The Lion of Chaeronea

Current nonfiction reading is The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw. I'm really enjoying this one -- for a single-volume history that spans millennia, it's remarkably comprehensive. Each chapter is written by one or more preeminent scholars, and they do a fine job of integrating textual evidence (where it exists) with archaeological data to produce a picture that includes not just political developments, but social, cultural, and economic changes as well.

As one of my roughly 1,000 reading goals, I'm working my way through the plays of Shakespeare that I've never tackled before (or tackled but didn't finish, for one reason or another). I just finished As You Like It, which was utterly delightful and easily ranks among the best of the comedies. Next up are Measure for Measure and Cymbeline (not sure which of the two I'll read first).

I have a bucket list of world museums I'd like to visit, and I recently added the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City to that list. It just looks damn cool.

I'm working right now on a novel set in the English countryside -- a combination of pastoral, comedy of manners, and ecofiction. If I'm honest, it's probably dumb as all hell, but it's what I need right now. Attempting anything dark or serious would probably put paid to the last of my sanity, so I'm taking a mental vacation from the horrors of real life.

Trying my best to stick with the Stafford Challenge to write a poem a day for a year. We're 158 days in, and while I'm proud of my achievement thus far, it's a little discouraging that I'm running out of steam and we haven't even hit the halfway mark. Still, I'll keep going for as long as I can.