Here are 100 books that The Metamorphoses fans have personally recommended if you like
The Metamorphoses.
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I’ve always been drawn to the moments when things shift—when what once made sense stops making sense, and you have to find your way through. As a designer and leader, I’ve spent years learning to read change instead of resisting it. I’m passionate about this space because it’s where growth actually happens. These books remind me that clarity doesn’t come all at once; it arrives through attention, through relationship, and through the slow, often messy work of becoming.
I love this book because it changes the way I see the world every single time.
Powers writes with a patience that feels almost radical. I found myself slowing my breathing as I read, realizing how little I notice in the rush of daily life. I love how he blurs the line between human and nature, reminding me that we’re never outside the system—we are the system.
The Overstory humbles me, and because humility, to me, is where clarity begins.
The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of-and paean to-the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers's twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours-vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I grew up on the wild island of Tasmania. I saw the Vietnam War on TV, then went to a farm my father was ‘developing.’ It felt like war. The natural beauty that I’d once played in was destroyed by machines, poisons, and fire. During agricultural college in mainland Australia, I recognized an absence of reverence for Mother Nature. Women were missing from the rural narrative that increasingly held an economics-only mindset when it came to food. I’m a co-founder of Ripple Farm Landscape Healing Hub–a 100-acre farm we’re restoring to natural beauty and producing loved meat and eggs for customers. And I’m a devoted mum, shepherd, and working dog trainer.
This is an oldie but a goldie. Written in 1962, it helped me understand why we are in the corrupt, red-hot mess we are in in terms of the food and climate crisis. It gave me a historical lens on why we are getting sicker, why the land is struggling, and why so many creatures are becoming extinct.
Rachel was slammed for this book at the time, and I feel we need to resurrect her and give her a platform and time in the sunshine to change our modern-day madness. At first, I had to listen in ‘grabs’ because the content was so utterly disturbing. We didn’t listen then! She cites so many actions by government agencies that sanctioned deadly chemicals sprayed over everything and everyone… and it’s happening today with increasing vigor because corporations wield so much power! After listening to the audio, I read the hard copy—it gives…
First published by Houghton Mifflin in 1962, Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. "Silent Spring became a runaway bestseller, with international reverberations . . . [It is] well crafted, fearless and succinct . . . Even if she had not inspired a generation of activists, Carson would prevail as one of the greatest nature writers in American letters" (Peter Matthiessen, for Time"s 100 Most Influential People of the Century). This fortieth anniversary edition celebrates Rachel Carson"s watershed…
For decades, I have been identified as a poet-farmer—I have a friendship with the earth forged through many seasons of cultivation, husbandry, and harvest. Enrolled in an MFA program abroad in creative writing, I found my way to Ireland, Oxford, and eventually to Cornwall, England, where I learned the art of cliff meadow farming. Returning to America, I became part of an agricultural revival called Community Supported Agriculture. I continued to write and teach poetry, enlivened by literature and the silt-loam soil of the Long Island peninsula. The language of the garden and the language of poetry and prose in sympathy with the earth, for me, are inseparable.
I feel the same about this book as Barry Lopez—who wrote a most wonderful introduction—when he notes that throughout his reading of the text, he often had to take a break to walk outside; the writing was just so stimulating.
Appealing to me as a poet, this is a slim book—about 90 pages—really a meditative essay that I return to again and again. I am fascinated by the originality of the author’s thought process, his supple prose, and his discussion of the polarities that exist between cultivated nature and wildness.
One singular sentence in this book (“The wood waits…”) has such resonance for me that I chose it as an epigraph for a book of my own.
John Fowles' writing life was dominated by trees. From the orchards of his childhood in suburban Essex,to the woodlands of wartime Devon, to his later life on the Dorset coast, trees filled his imagination and enriched his many acclaimed and best-selling novels.Told through his lifelong relationship with trees, blending autobiography, literary criticism, philosophy and nature writing, The Tree is a masterly, powerful work that laid the literary foundations for nature-as-memoir, a genre which has seen recent flourishings in Roger Deakin's Wildwood, Richard Mabey's Nature Cure, Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways and Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk.As lyrical and precise…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
"Ut pictura poesis", as goes painting so goes poetry is a pithy phrase that sums up the truth that a picture is mute poetry and poetry is a speaking picture. I have studied the history of this tradition from many angles and I have derived from it the term “lyrical naturalism” which I use to discover what is charming or captivating in the world of plants. As an art historian, well-read in European literature, I regard myself as a member of the environmental humanities which increasingly is the home of many academics eager to participate in the great debate on how to honor the natural world in literature and art before it is too late.
