#so rick riordan's afterlives...

[wanderingmind867]

My Ideal Afterlife:

As you all know by now, the afterlife is important to me. I lost my mom. I have next to no friends. For me, a good afterlife is necessary for me to maintain mental stability. I don't care about religion, I just care that I need an afterlife. And whenever Rick Riordan showcases a new afterlife, it always gets under my skin. Asphodel isn't what I want! Valhalla isn't what I want! No! No! F**k you, no! And since I react so viscerally to these things, you probably womder: what do I want from an afterlife? Good question. Excellent question. So now I'm just gonna make a big essay on what my paradise and afterlife would look like:

You know how Valhalla is about fighting to prepare for Ragnarok? No. Just no. I refuse to have that be my life. I also refuse a nameless nothingness like asphodel offers. No, the afterlife is everything everyone deserves. When we die, we all ascend to a plain much like this one, but without the ills of today. No money, no greed, no pain and no suffering. We'd all live in the place we feel most comfortable (for me that's my home with my dad, so It'd be there). There would be no hell, either. Hell is a concept made up to divide man and make us condemn each other. Even the worst sinner is welcome in paradise. I don't care what you say; that's the only proper way to do things. Just peace and harmony for everyone. Life is exactly as it is now. Everybody lives in the same afterlife, and you can travel by pure thought. You'd never lose anybody you care about (like rick riordan's filthy afterlives imply can happen). In my afterlife, magnus chase wouldn't have to lose his mother. Hazel Levesque wouldn't lose her mom. All these things wouldn't happen. Because I know fairness when I see it. And everybody: Valhalla and the Underworld are not fair.

You know which afterlife does seem okay? The Land of The Dead, ruled by Lord Osiris. Osiris is a fair ruler, and his kingdom delivers 90% of what i want. People are still punished, but there's no such thing as purgatory. You just get to go on living the same way you would have in life, and all your material possessions follow you along. It's pure freedom. Now, I'm not saying Osiris should lead a Holy War against Odin and Hades, but...actually, he totally should. Osiris and Anubis could show those fools a thing or two.

[geraniums-red]

Rick Riordan - Magnus Chase and the Sword of Summer

Book 1 of the Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard series.

Rick Riordan has written a lot of quest driven fantasy books. In order to save the world, the hero and their allies needs to accomplish a task. For every step of the task you get a few small adventures, building up to completing the task and saving the world. It's quite formulaic in terms of structure, but you don't have to concentrate too hard, and there's variety from the characters involved and the adventures they have along the way. This book is written to that formula.

This time the main characters are Magnus, who has spent the previous two years sleeping rough without seeming to have learnt any proper swear words (it's a children's book, I know...), a Muslim Valkyrie (I would have loved to have learned more about how she balanced being Muslim with being employed by Norse gods, but that part was pretty much glossed over), a deaf elf who communicated using lip reading (apparently understanding everyone perfectly, but I'll allow that given this is fantasy) and sign language, and a fashion-loving dwarf.

For the most part, the book does a good job of reflecting Norse mythology, in that the gods are very powerful but not always very kind or very bright, and interactions between them and our heroes are more transactional than beneficent. The giants they encounter are sometimes backstabbing and untrustworthy, and sometimes just trying to live their lives or run their fishing business. Our heroes are also tricked by fairly simple traps, and not above cheating in order to get what they need. I felt this was nicely in keeping with the sort of behaviour you'd expect to find in Norse myths.

Annoyingly, at the end of the book, it is made clear that one particular god is Good and Worth Following and another is Evil and Needs Opposing. This was a bit of a let-down given the earlier nuance, but this is a formulaic quest-based fantasy book for children, so I probably shouldn't have expected too much.

Another thing that bugged me is that the book finishes with the funerals of some allies who didn't survive the final battle. This would be a decent ending point, except that we'd had glimpses into various afterlives throughout the book, and I was waiting to see which one they would end up in. Possibly this is addressed in later books in the series, but it was still disappointing.

