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
Showing posts with label WP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WP. Show all posts
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
Friday, March 14, 2008
Tapestry
I think that the thing I love most about War & Peace is probably the richness of variety in the characters. There is a VAST range of personalities, motivations, attitudes, desires, and needs on display. Consequently, relationships as they are portrayed in literature are taking on whole new meanings for me. Indeed, it will be hard to ever look at a typical fiction's relationship dynamics ever again without feeling some hollow ring of sadness that Tolstoy is not writing it. I think this comes from the characters seeming to be in such relief against a theater that most authors find inaccessible. I think in the end, Tolstoy just committed to his story and his characters in a way few authors do (dare I say, "can"?). One would have to commit to this level in order to lay out such a staggering array of people and such a sprawlingly lengthy work. Every time I pick it up, I think "this is what it takes to commit and this is what happens when you do." In the end, I suppose that's the real root of my love affair with War & Peace. I do love the characters and the stories, and I'll discuss them more at length--but Tolstoy's commitment is inspiring and rewarding.
So this entry was short and rambly. I'm a rambly kind of guy. But not short. So you can usually expect me to be rambly. But if you see me, I won't be short. It was written in a cab at 12am. What do you want?
-S
So this entry was short and rambly. I'm a rambly kind of guy. But not short. So you can usually expect me to be rambly. But if you see me, I won't be short. It was written in a cab at 12am. What do you want?
-S
Saturday, February 23, 2008
An Introduction
Hi, all, and welcome to The List.
My name is Sean and I live in China. So as I noted in the other half of the The Awesomeosity Project (TAP)—Blogworthy, if you are ever reading an entry where I seem like I’m not trading in the same cultural currency you are, then it’s because I’m not.
For me, The List is an especially bold undertaking, since I’m going to have a hell of a time getting the books I need for it—reading material on-demand in China is out of the question at this point, so I have to rely on a planned trip home in May, meaning that I’ll be far behind on the novels. In the meantime, I’ve started tackling the only fiction that’s on The List for Year 1: Tolstoy’s War & Peace, so you can expect some posts on that soon, and Mariel has been generously sending me the essays as she obtains them, so I can also keep up there.
In the meantime, for me, The List is not so much about a sense of accomplishment as it is about the absolute drive to know everything. Of course I don’t expect to obtain omniscience, but if you were to look at my Facebook profile under interests, you would find the intentionally ubiquitous word “everything.” And it’s true. So as far as my minor contributions to the literary content of The List goes (I’ll probably have a lot more to say once we start working out the Music and Movies part), I’m much more interested in literature that operates as a mirror of the human experience and a repository of collective knowledge and the simple necessities, such as The Odyssey. Music and Movies will also reflect that interest as well, I hope.
And that’s my biography pertaining to my participation here. I hope you all join in, and if you’d like to contribute, either to the blog or a view on some media that should be added to The List itself, please contact us at our addresses listed on the side.
I’ll post again by Tuesday with something resembling my Booklust 2008. ‘Til then, happy reading!
-SMonday, February 18, 2008
War and Peace, Entry No. 1
This is going to take a while.
After I picked War and Peace up from the library, I let it sit on my shelf for a few days, just staring at me. It's an intimidating book - 1200 pages, one of the greatest books of all time, written by one of the greatest authors of all time (inspiring a philosopher no less than Isaiah Berlin to ponder his motivations,). It was precisely for these reasons that we included it in the beginning year of The List, rather than later on with his contemporaries - as Sean insisted, what better way to start off an exploration of human thought, history and literature than by reading W&P. So here we are. And this is going to take a while.
I'm intentionally taking my time with it, spreading it throughout the first year of this gedankenexperiment. Actually, as of this writing, I'm already off target, since my goal is to read 100 pages a month, and I'm only just now hitting that mark in February. It didn't help that it took me 60 (large, dense) pages to get into the story. Any book of this length, (including The Discoverers, which I love) is bound to be intimidating. But when it appears that the book will be nothing but reading reports of conversations (half in French, which, while I can read it without the translation, I'm still unsure of the point) between over-privileged Russian elites in their over-stuffed salons, even my interest flags (not that I would ever not finish the book - I am a completionist, and besides, this is The List, and War and freaking Peace!).
