Books on my Mind

Last night I was finally able to turn around the paper that was bothering me this weekend. Its not the best thing that I've ever written but I think I managed to do what the professor wanted. I just filled out my course evaluations and that's a really freeing feeling to just be honest about a course.

Now I'm enjoying the quiet of the undergrad before my class tonight, last late night Tuesday. Thanks to Comcast being awful on Sunday night, I ended up actually finishing two books that I've been reading and they both gave me a lot of things to think about.

I'm always interested in reading things about Classics, its what my undergrad study was in and its still one of my favorite topics. A year or two ago, I read a book called Loot in which a journalist took on the question of cultural patrimony and made me rather angry. She didn't do as much research as she might of and she fell under the sway of a major figure, Zawi Hawass and lost some of her objectivity.

Recently I was in Dawn Treader with the_croupier and saw a book called Who Owns Antiquity?, this book was the answer of someone who has worked in the museum business for a long time and doesn't buy cultural patrimony.

The author talks about how important it is to have places where we can look at art from throughout time and place in one space and we need more of them. What's getting in the way is the idea of nation and national identity and archaeologists and museum curators have been convinced that looting is the same thing as having things in a place where everyone can see them. Its a complicated argument that I'm not doing justice so I recommend this book.

The other book I recently finished was The Lost Hero, which I have some issues with. They're going under the cut.
( Jason, Piper and Leo )