I enjoyed this book. I appreciated the representation of deaf and Muslim characters. I probably won't ever read it again, but it gave me something to listen to (I got the audiobook from the library) while I did my knitting, and I finished a pair of socks as a result. There's a good chance of me consuming the rest of the series, as long as they're available at the library.

[closeted-pagans-shrine]

Understanding My Spiritual Beliefs

Starting my spiritual journey has been a difficult one. I grew up with overly religious Christian grandparents, a mom who never has stated her religious beliefs, an atheist sibling, and a dead father.

For the majority of my life, I was an atheist. I didn't really believe in a higher power or higher powers. The treatment of all of the overly religious people in my life towards me wasn't always positive and it left me pretty avoidant of religion in general.

I would hear things like "You wanna see your dad again, right?" and "Just being a nice person doesn't mean you'll get into heaven."

I thought that belief was pretty shit and I didn't want to turn out to be like that.

I had never been introduced to polytheism until I was in middle school. I learned through the books of Rick Riordan and "myth" books they had in the library. However, I still didn't get into the religion then. I didn't know people still worshipped these deities, I thought I would be deemed crazy. That assumption came to be true when I publicly said I was pagan, my friends became scared of me and would whisper behind my back.

I do find myself feeling outcasted within the pagan communities as well. I realize my belief is not one many, if any other, people have.

It started when I thought of what was outside our universe.

I believe outside of our universe is an endless amount of universes. Every universe is different, the possibilities are endless. I also believe black holes and light holes are connections to different universes. Black holes take matter and energy and bring it into another universe. Light holes are where matter and energy come out into the new universe.

Because of this, I believe we are in a constant flow of new and old energies mixing together. Through this process of energy transfer, spiritual energy is brought through every universe as well.

I don't believe that every deity lives in our universe though. I believe they have the ability to transfer part of their energies throughout the universe system. So while they stay dormant in one universe, they are also able to travel through the spiritual energies and manifest themselves to those who have strong spiritual beliefs.

People who are spiritual give off more spiritual energies which allows the deity to manifest in many different ways depending on the person.

Given that the number of universes is unending, anything is possible. Therefore, all deities are real. However, they actively seek out those who believe in them.

I believe the amount of energy needed to travel from universe to universe is massive. They need the spiritual energy from their believers to continue keeping this part of them from dying out.

All deities are real, even those we don't know about. In a universe or two, even you yourself are a deity.

Every universe houses at least one dormant deity, I believe ours are Chaos, Chronos, and Cernunnos. Chaos is the matter that makes up the universe itself while Chronos is the flow of time and space. Cernunnos is life, death, and the changing of times.

I also believe that the deities do not look like us humans. I think humans are very narcissistic in nature and believe we are the best form. The deities are constant forms of energies that are sentient in nature. However, they take the form of the species they are with to make said species more comfortable.

When we astral project or shift into another universe, we are becoming one with our spiritual energies and moving along the spiritual plane.

The different religious afterlives are all real, but it's up to your spiritual self to decide where to go. Reincarnation is when a spirit self decides to re-live instead of resting in a different universe.

Our spirits are only able to relive in our own universe.

There's more, so if you want to hear it let me know.

[onelittlebookgeek]

Book Challenge 2019 - I DID IT!

Hi guys, after tracking all the books I’ve read here from 2013-2016, I completely forgot this whole thing for more than 3 years! Sorry!!

No fear though: I’m back! Even though 2019 has almost ended, I’ll make sure this post correctly reflects the whole of 2019!

Since it’s already the end of October, I do feel like I have some hindsight vision into my reading pace this past year, but before I mention how it actually went, I want to explain my original expectations! So 2019 for me is the year I’m finishing my Classics Bachelor Degree in July and the year I’ll be studying abroad for one term from September to December (I’m doing two degrees, so I’ll still be doing my English degree after Classics!). So for my reading, I’d expected not to read a lot. Perhaps for my thesis some books on the subjects and of course for English my course work. So my original reading goal was 50 books!

