Monthly Archives: March 2009

Arms of Nemesis by Steven Saylor

By terje | Published: March 31, 2009
430 pages. Robinson paperback. 1992. 72 BCE: While Spartacus is ravaging the countryside of Southern Italy and making all good Romans distrust their slaves, Goridanus the Finder is brought to Baiae on the Cup, what today is known as the Bay of Naples, to find a killer. Lucius Licinius, the cousin of Marcus Crassus, has been found murdered [...]
Posted in Literature, Review, Roman stuff | 4 Comments

The Awesome Epithets of European Nobility and Royalty, part 2

By terje | Published: March 30, 2009
Anund Jacob (1022-1050) of Sweden: the Coalburner (Colbrænnæ). When this Swedish king was elected ruler by the Thing the people objected to his foreign name, and appended an “Anund” to it. When not caring for the balance of power in Scandinavia by supporting Olav Digre of Norway against Knut of Denmark, Anund Jacob enjoyed crusading in [...]
Posted in History, Norse stuff, The Awesome Epithets of European Nobility and Royalty | 2 Comments

A matter of spiritual kinship — 2009-03-30

By terje | Published: March 30, 2009
Bob goes to church every Sunday, Every Sunday that the fish ain’t biting Bob never has to have dinner with the preacher, cause Bob never bothered getting married He likes to drink a beer or two every now and again, he always had more dogs than he ever had friends Bob ain’t light in the loafers, he might kneel but [...]
Posted in Links, Music, Quote of the day | 2 Comments

The Awesome Epithets of European Nobility and Royalty, part 1

By terje | Published: March 30, 2009
General Introduction Whenever someone distinguished themselves in olden days, be it positively or negatively, it was customary to give them a nickname (also known as an epithet). Some of these are plain and dull (Haakon the Good, Louis the Pious), but some are more fascinating (Philip the Handsome (an epithet which sounds ridiculously more fun in [...]
Posted in History, My microcosmos, Roman stuff, The Awesome Epithets of European Nobility and Royalty | 3 Comments

Wonderful — 2009-03-29

By terje | Published: March 30, 2009
strange: aberrant, able, abnormal, absurd, alien, amazing, anomalous, apart, astonishing, astounding, atypical, barbarian, barbaric, barbarous, beguiling, bereft of reason, bewildering, bizarre, brainsick, crackbrained, cracked, crank, crankish, cranky, crazed, crazy, crotchety, curious, daft, deluded, demented, deprived of reason, deranged, detached, deviant, deviative, different, disconnected, discrete, disjunct, disoriented, disrelated, dissociated, distraught, divergent, dotty, eccentric, enigmatic, erratic, exceptional, [...]
Posted in Awe, Quote of the day, Words | 16 Comments

Stranger than Fiction

By terje | Published: March 30, 2009
Watched Stranger than Fiction again tonight, and I was happy to discover that it was as good on the second viewing and in company as it was on the first and alone. The plot is a bit hard to describe without ruining it all, as discovering what the hell is going on is one of the [...]
Posted in A Moistening of the Eyes, A Praise Chorus, Art, Awe, Bliss, Glee, Goosebumps!, Love, Movies, Pimping, Pleasant surprises, Recommendations, Review, Speculative fiction, Television stuff, Yay! | 9 Comments

Roman Blood by Steven Saylor

By terje | Published: March 27, 2009
565 pages. Robinson paperback. 1991. First installation of the series Roma Sub Rosa. Roman Blood sends us back in time to 80 BCE, to the final weeks of the dictatorship of Lucius Cornelius Sulla. The relatively young and unknown advocate Marcus Tullius Cicero seeks the help of Gordianus the Finder in unearthing evidence to help him defend his friend’s [...]
Posted in Literature, Review, Roman stuff | 6 Comments

The First Book of Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber

By terje | Published: March 24, 2009
Containing the four short-story collections “Swords & Deviltry”, “Swords against Death”, “Swords in the Mist” and “Swords against Wizardry”, The First Book of Lankhmar is a must-read for any serious lover of Fantasy. Fritz Leiber’s Sword & Sorcery has to be counted among the many who created the clichés of the genre, especially as Leiber [...]
Posted in Literature, Review, Speculative fiction | 1 Comment

A brief update

By terje | Published: March 24, 2009
As mentioned somewhere before, albeit probably on my ridiculously short-lived Norwegian blog, I didn’t have access to the Internet where I lived in Athens. I also tended to prioritise other stuff than blogging or the Net in general when I actually had access, and in combination with my well-known erratic posting habits recently, this has [...]
Posted in My microcosmos | 6 Comments