This is another book that permanently perches on my shoulder. It is a masterpiece by a visionary author that helped me to explore the mythic origins of shrubs and trees in early societies. The book inspired me to write essays on the hazel and the hawthorn, their early blossoms as manifestations of the power of the mysterious white mantle spread by the White Goddess in Celtic lands, in contradistinction to the Aphrodite as the goddess of all that is green in the Mediterranean.
The definitive edition of one of the more extraordinary and influential books of our time
This labyrinthine and extraordinary book, first published more than sixty years ago, was the outcome of Robert Graves's vast reading and curious research into strange territories of folklore, mythology, religion, and magic. Erudite and impassioned, it is a scholar-poet's quest for the meaning of European myths, a polemic about the relations between man and woman, and also an intensely personal document in which Graves explores the sources of his own inspiration and, as he believed, all true poetry. Incorporating all of Graves's final revisions, his…
Jordanna Max Brodsky is the author of the Olympus Bound trilogy and The Wolf in the Whale, a sweeping epic of the Norse and Inuit. Jordanna holds a degree in History and Literature from Harvard University, but she maintains that scholarship is no substitute for lived experience. Her research has taken her from the summit of Mount Olympus to the frozen tundra of Nunavut, and from the Viking ruins of Norway to Artemis’s temples in Turkey.
Ancient Roman poet Ovid gives us the definitive versions of nearly 250 different myths, most involving transformations of men and women into beasts, trees, or flowers. If that sounds dull, know that there’s more incest than Game of Thrones and more bloody mutilation than a Quentin Tarantino flick. Some tales, like that of Orpheus and Eurydice, are well-known. Others, like the story of the fleet-footed Atalanta, should be. For anyone interested in writing their own story inspired by Greek myth, Ovid’s Metamorphoses provides an invaluable source of inspiration. Read Allen Mandelbaum’s excellent poetic translation for the most authentic experience.
Through National Book Award-winning translator Allen Mandelbaum's poetic artistry, this gloriously entertaining achievement of literature — classical myths filtered through the worldly and far from reverent sensibility of the Roman poet Ovid — is revealed anew.Savage and sophisticated, mischievious and majestic, witty and wicked, The Metamorphoses weaves together every major mythological story to display a dazzling array of miraculous changes, from the time chaos is transformed into order at the moment of creation, to the time when the soul of Julius Caeser is turned into a star and set in the heavens. In its earthiness, its psychological acuity, this classic…
My obsession with metamorphosis began after my wife and I discovered that we're going to have our third child. I started having nightly dreams about the butterflies I kept in a dry aquarium when I was a kid, waking up in the middle of the night with a flashlight strapped to my forehead, waiting to see them emerge from their chrysalis. A pregnancy somehow feels like our human version of emergence: few experiences are as life-changing as becoming a parent, and fewer wonders more exhilarating than the natural magic of metamorphosis. Both mark beginnings but are in fact continuations. Both, in different ways, are also forms of endings. Both make us wonder about the riddles of our world.
This classic is one of the main sources for Greek and Roman mythology, giving us the tales, among others, of the daughter of the river god, the nymph Daphne, turning into a laurel tree to escape the suffocating love of Apollo; the son of Neptune, Cygnus, beaten in battle by Achilles and turned by his father into a swan to escape terrible death; the King of Cyprus, Pygmalion, falling in love with his own sculpture, only to have her turn into a real woman.
When Ovid completed his great work, he stated: “Evening has overtaken me, and the sun has dipped below the horizon of the Ocean, yet I have not had time to tell you of all the things that have evolved into new forms”.
'Still remarkably vivid. It is easier to read this for pure pleasure than just about any other ancient text' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian
Ovid's sensuous and witty poem begins with the creation of the world and brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation - often as a result of love or lust - where men and women find themselves magically changed into extraordinary new beings. Including the well-known stories of Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion, Perseus and Andromeda, and the fall of Troy, the Metamorphoses has influenced writers and artists from…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I’ve been fascinated by Greek Mythology since I read a book about it in childhood. There was a popular graphic novel series about Greek and Roman Mythology in Korea, and I was one of many kids obsessed with these books. That passion continued and became stronger when I moved to New York. It had various mythology books, including novels and picture books, and there were tons of references, such as paintings, sculptures, and authentic vases. I hope you enjoy the books on the list and feel the same thrill I felt!
I can see that I tend to choose books with nice illustrations that emphasize the story more. This was the most recent reading I did. These dreamy, whimsical illustrations caught my eye when I browsed in the local bookstore.
I’m glad I came across this book at the beginning of summer when it is much easier for our minds to fall in love. Before the weather gets colder, I plan to bring this book to a picnic and enjoy it fully outside.
A landmark illustrated anthology of queer Greek and Roman love stories that reclaim and celebrate homosexual love and sensuality, from artist Luke Edward Hall and award-winning poet Seán Hewitt.