Looking back on these expectations I must say I’ve read a great deal more than I expected! Writing my thesis did include reading a lot of books and other course work had more reading than I thought I would which boosted my challenge in the first half of the year! Of course, I’ve also read quite a lot during the holidays because what else is there to do in the holidays :D? Regarding my studying abroad experience, I’m reading more than I expected. This is partly because the course work is again much more based on reading books than articles or just parts of book. At the same time, I’m doing less studying than I used to do back home, so I have more time free to do some casual reading. On top of that - since I’m walking everywhere here - I’ve started listening to audiobooks which also adds a couple to the challenge.

So my challenge became 80 books! But I had already surpassed before November, so that’s great! I’d expressed my hopes to read 100 books this year as well, but out of fear of not making that I hadn’t changed my goals. Seeing as of now (mid-November), I’ve already read 93 books I feel confident I can read at least 7 more until a 100, so I’ve changed my goal to read 100 books

The crossed book is the one I’m currently reading, I’ve written reviews for books that have a (x) behind them; the (x) is a link to my Goodreads review!

Update: Today (December 31) I’ve read 135 books so I’ve finished my challenge!!  Let’s see where the rest of this year brings me :D!

January

The Oresteia - Ted Hughes (4/5) (x)

The Sign of Four (Sherlock Holmes #2) - Arthur Conan Doyle (3/5)

The Suffragettes - Various (3/5)

The Poems of Phillis Wheatley - Philils Wheatley (3/5) (x)

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave - Frederick Douglass (3/5)

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself - Harriet Ann Jacobs (4/5)

February

Darius the Great is Not Okay - Adib Khorram (5/5)

A Disquisition on Government - John C. Calhoen (2/5)

March:

‘s Nachts verdwijnt de wereld - Jaap Robben (Dutch) (4/5)

Public Opinion - Walter Whitman (3/5)

Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives - David Eagleman (5/5) (x)

Zalig Uiteinde - Viktor Frölke (Dutch) (2/5)

Vampire Academy (Vampire Academy #1) - Richelle Mead (reread) (4/5)

Frostbite (Vampire Academy #2) - Richelle Mead (reread) (4/5)

Language and Power - Paul Simpson (3/5)

Language Change: Progress or Decay? - Jean Aitchison (3/5) (x)

Shadow Kiss (Vampire Academy #3) - Richelle Mead (reread) (4/5)

April:

Blood Promise (Vampire Academy #4) - Richelle Mead (reread) (4/5)

A Latin Lover in Ancient Rome - W.R. Johnson (2/5) (x)

The Waste Land - T.S. Eliot (5/5) (x)

Propertius: Elegies - Propertius (ed. Hutchinson) (2/5) (x)

Propertius: A Critical Introduction - J.P. Sullivan (3/5)

Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett (4/5) (x)

Lanny - Max Porter (4/5) (x)

Between the Acts - Virginia Woolf (5/5) (x)

Roman Propertius and the Reinvention of Elegy - Jeri Blair DeBrohun (1/5)

Yukon Ho! (Calvin and Hobbes #3) - Bill Watterson (4/5) (x)

Emancipating Lincoln - Harold Holzer (3/5)

The Lonely Londoners - Sam Selvon (1/5) (x)

May:

Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov (5/5) (x)

The Shadow of Callimachus: Studies in the Reception of Hellenistic Poetry at Rome - Richard Hunter (2/5)

Literary and Artistic Patronage in Ancient Rome - Barbara K. Gold (3/5)

White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America - Nancy Isenberg (2/5) (x)

Act of Justice: Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Law of War - Burrus M. Carnahan (3/5)

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America - Allen C. Guelzo (3/5)

