I thoroughly enjoyed Ann Patchett’s new novel, Commonwealth. In it, she tells the story of an extramarital affair and the blended family of six children that results. The stepsiblings mostly live on opposite coasts except for summer vacations when they become a tribe, wandering around the Virginia countryside. Patchett’s books tend to be about groups…
Like everyone else we know, my wife and I have gotten hooked on Marie Kondo. But maybe we shouldn’t have. After reading her book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, we tidied up. We are frugal people and don’t accumulate that much stuff, but still we had many bags of old clothes, shoes and books…
As I prepare for another dig later this month (i.e. ignore clothes and such but trying to find the perfect book for the airplane), I was reminded of an essay I wrote for Booksense.com. That website is no longer available so I guess the rights reverted back to me. Dig libraries can be described in…
I just finished reading Succeeding When You’re Supposed To Fail: The 6 Enduring Principles of High Achievement by Rom Brafman. So much of it deals with issues of parenting and teaching non-traditional students (which I do at the Clemente Course), that I thought I would take some time to summarize the book for myself and…
I’m an accidental coach. I thought I would sign up to assistant coach my son’s 4th grade soccer team but with limited parent volunteers, I got “promoted” to head coach of the Bears. As it turned out, some other parents stepped in to help out and I’m enjoying it. One of the other father’s even…
Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context: Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter By Her Students, eds. Jack Cheng & Marian Feldman, (Leiden: Brill), 2007 is now accessible online for reading or download. You can find it on Scribd here: Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context: Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter By Her…
Babylon’s Ark by Lawrence Anthony is a memoir of a conservationist’s trip to Baghdad soon after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to save the animals at the Baghdad Zoo. After reading a number of books on the topic, mostly on the archaeological looting, but also the excellent Imperial Life in the Emerald City, as…
Aren Maeir has published a review of Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context in the Review of Biblical Literature. As is often the case in reviewing essay collections, much of the article summarizes the contents of the book but Maeir is generally positive. This is the final paragraph: All told, the varied, provocative, and generally…
Because I’m a dork, I looked up our book in Hollis, Harvard’s online library catalog, and was pleased to find that the University bought three copies! One for the Divinity School library, one for Widener (the main, big general library) and one for the Fine Arts library. In case you’re wondering, only the Div School…
Well, turns out people better informed than me also think that Moqtada al-Sadr is one of the central figures in Iraq, marginalized by the Iraqi and American governments (as well as the American media). Here’s a post with the last chapter of Patrick Cockburn’s new book Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle…
Jack Cheng, PhD 