Daily Thoughts 4/21/2010

Caricature of Anthony Panizzi, a librarian who worked for the British Museum and was from Italy.

Daily Thoughts 4/21/2010

This morning, I finished reading Before The Throne on the train in to work. It is a very interesting story. The leaders of Egypt are being judged before the ancient gods Horus, Osiris, Isis, Ptathotep, in the tribunal of the dead. Each must state their case in life. This determines their place among the immortals, or whether they will be sent to hell, paradise, or purgatory.

The summaries are very brief one to two pages of the leaders down through ages, Ramses, Khufu, Amenhotep and other ancient egyptian leaders are judged down the ages. It changes slightly with more modern leaders from the caliphates, the ottomans, and even modern Egypt. The elder gods get a first chance to review them before they are sent before their appointed god; christian, coptic, or islamic.

Each is judged by how they ruled and what they did for the Egyptian people. It is a quite interesting book. There is a sense of nationalism in the writer. He includes the nation builders of Egypt like Anwar Sadat and Mustafa Kamil.

It is a kind of literary imagined history. It gives a different view of history by a modern Egyptian writer. Naguib Mahfuz won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1988. He is an excellent literary writer.

Today we had an order meeting. I put in my orders for the month. I also ran the Graphic Novels club today. We had the president of the Graphic Novels club from the high school and the middle school at the club today. I showed one of the parents some of our newer graphic novels. I changed the books in the rotunda gallery displays to books on portraiture by artists as well.

Chuck Klosterman, Eating The Dinosaur came in for me to read. I think it will be an interesting read.