A Trip to the Library

My wife gave me a delightful task: take a shirt back to the Student Book Center at ASU for a refund. Not many interesting books there, but it’s a few yards from ASU’s library. So I spent almost an hour in the library and checked out the following books:

Alternative Histories of English – a collection of essays on the history of non-standard Englishes to highlight the fact that the typical history of English textbook focuses on the standard in the last half of the past millenium while fairly much ignoring the many other Englishes spoken around the world.

A History of the English Language by VanGelderen – probably a mistake in my haste but I’ll look it over for particular insights. I just felt like a general history of English and couldn’t find what I wanted, a book by Roger Lass. I’ll take it back soon if it doesn’t serve my interests.

Cavafy’s Alexandria – the author, Edmund Keeley, got me interested in modern Greek poetry with his Six Poets of Modern Greece many years ago. Cavafy lived in Alexandria, Egypt around the turn of the last century and is considered one of the top five poets of modern Greek literature if not the top. True to my usual bent, my interest in literature is more in its context than in its substance (unless it involves linguistic and lexical analysis), and this fits the bill perfectly

An Introduction to Modern Greek Literature – a broader take on the literature of Greece from the early 1800s on. I read a great deal on Russian literature years ago and it is interesting to read about the literary development of a country. Greek is also a language I am studying – it’s probably the one on my list I am least advanced in, but I am interested in starting off with poetry and Harry Potter, then some modern classics like Kazantzakis.

Next week I’ll go back to the library and pick up something by Lass.

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