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Chapters 13-16: Ishmael and Queequeg go to Nantucket to enlist on a whaling ship. Q saves a man from drowning, they have some chowder and get some sleep, and then Q tells Ish that his little idol Yojo (aka Jobu) has decided that Ish will choose the vessel (or rather that Jobu will guide him to it.) Ish goes to the docks and finds three ships, signing on with the Pequod despite its quirky Quaker owners.

Chapters 1-2: Simón's family history, childhood, and marriage to María Teresa.

Chapters 9-12: We hear the preacher's sermon, Noah and the big fish, naturally, then Ish goes back to the hotel and meets back up with Queequeg. They stay up late talking, and we learn a bit of Q's backstory. They resolve to go to Nantucket together and get spots on the same whaling vessel.

Chapters 7-8: Ish goes to church, ponders the dangers of life and death at sea. Then the preacher comes and Ish describes the pulpit and its nautical theme.

Chapters 4-5 are basically just Ish and Queequeg waking up, getting dressed, and having breakfast. Chapter 6 is a quick note on the quality people-watching in a nautical hub like NYC.

End of Part 4. This is really turning into an Idiot Plot. If any one of these people had taken normal precautions or communicated like a grown-up, this wouldn't be happening.

We're a little more than halfway in, and this still feels more like a collection of vignettes than a single story. The characters are fun and the scenes are interesting, but is it going anywhere?

Also, there have been some funny moments, but hardly "uproarious" or "laugh your pants off" as the praise says. Of course, these are the same kind of people who say a book made them sob uncontrollably, so grain of salt.

Wow, that letter to Paul is really... scattershot. This does not seem like the kind of person who could devote herself to a project for three years straight.

Started this a week ago. Not bad so far. The characters are fun, and the book makes good use of the epistolary format. Bernadette herself comes off as kind of vapid and bigoted though.

Also, the PPB would normally be the villain's comeuppance, not part of the setup. Maybe this is like the first ten minutes of "The Simpsons", where it's a mini-story that leads us into the proper plot.

Ch. 3 - Introducing Queequeg. Also, why did this chapter begin with second-person narration? You hate that, it's literary god-moding.

I'm afraid I'm one of the modern readers who, having no personal connection to Rome nor fresh memories of its Civil War, find little of interest in the latter half of the epic. Camilla's pretty badass though. In fact, as long as we're paying homage to Homer I'd have liked to have seen more aristeias (aristeii?) and more of those humanizing personal details about the defeated.

"I want to get a description of supper out of the way in a fast footnote" [footnote continues for 2½ pages]

Chapter 6 Part 1: The Irish, too far on the fringes of the empire to be martyrs, instead became hermits. Hermits coalesced into monasteries, and in those monasteries students copied classical texts and transcribed oral legends.

Listened to the title story, as narrated by Michael C. Hall. Not particularly plot-driven, but a beautifully told character portrait. Now I'm switching over to the ebook to read the other three stories in this edition ("House of Flowers", "A Diamond Guitar", and "A Christmas Memory".)

I have a feeling I've been clickbaited. We're halfway through the book and we've discussed ancient Celts, St. Augustine, and the early life of St. Patrick, but nothing about How the Irish Saved Civilization. Judging by the chapter titles, that won't come until the next-to-last chapter.

Through Book VI, wherein Aeneas visits the underworld and Virgil enumerates the virtues of Rome.

Chapter 1 narrated the sack of Rome in 410 AD, and Chapter 2 tries to illustrate what we lost in the Empire's fall through St. Augustine and his _Confessions_.

I like the writing so far. It's brisk and easy enough to follow. If the reader already knows the people and periods under discussion they'll probably get more out of it, but Cahill explains enough that new readers aren't locked out.

Author, writing in his own voice, uses "female" as a noun. This immediately makes me question whether I want anything more to do with him.

It's easy to blame over-prescribing docs and greedy drug companies for the opioid epidemic, but at least the way Quinones paints it, a lot of this was borne from good intentions. They wanted to help people with terminal diseases and chronic pain, and opiates seemed like a way to do that.

(Side note, Kobo page numbers don't line up with what's shown here on Goodreads. Not sure why.)

Book III - Aeneas recounts his people's wandering across the sea. They fight with harpies, they go to Crete but are driven off by disease, they find Helen and a mini-Troy, and they're warned that they have a long way to travel before they will have their site to settle.

Book II - Aeneas tells of the Trojan Horse (which doesn't make them out to be chumps like the pop-culture version does) and the sack of Troy. Aeneas gets a sign from the gods that his fate is not to die here, but to escape and start over, so he takes his family out of the city. Not everybody makes it, but they also meet up with other survivors, so at least they'll have a starter population wherever they end up.

Aeneas (a Trojan commander from the Iliad) and several ships worth of people are sailing to resettle in what will someday be Rome. They pass Sicily but then get caught in a nasty storm and almost die. There is, however, a big difference between almost dead and all the way dead, and they all wash up on the shore of Phonecia. Queen Dido, herself something of an exile, welcomes them.

I'm not sure it counts as a retelling of a classic myth if you just tell the original story inside your own completely different story. Twilight: New Moon had plot similarities to Romeo & Juliet, so that self-appointed comparison was valid. This book, so far, has no particular parallels to Shakuntala & Dushyanta.

Chapter 18: Hobo fight!

I figure if I'm going to read "Infinite Jest" this summer maybe I should get familiar with DFW's style. He certainly has a way with words, but what's his intent with these essays? It feels like one of those TV shows where they show how some ordinary object is made. It's sort of educational, but not in a useful way, so the only benefit is maybe to help us appreciate the work behind the scenes of our everyday lives.

Through Chapter 5, wherein Odysseus strikes out for home and Poseidon says "K, but I'm still mad at you, so I'm gonna do everything short of kill you."

Picked this up on something of a whim. It's okay so far, a bit cliché but not bad. It has that simplistic, solipsistic tone that's common in YA, but hopefully that'll change as the heroine gets some perspective.

I really like Mitchell's translations. He's said that his goal is to recreate the experience of hearing these poems, the "essence and the music" of the original, even if that means departing from the exact words. I think he succeeds in that, and the resulting texts are easy and fun to read, with a meter that pulls the reader along.