Charles Halton

The Value of Revision

This was originally a reflection on fiction writing but is equally applicable to academic writing (which in many cases is, again, fiction, but I digress…):

I think revision is hugely underrated. It is very seldom recognized as a place where the higher creativity can live, or where it can manifest. I think it was Yeats who said that literary revision was the only place in life where a man could truly improve himself.

William Gibson

Charles Halton

New Reviews

Here is the latest batch of RBL reviews:

Joseph Blenkinsopp
Creation, Un-creation, Re-creation: A Discursive Commentary on Genesis 1-11
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=8153
Reviewed by John E. Anderson

Yoram Cohen, Amir Gilan, and Jared L. Miller, eds.
Pax Hethitica: Studies on the Hittites and Their Neighbours in Honour
of Itamar Singer
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=8022
Reviewed by Paul Sanders

Ronald Hendel, ed.
Reading Genesis: Ten Methods
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7821
Reviewed by Frank H. Polak

Amanda H. Podany
Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7943
Reviewed by Bertrand Lafont

Hayim Tawil
An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew:
Etymological-Semantic and Idiomatic Equivalents with Supplement on
Biblical Aramaic
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7603
Reviewed by Aaron D. Rubin

Charles Halton

In Memoriam, Wilfred Lambert (1926-2011)

Seth Sanders said it well:

Wilfred Lambert, the greatest Assyriologist of the late 20th century, has died. Unfailingly charming and lively, he combined intimate knowledge of a huge spectrum of texts with an abiding care for how they would have come together in real life.

Even though he has left us his work will continue to inform and inspire for generations to come.

Here is his Wikipedia page which lists a few details and accomplishments.

 

Charles Halton

Quality Endures

No one really understands precisely where book publishing is headed. The traditional role of publishers–editing, production, marketing, distribution–is certainly up for grabs. What don’t appear to be up for grabs are the old-fashioned virtues of craft and quality. They still count for something. Actually, they count for everything.

–Graydon Carter in the forward to Vanity Fair’s How a Book is Born