After the 60th page or so, something changed. I'm not sure if it was me, if it was Tolstoy, or what, but it captured me. Most of the *action* still takes place in drawing rooms and hallways, but each of the characters, however briefly noted, are complex actors. Each is fully human - not simply a caricature or type inserted for fill. Tolstoy is evidently fascinated by these individuals and their lives, the choices they make, the actions they take, the circumstances that shape them. After a while, it's infectious.
Some of that credit must be placed with the translators, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Being desperately out of practice with my own Russian language skills (and never having reached Tolstoy's level anyway), I really can't know for certain how true they are to the original text. The reader has to place tremendous faith in the work of the translators, the best of which rise to the level of interpreters - not merely transposing the original words, but actively reimagining the work - writing as the author would have, if s/he had written in the second language. While not a substitute for a reading in the native tongue, the best translations capture the spirit and render the thinking of the original. Given what I've heard about W&P from those who read it in Russian, Pevear and Volokhonsky have done a worthy job
So, this is going to take a while, but I'm looking forward to it. I'm also hoping that by writing every 100 pages or so, and interspersing my reading of this with other selections from The List, I will be able to observe my own thinking grow and evolve over the course of the year. I'm also looking forward to the inevitable debates with Sean about these books (since we rarely agree on any interpretation). All in all, it should be a very interesting year.
- M
After I picked War and Peace up from the library, I let it sit on my shelf for a few days, just staring at me. It's an intimidating book - 1200 pages, one of the greatest books of all time, written by one of the greatest authors of all time (inspiring a philosopher no less than Isaiah Berlin to ponder his motivations,). It was precisely for these reasons that we included it in the beginning year of The List, rather than later on with his contemporaries - as Sean insisted, what better way to start off an exploration of human thought, history and literature than by reading W&P. So here we are. And this is going to take a while.
I'm intentionally taking my time with it, spreading it throughout the first year of this gedankenexperiment. Actually, as of this writing, I'm already off target, since my goal is to read 100 pages a month, and I'm only just now hitting that mark in February. It didn't help that it took me 60 (large, dense) pages to get into the story. Any book of this length, (including The Discoverers, which I love) is bound to be intimidating. But when it appears that the book will be nothing but reading reports of conversations (half in French, which, while I can read it without the translation, I'm still unsure of the point) between over-privileged Russian elites in their over-stuffed salons, even my interest flags (not that I would ever not finish the book - I am a completionist, and besides, this is The List, and War and freaking Peace!).
After the 60th page or so, something changed. I'm not sure if it was me, if it was Tolstoy, or what, but it captured me. Most of the *action* still takes place in drawing rooms and hallways, but each of the characters, however briefly noted, are complex actors. Each is fully human - not simply a caricature or type inserted for fill. Tolstoy is evidently fascinated by these individuals and their lives, the choices they make, the actions they take, the circumstances that shape them. After a while, it's infectious.
Some of that credit must be placed with the translators, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Being desperately out of practice with my own Russian language skills (and never having reached Tolstoy's level anyway), I really can't know for certain how true they are to the original text. The reader has to place tremendous faith in the work of the translators, the best of which rise to the level of interpreters - not merely transposing the original words, but actively reimagining the work - writing as the author would have, if s/he had written in the second language. While not a substitute for a reading in the native tongue, the best translations capture the spirit and render the thinking of the original. Given what I've heard about W&P from those who read it in Russian, Pevear and Volokhonsky have done a worthy job
So, this is going to take a while, but I'm looking forward to it. I'm also hoping that by writing every 100 pages or so, and interspersing my reading of this with other selections from The List, I will be able to observe my own thinking grow and evolve over the course of the year. I'm also looking forward to the inevitable debates with Sean about these books (since we rarely agree on any interpretation). All in all, it should be a very interesting year.
- M
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