June:

Apollo, Augustus and the Poets - John F. Miller (2/5) (x)

Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam #1) - Margaret Atwood (3/5) (x)

Circe - Madeline Miller (4/5) (x)

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson #1) - Rick Riordan (reread) (4/5)

Callimachus and his Critics - Alan Cameron (2/5)

July:

Elegies - Propertius (5/5)

Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson #2) - Rick Riordan (reread) (4/5)

Er was er eens en er was er eens niet - Judith Herzberg (Dutch) (1/5)

Percy Jackson and the Titan’s Curse (Percy Jackson #3) - Rick Riordan (reread) (4/5)

A Room of One’s Own - Virginia Woolf (5/5) (x)

Red, White and Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston (4/5) (x)

The Book of Extraordinary Deaths - Cecilia Ruiz (3/5)

The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Poems - Oscar Wilde (4/5)

The Epic of Gilgamesh (3/5)

Much Ado About Nothing - William Shakespeare (5/5)

Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson #4) - Rick Riordan (reread) (5/5)

Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian (Percy Jackson #5) - Rick Riordan (reread) (5/5)

The Peloponnesian War, Book 2 - Thucydides (3/5)

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde (5/5)

August:

A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses #2) - Sarah J. Maas (reread) (4/5)

Hold Your Own - Kate Tempest (4/5)

Slimy Stuarts - Terry Deary (3/5)

Orlando - Virginia Woolf (5/5) (x)

Silence of the Girls - Pat Barker (3/5) (x)

Songs of Innocence and Experience - William Blake (4/5)

Windharp: Poems of Ireland since 1916 - Coll. by Niall MacMonagle (4/5)

Kaas - Willem Elsschot (Dutch) (1/5)

Goblin Market - Christina Rossetti (4/5)

Brand New Ancients - Kate Tempest (3/5)

September:

The Fall of Arthur - J.R.R. Tolkien (3/5)

Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (4/5)

The Bees - Carol Ann Duffy (4/5)

Poems - Allen Ginsberg (5/5)

Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy #5) - Richelle Mead (reread) (4/5)

Last Sacrifice (Vampire Academy #6) - Richelle Mead (reread) (4/5)

Callirhoe and Caereas - Chariton (3/5)

Bartleby the Scrivener - Herman Melville (3/5)

Benito Cereno - Herman Melville (4/5)

October:

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave - Frederick Douglass (4/5)

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself - Harriet Ann Jacobs (2/5)

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing - Hank Green (4/5)

Song of Myself - Walt Whitman (4/5) (x)

Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson: Poetry of the Central Consciousness - Salsa Agnieszka (3/5)

A Thousand Ships - Natalie Haynes (4/5) (x)

Roderick Hudson - Henry James (4/5) (x)

All That She Can See - Carrie Hope Fletcher (3/5) (x)

The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon (4/5)

All the Crooked Saints - Maggie Stiefvater (3/5) (x)

Daphnis and Chloe - Longus (3/5)

The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett (1/5) (x)

November:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain (2/5) (x)

Lily and the Octopus - Steven Rowley (4/5) (x)

First World War Poems from the Front (4/5)

If We Were Villains - M.L. Rio (4/5) (x)

The Republic - Plato (2/5) (x)

Observations - Marianne Moore (5/5)

Poems (1930) - W.H. Auden (2/5) (x)

The Professor’s House - Willa Cather (1/5) (x)

Becoming - Michelle Obama (4/5)

The Outsider - Albert Camus (4/5)

Three Poems - Hannah Sullivan (3/5)

Leucippe and Clitophon - Achilles Tatius (4/5)

The Book of Mirrors - Frieda Hughes (3/5) (x)

Sophist - Plato (5/5) (x)

Selected Poems - E.E. Cummings (4/5)

A Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry (4/5)

The Beats (A Very Short Introduction) - David Sterrit (4/5)