For centuries, evidence of queer love in the ancient world has either been ignored or suppressed. Even today, only a few narratives are widely known: the wild romance of Achilles and Patroclus; the yearning love of Sappho's lyrics; and the three genders introduced in Plato's Symposium. Yet there is a rich literary tradition of queer Greek and Roman love that extends far beyond the prudish translations of these familiar handful of…
I am a writer, classical historian, and journalist. While there is no shortage of Roman historians in Britain and the US, I have long felt that English-speaking historians have had a blind spot as far as Roman Germany goes. Fascinated by the Battle of Teutoburg Forest for many years, while there were numerous accounts in German, it frustrated me that there was no general account of what happened in English. So I wrote it! I wasclearly not alone in my interest in Roman Germany and have presented a number of documentaries on the battle on the History Channel and National Geographic since.
For those who like their conspiracy theories, it is hard not to be seduced by Ovid and David Wishart’s hard-boiled detective Marcus Corvinus.
Commissioned to bring back Ovid’s ashes, the author links the exile of the poet Ovid by the Emperor Augustus to the loss of the three legions under Varus. The book is notable both for the real sense that it gives how the defeat became one to be avoided in the polite society in Rome, but also for its generally sympathetic portrait of the Roman governor. Varus is corrupted and betrayed by Arminius, but he is not wholly incompetent.
In AD8, Augustus banished the poet Ovid to Tomi, on the Black Sea. In spite of repeated appeals by his friends in Rome for the sentence to be revoked, he died in exile ten years later.
No one knows why Ovid was banished. The most convincing explanation is that Ovid was involved somehow with the emperor's granddaughter Julia, who was exiled the same year for immorality. However, Julia's sexual partner was sentenced to nothing worse than social ostracism. Her husband, on the other hand, was executed shortly afterwards for treason ...Why should the witness to a crime be punished…
I love exploring new places, buildings, and artworks. Luckily, my job, as a professor of ancient Roman art history at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, allows me to do so! I am fascinated by the material culture of the Roman Empire and the ways in which buildings and objects—whether grand monuments like the Pantheon in Rome or humbler items like a terracotta figurine of a gladiator—shape how we experience the world and relate to other people. Whether I am living in Paris or Rome, excavating in Greece or Italy, or traveling elsewhere in the former lands of the Roman Empire, these topics are never far from my mind.
If you want to know what some Romans thought about sport and spectacle in their own words, turn to Anne Mahoney’s sourcebook, which offers translations of key literary passages and inscriptions. From Horace’s descriptions of unruly theater audiences to Ovid’s advice to young Roman men about how to pick up girls at the circus, this sourcebook brought the world of Roman spectacle to life for me. I love that she shows how the themes that make modern sport and fandom so complex—religion, gender, politics, and money—were just as relevant in ancient Rome. I always come away from reading the sources she compiles feeling that Roman sports fans are not so different from us today.
Roman Sports and Spectacles: A Sourcebook contains numerous translations from the Latin, including famous authors, such as Cicero, Seneca, Tertullian and Augustine, and the not so famous, including graffiti, advertisements and tombstones to paint a world view of what sports Romans played and what they thought of them. The world of Roman sports was similar in many ways to our own, but there were significant differences. For one thing Roman sports centered during religious festivals and the participants were most often slaves. Roman sports were not team sports, but individual competitions. And sports like chariot racing and gladiatorial competitions were…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
My specialty is American history, meticulously researched, but delivered in a narrative style that’s akin to fiction. My latest book, A Fierce Glory, is about Antietam, a battle that occupied a single day in 1862, yet remains one of history’s most consequential events. Of course, there are countless military histories of Antietam–or any Civil War battle, for that matter–focusing on troop movements and tactics. I wanted to get at the emotional heart of this epic showdown: the confusion, terror, sadness, along with some startling and selfless acts of heroism. To do so, I drew inspiration from some of my favorite fictional works.
This fifth pick isn’t fiction. But like the best fiction, poetry can pierce through to the very essence. Although shaggy poet Whitman was the furthest thing from a soldier imaginable, he was deeply involved in the war effort nonetheless. After the Battle of Fredericksburg, Whitman traveled to Virginia to find his wounded brother. He then chose to remain in Washington, DC, nursing wounded soldiers. Whitman’s war-time experiences gave rise to some of the finest poems in Leaves of Grass such as “The Wound-Dresser,” “Come Up from the Fields Father,” and “A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim.”
This Library of America edition is the biggest and best edition of Walt Whitman's writings ever published. It includes all of his poetry and what he considered his complete prose. It is also the only collection that includes, in exactly the form in which it appeared in 1855, the first edition of Leaves of Grass. This was the book, a commercial failure, which prompted Emerson’s famous message to Whitman: “I greet you at the beginning of a great career.” These twelve poems, including what were later to be entitled “Song of Myself” and “I Sing the Body Electric,” and a…
