cue intermission music

[bonny_kate]

I'm taking a bit of an intermission between Chesterton's The Everlasting Man which I just finished and beginning The Faerie Queene. This year my only New Year's not resolution (it's only a desire or plan or some such, so I don't feel as obligated to actually do it) is to make it all the way through The Faerie Queene. I've tried a couple of times, the most recent being the summer I graduated, but have never made it through the second book. But I am determined to make a start, and not worry too much about understanding things or reading footnotes or underlining. The point is to make it all the way through. I also plan to sort of skim the first book, which I've probably read three times. I don't want to skip it entirely, since it has been a while, but I also don't want to burn out at the second book again. The book is a generous thousand pages of old English poetry, and right about now I'm wondering why I decided that this was a brilliant idea. (As an interesting sidenote, I learned that Spencer is buried in Westminster Abbey near Chaucer, and while I couldn't find any monuments to Spencer, he's still there and I was there and that's just cool.)

So, as an intermission before I start The Faerie Queene, I'm reading Anne of Windy Poplars, which is quite as good as I remember so far (somewhat remarkably), and just what I was in the mood to read. I'd never noticed the occasional classic reference before. The latest in Windy Poplars is Homer.