquity makes it better, but no, it's Trigger warning: This review talks about sexual assault.

What a mess. How did this poem come to be a central part of the Western Civ canon? It's disgusting. Congrats, Virgil, you figured out a way to be disturbing and boring at the same time. It felt like an ancient version of Captain America: Winter Soldier, with its mind-numbingly stupid blend of uber-patriotism and gratuitous fight scenes. Supposedly its antiquity makes it better, but no, it's still muscular men in tights grunting and killing each other for far too long. So many times my eyes glazed over at yet another long description of bloody gore, uneasy in my heart at the violence, sleepy in my brain from the sheer repetitiveness of another addition to the body count.

Let's call this work what it is: imperial propaganda. It's one long self-serving justification for the Roman Empire. You can't argue with Feuerbach's thesis that God is just a projection of our desires when Virgil pulls $@*! like this. Throughout the poem, the gods are a set of props, an elaborate lie to give the Roman Empire some tattered shred of legitimacy.

But it gets worse. The true villain of this poem is Jupiter, an unrepentant sexual predator, who uses his power as paterfamilias to destroy the lives of others with impunity. The plot is set in motion by his sexual assault of Ganymede, and it reaches its horrible non-denouement as Juturna relives the trauma of her sexual assault by Jupiter. Her sign of the eagle in the sky chased off by the mob of smaller birds is a #MeToo shout of protest if there ever was one. And yet, in the end, Jupiter wins, by feigning neutrality and eluding justice. I can't remember the last time I was this angry at the ending of a book.

It's not all a stinking pile of trash, though. Yes, Virgil is an amazing poet. Yes, there are many arresting bits of wordplay. Most of all, Book VI is beautiful, creepy, and clearly fertile, as evidenced by how much of Dante's Divine Comedy pops up in it in embryonic form. But the imperialist poison is still coursing through it, and one can see where Dante's political theology was tainted by this influence. (Dante, get that Roman Eagle out of Paradise!)

In the end, I find myself sharing the appraisal of Augustine in City of God, who was not afraid to unmask the pretensions of Virgil and mock Roman history for its silly, incoherent, and morally inconsistent founding narratives. In this era of handwringing about toppling statues and radical revisionist history, we can take comfort that Christians of the past like Augustine have been unafraid to critique official histories in the searing and transfiguring light of the Gospel.

[A note on translation: I read the new Sarah Ruden translation. I had previously read her translation of Apuleius鈥� Golden Ass, and appreciated her terse and readable style. But where her conversational English fit perfectly with Apuleius鈥� irreverent hijinks, it didn鈥檛 quite fit Virgil鈥檚 austere self-importance. Whenever I did a translation comparison, Mandelbaum (1971) and Fitzgerald (1983) often came out the winners with more faithful renderings of the Latin.] ...more

厂罢贰痴贰狈鈥橲 2024 BOOKS

The History of Portugal by James Maxwell Anderson

it was amazing

Shakespeare in a Divided America by James Shapiro

The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges

it was amazing

Galatea (Revels Student Editions MUP) by John Lyly by John Lyly

Steven鈥檚 last review of the year

it was amazing

Top 20 book for me! Highly recommend.

What did you read this year?