The Cat Inside - William S. Burroughs (5/5)

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton (4/5) (x)

Kindred - Octavia E. Butler (4/5)

Remains of Elmet - Ted Hughes (3/5) (x)

Dear Boy - Emily Berry (1/5) (x)

The Merchant of Venice - Willaim Shakespeare (3/5)

Pnin - Vladimir Nabokov (4/5)

How to Be a Woman - Caitlin Moran (2/5) (x)

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America - Bill Bryson (3/5)

December

Tracks - Louise Erdrich (3/5)

Derrida (A Very Short Introduction) - Simon Glendinning (x)

Ariel - Sylvia Plath (5/5)

London Triptych - Jonathan Kemp (3/5)

Two Cures for Love - Wendy Cope (5/5)

Citizen: An American Lyric - Claudia Rankine (4/5)

Magnus Chase and the Ship of the Dead (Magnus Chase #3) - Rick Riordan (4/5)

The Vegetarian - Han Kang (4/5)

Selected Poems - Philip Larkin (3/5)

Kid - Simon Armitage (1/5) (x)

The Children Act - Ian McEwan (4/5)

On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan (3/5) (x)

The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (4/5) (x)

Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs (4/5)

Man met hoed - Lieke Marsman (3/5) (Dutch) (x)

Koffers Zeelucht: Gedichten - Hagar Peeters (Dutch) (4/5)

Selected Poems - Gregory Corso (3/5)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone - J.K. Rowling (reread) (5/5)

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (reread) (5/5)

Erotic Poems - E.E. Cummings (3/5)

Twelfth Night - William Shakespeare (reread) (4/5)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Edward Albee (2/5)

Carry On - Rainbow Rowell (reread) (4/5)

My 2016 challenge

My 2015 challenge

My 2014 challenge

My 2013 challenge

[wanderingmind867]

Ranking the Afterlives of each of Rick Riordan's pantheons:

The Greco-Roman Underworld: Hell. Literal Hell. The Fields of Punishment, a land of cruel and unusual punishment. No eating for eternity. No rest, since you have to push a boulder forever. No peace. The Fields of Asphodel, where you forget who you are and become one of a nameless, formless host of ghosts. Elysium, a gated community for only the most "valorous" and "heroic". And the Isles of the Blest, a segregated island within the already segregated Elysium. 0/10

The Duat/Egyptian Afterlife: Perfect. Beautiful. Majestic. Come to The Duat for a good afterlife. Here you'll find whatever you expect to find. You expect heaven? You'll see Heaven. Expect the Greek afterlife? You'll see that. But the Egyptian Afterlife seems to manifest as whatever you want most. It also sends all your possessions in life to the afterworld with you. So in essence, the egyptian afterlife is peak afterlife performance. 9/10 or 10/10

Valhalla: A warriors paradise, where death is an everyday occurrence? No. No, no, no! I will not accept this! I would not accept a classist bloodthirsty warrior world (it's definitely classist, have you seen how the bellhop is subservient to the head of the hotel's reception desk?). I would not accept it for anything in the world. I would stay sequestered in my room until a found a way to sneak into some different, far superior afterlife. 0/10

Folkvanger: Better than Valhalla, Freya's realm is sometimes violent. But it's not violent nearly as often, and things tend to be more laid back here. I don't think I'd love her place, but I'd tolerate it far more than i'd tolerate valhalla. 4/5 or 5/5

Helheim: Home to Hel, the goddess of death with a face of two sides. A beautiful living woman on one side, a rotting corpse on the other. Hel or Hela or whatever we call her is patron to all of us. She takes in those who died of old age, illness, or any other thing. All those that Odin and Freya don't want come to her kingdom in the pit. She isn't a cruel mistress, though. I believe she cares for her people, and treats them with basic dignity. Helheim is actually far superior to Valhalla or Folkvanger, and Lady Hel deserves our respect. 7/10 or 8/10