Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Started: The New Teen Titans Volume Seven by Marv Wolfman and George Perez

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Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Teen Titans: The Silver Age Volume 2: Book Review


Started: May 1, 2025

(This is my first time reading this book, so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.)



Links to stuff mentioned:

* My review of The New Teen Titans Volume Six  (This is the volume in which Marv Wolfman digs deeper into the origins of Wonder Girl.  I said Volume 5 in the video, but that was a mistake): https://youtu.be/jN2H5jFbvL0

* My review of The '60s TV Movie (one of several videos in which I talk about my youthful fascination with the 1960s): https://youtu.be/JXoqGLasO9Y

* The BBC Steve Ditko documentary that I mentioned (see the 38 minute mark for the commentary on Hawk and Dove): https://youtu.be/EX-wGAwSi9Q?si=MqjgD0XEm0n9vkE6

* For an example of Captain America fighting against the Vietnamese, see my review of Captain America Volume 1: https://youtu.be/u9YNze-zihI

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I was able to read this book thanks to the Michigan statewide state-wide interlibrary loan service called MeLCat, which may be in danger thanks to a Presidential executive order.  If you, like me, enjoy using MeLCat, contact your local representatives and let them know. 

Did you enjoy this review? Consider supporting me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joelswagman

Support me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/JoelSwagman

Check out this book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4di2eFr          (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
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Monday, May 12, 2025

Starting: Rose by Jeff Smith

Check out this book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4m936Ad                (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
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Roots: The Next Generations (TV Mini Series): Review


Links to stuff mentioned:
* At the moment, you can watch Roots: The Next Generation on Youtube.  Who knows how long it will stay up, but for the moment at least here's a link to the first episode: https://youtu.be/uWVXScIrKpg?si=lTMSySBKpzC6qVTi

This is part of my so-called "Scripted Review" series, in which I make a Youtube video based on an old blogpost.  For more information on what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE:

This is also part of my Television Addiction series.  For my explanation of what the Television Addiction series is and why I'm doing it, see: https://youtu.be/T5CEQ9-35xA and http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2021/04/television-addiction-article-on.html


Roots: The Next Generations

          I was first introduced to Roots when my 5th grade school teacher showed us the first couple episodes.
            It wasn’t until years later, when I was in Japan, that I finally got my hands on the whole series.  (The Japanese video rental store near my town had the series in stock—in English with Japanese subtitles.)
            But I’ve never had an opportunity to watch Roots: The Next Generations until now when I stumbled upon it at a DVD store in Cambodia.
            Before I watched this series, I had always assumed that Roots: The Next Generations was just an attempt to milk more money off of the original Roots.  But I was mistaken.  This is the ending of the story, and without this sequel the series would not have been complete.
             Roots: The Next Generations came out in 1979 just 2 years after the original Roots, and it picks up right where the original Roots left off.  And it completes the goal of the TV series which, like the book, is to follow Alex Haley’s family tree all the way from Africa to the present day. 
            I suspect what happened is that the book got split into two different TV shows for economic reasons—the TV company wasn’t willing to commit to the whole story until it knew it had an audience, and only after the success of the original Roots did they agree to complete the story.
            But now that the whole series has been produced, they should really just stop selling it separately as Roots and Roots: The Next Generations and instead put box up both DVDs together into one package and sell the whole thing as Roots, because it really is just one continuous story.
            The TV show is from 1979, and has a lot of the hallmarks of television drama from the late 1970s/early 1980s that strike us as cheesy today—over-acting, overly dramatic music that swells up at the end of each episode just as a character looks off into the distance and says some sort of dramatic line, a complete lack of any subtlety, et cetera.
            And yet, inspite of all its flaws, it’s still incredibly addictive to watch. The cheesy 70s television drama still has a strong narrative appeal, and I found myself getting sucked in episode after episode and unable to pull myself away from my couch.    (I guess it was not for nothing that Roots was one of the the most watched mini-series in American television history.)
            All the famous actors who participated in the series also make it fun to watch: Peter Fonda, Marlon Brando, James Earl Jones, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis.




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Friday, May 09, 2025

Ludlul bēl Nēmeqi: The Standard Babylonian Poem of the Righteous Sufferer translated by Amar Annus and Alan Lenzi: Book Review


Started: May 6, 2025

(This is my first time reading this book, so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.)



Related Playlists




I was able to read this book thanks to the Michigan statewide state-wide interlibrary loan service called MeLCat, which may be in danger thanks to a Presidential executive order.  If you, like me, enjoy using MeLCat, contact your local representatives and let them know. 

Did you enjoy this review? Consider supporting me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joelswagman

Support me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/JoelSwagman

Check out this book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4d6s5zY             (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
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Thursday, May 08, 2025

Babylonian Creation Myths by W.G. Lambert (My reread of the Enuma Elis): Book Discussion

(Book Review--Blogging the Canon, The Classics)

Started: April 22, 2025

As I mentioned in the video, this book is a partial reread because it is based around the Enuma Elis translation by W.G. Lambert, which I read when I did Enuma Elish Translated by W.G. Lambert with commentary by Ken Goudsward.  However, because this book has additional material, I am treating the book as a whole as a first-time read, and subsequently accoding to my new rules I am doing this as a video only review.



