So I long ago promised something resembling an introduction to my taste, and I suppose I need to offer some sort of frame of reference for my comments and contributions. I’ll update my Amazon Wishlist eventually, but for now, you’ll just have to be satisfied with a brief overview of my favorites and current reads.
Let me point out, first of all, that the best resource for my book current booklust can be found on my Facebook Visual Bookshelf, which is tracking every book I’ve read/am reading/want to read here in China, or rather, since June of 2007. The tracking includes books I’ve borrowed from friends or my cohort, Mike’s bookshelf. It also keeps you posted on the unread books on (only) my bookshelf, and the books I’m working on at any given moment. As of this entry, it shows me as currently reading Songbook by Nick Hornby (finished since I wrote this entry), A Sideways Look at Time by Jay Griffiths, Walking On Water by Madeleine L’Engle, and A Beginner’s Guide to the World Economy by Randy Charles Epping. I’m also registered as in the middle of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, but I haven’t so much as glanced at that book in months. As a matter of course and commitment, I’m also “currently reading” The Bible.
Seeing as how Mike has turned the Visual Bookshelf into a competition of sorts, I can guarantee you it will be updated frequently. The reads I’m most looking forward to this year are mostly from my bookshelf since I can’t count on getting home by 2009. I’m really excited to read A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, and I’m thinking I’ll take on The Brothers Karamazov if I can fit it in. More generally off this list, my favorite authors in no particular order are Mark Twain, William Shakespeare, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. I probably ought to add Leo Tolstoy to that list after falling completely in love with both War & Peace and, so many years ago, Anna Karenina.
Anyhow, soon I'll also post my Movie Lust and Music Lust, but I didn't want to flood the blog. Catch you later.
-S
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Thursday, June 19, 2008
History According to Tolstoy
I apologize for my absence, life has kept me quite…occupied. I'm going to strive to update one of my four blogs at least once a day,from soonish on out, I promise. For that kind of consistency, I'm going to need to make sure I can get ahead of myself, writing-wise.
Since I last posted, I've finished War & Peace, How to Read a Book by Adler, and How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Foster and I've started A Sideways Look at Time by Griffiths. But first, let me talk about War & Peace. After finishing, War & Peace feels like an immense accomplishment. The last 100 pages are quite taxing but after finishing it, I absolutely believe it belongs on Year 1 of The List—more as a starter case than anything else, I think. You see,this first year is about "How to Use the List: Theories and Thought Exercises," and so M and I (by far mostly M) have struggled to look for books that will enlighten one on the meaning of reading and to a certain extent, life and time in general (aren't the two synonymous on some philosophical level?).
War & Peace is both. What is the meaning of reading for enrichment if not to accomplish a thorough reading of a masterpieces such as Tolstoy's War & Peace. Moreover, Tolstoy's historical theories are worth considering in the grand scheme of learning how to use The List. His idea is basically this—history as written by historians is fatally flawed because in his view, it generally fails to take account of the conditions of the general population. For Tolstoy the history that matters is that of the Bolkonskys and the Rostovs and every other myriad families fumbling their way through "history." Too often historians give account only of events or the personal conditions that lead historical leaders/"great men" to do whatever they do. Such accounts are insufficient, and we lose sight of the brave soldiers who brashly charge into action, the "historically" insignificant motivations of a man to be a mid-level government decision-maker, or the morbid interloper who ruins romances and lives out of revenge,spite, or hedonistic malevolence.
Is this true? I think the story makes a good case, if not an unnecessary argument altogether. But what an enjoyable way to read it—and what a great way to kick-off a 20+ year long examination of humanity's artistic history.
Read it already.
- S
Since I last posted, I've finished War & Peace, How to Read a Book by Adler, and How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Foster and I've started A Sideways Look at Time by Griffiths. But first, let me talk about War & Peace. After finishing, War & Peace feels like an immense accomplishment. The last 100 pages are quite taxing but after finishing it, I absolutely believe it belongs on Year 1 of The List—more as a starter case than anything else, I think. You see,this first year is about "How to Use the List: Theories and Thought Exercises," and so M and I (by far mostly M) have struggled to look for books that will enlighten one on the meaning of reading and to a certain extent, life and time in general (aren't the two synonymous on some philosophical level?).
War & Peace is both. What is the meaning of reading for enrichment if not to accomplish a thorough reading of a masterpieces such as Tolstoy's War & Peace. Moreover, Tolstoy's historical theories are worth considering in the grand scheme of learning how to use The List. His idea is basically this—history as written by historians is fatally flawed because in his view, it generally fails to take account of the conditions of the general population. For Tolstoy the history that matters is that of the Bolkonskys and the Rostovs and every other myriad families fumbling their way through "history." Too often historians give account only of events or the personal conditions that lead historical leaders/"great men" to do whatever they do. Such accounts are insufficient, and we lose sight of the brave soldiers who brashly charge into action, the "historically" insignificant motivations of a man to be a mid-level government decision-maker, or the morbid interloper who ruins romances and lives out of revenge,spite, or hedonistic malevolence.
Is this true? I think the story makes a good case, if not an unnecessary argument altogether. But what an enjoyable way to read it—and what a great way to kick-off a 20+ year long examination of humanity's artistic history.
Read it already.
- S
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