Latro musings

Hi all, Unfortunately, I have woefully little to contribute to the understanding of these great books, but I've found the discussion going on here quite helpful. I just picked up a U of Chicago edition of Herodotus' History which I plan to read as soon as I finish the last few pages of Legends of the Samurai. On an aside, I also picked up a copy of Hamlet's Mill which I plan to tackle after H (thanks Crush). The farther I travel on the path of the Autodidact, the more pissed I get at my public (including college) education. I should have read Herodotus ten, if not fifteen, years ago. Oh well. Anyhow back to Latro. This is my one contribution, and it's only an aesthetic one. I found that while I was reading the Soldier omnibus I was having a devil of a time keeping track of all of the people and events. A few times I backtracked to figure out what was going on but then I stopped and just read through. It was quite an interesting effect, forgetting a lot of what I read. Very disorienting, but it produced quite an empathetic bond in me with Latro and made him one of my favorite characters in the works of Wolfe's I've read. For what it's worth, Don

I've found that most people do better if they work up to 'Hamlet's Mill'. I generally recommend that people first read Anthony Aveni's 'Stairways to the Stars' and William Sullivan's 'The Secret of the Incas' before they tackle 'Hamlet's Mill'. The first is a good general work on what's called archaeoastronomy these days, the second is a specific application of the ideas and methodology described in 'Hamlet's Mill' to the history and archaeology of Andean civilization. .

Thanks for the suggestion. On looking back, I see that you brought up Hamlet's Mill to Crush. So double thanks. God only knows when I'll get to all this stuff. I need a personal reader like Borges had (though I'd rather not go blind). Maybe I won't sleep. Yeah. Don