This volume contains:
* Enuma Elis
* Enmesarra's Defeat
* The Town of Zarpanitum
* The Toil of Babylon
* Uras and Marduk
* The Murder of Ansar?
* Damkina's Bond
* The Defeat of Enutila, Enmesarra, and Qingu
* Enki and Ninmah
* The Exaltation of Nabu
* A Unilingual / Bilingual Account of Creation
* The Slaying of Labbu
* The Founding of Eridu
* The First Brick
* Another Dragon-Slwing Episode
* The Theogony of Dunnu
* The River Incantation
* Mythological Introductions on Creation


Related Playlists





I was able to read this book thanks to the Michigan statewide state-wide interlibrary loan service called MeLCat, which may be in danger thanks to a Presidential executive order.  If you, like me, enjoy using MeLCat, contact your local representatives and let them know. 

Did you enjoy this review? Consider supporting me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joelswagman

Support me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/JoelSwagman

Check out this book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3Y7FYYs             (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
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Wednesday, May 07, 2025

Started: Metamorphoses by Ovid

Check out this book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4jMYY7l                 (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
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Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls: Book Review


Started: April 29, 2025

This is a reread.  As I mention in the video, I think I read it around 4th grade.  However, as this is my first time reviewing this book on this blog, according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.





Did you enjoy this review? Consider supporting me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joelswagman

Support me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/JoelSwagman

Check out this book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/436YfYv         (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)
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Tuesday, May 06, 2025


I've recently gotten a bit distracted in my readthrough of the Bible, but I am making slow progress through Psalms.
Psalm 74 had a number of interesting features, so I thought I'd mention it. 
The Jerusalem Bible (which is the Bible I'm reading) titles this Psalm "Lament on the destruction of the Temple", so I guess right away we can guess that there's no use pretending this Psalm was written by David.  The NIV translation doesn't give this Psalm a title.  (The NIV translation is the translation that was used in my community, and the translation I grew up with, so whenever I see something surprising in The Jerusalem Bible, I try to cross reference it with the NIV.)
Anyway, from the beginning, according to The Jerusalem Bible translation, Psalm 74 reads:
God, have you finally rejected us,
raging at the flock you used to pasture?
Remember the people you long since made your own,
your hereditary tribe whom you redeemed, 
and this Mount Zion where you came to live.
Pick your steps over these endless ruins:
the enemy have sacked everything in the sanctuary.
They roared where your Assemblies used to take place,
they stuck their enemy emblems over the entrance, *
emblems we have never seen before.
 As you can see, there's an asterisk by entrance, which references to a footnote at the bottom of the page in The Jerusalem Bible, which reads:
Probably a description of the destruction of the temple by the 'mad king', Antiochus Epiphanes.

Interesting.  I guess this must come from First Maccabees chapter 1, in which Antiochus Epiphanes erects the Abomination of desolation in the Temple. But I had never realized that some of the Psalms were written as late as the Seleucid period.  I had known some of them were from the Babylonian exile, but I didn't realize they came from even later than that.  (The NIV, by the way, does not have this same footnote.  Nor is it as clear from the NIV translation that someone is putting something over the entrance to the temple.  See NIV version here.)

For what it's worth, Wikipedia backs up the idea that there's a tradition of attributing this Psalm to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes.  From Psalm 74 Wikipedia page:
The enemy is not named, but may refer to King Nebuchadnezzar. According to the Targum, the reference is to Antiochus Epiphanes.[4]

The second interesting thing comes a bit further down in Psalm 74, from verse 12.  Quoting again from The Jerusalem Bible:

Yet, God my king from the first,
author of saving acts throughout the earth,
by your power you split the sea in two,
and smashed the heads of monsters on the waters,
You crushed Leviathan's heads,
leaving him for wild animals to eat,

This section is interesting to me because it seems to be explicitly referencing the Babylonian creation myths, in which at the beginning of time the sea is subdued and the sea monsters killed.  

I'm currently reading Babylonian Creation Myths by W.G. Lambert, so those stories are fresh in my mind at the moment, and it's interesting to see the influence in the Psalms.  
Although I had long known that these references were in the Psalms.  Christine Hayes in her lectures on the Old Testament  had mentioned that the Babylonian creation stories about subduing the sea monsters were absent from Genesis, but in the Psalms and in the book of Job.  I even wrote about this fact in a previous post.  But even though I had known this was in the Psalms, it still jumped out at me when I read it because I'm currently reading the Babylonian Creation Myths.

And finally, the other thing I find interesting about Psalm 74 is that, just like Psalm 44, the author seems to be accusing God of abandoning Israel to its enemies without justification.  

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Started: Ludlul bēl Nēmeqi: The Standard Babylonian Poem of the Righteous Sufferer (State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts) translated by Amar Annus and Alan Lenzi

Check out this book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4d6s5zY               (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.  Although in this case it looks like they're out of stock, so just use the link to get more information about the book, I guess.)
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