That's sort of the way I see it as well. Stupid is a poor choice of a word. Reading for me was the great escape and education. My formal schooling ended at 15 and except for night school and one day a week provided as part of an apprenticeship in engineering. Reading 'everything' I could get my hands on helped me on a lot. Some left me scratching my head as to why they were called great, had to be read books. "The Brothers Karamasov" really didn't do anything to improve my life or my way of looking at the world. I hated Joyce and failed to see why he was labeled a literary genius. Funny though, years later I read Gore Vidal's books and sort of enjoyed the life of a rich, privileged smart bugger. Now I just read for pleasure. If I like a book, I almost have to read it at one sitting. If I don't, or I'm struggling with it (stupid ) I'll toss it
I actually liked Warren's novel quite a bit. May have something to do with reading it in a great grad seminar in Baton Rouge, LA, one floor above where Warren wrote huge chunks of it. Well, the last one was probably not very helpful. And I don't know how often it's a matter of being too stupid for a book... though I can think of a certain thread about a certain peg-legged captain chasing a white whale wherein that proved to be the case. I just think some authors tell stories/write poems, etc. in ways that work for some people and don't work for others. I like Hart Crane's poems quite a bit, but 1) they can be as obscure as hell, 2) I don't always know what's going on, so if I'm teaching, I freely admit that and 3) I don't assume someone is dumb because something doesn't work for them, which leads me finally to 4) UNLESS!!! they are militantly and belligerently ignorant in their attack on the work. Anyway, and speaking of obscure... Eric G. Wilson: My Business is to Create: (William) Blake's Infinite Writing, a book from that same series as the above-mentioned Emerson book. I like this one quite a bit so far, though again, it's main flaw is that someone else wrote it, and not me. ********er.
In honor of Spejic's Van Dammathon.... I present the Bardathon!!! My goal for this calendar year beginning April 1st is to read all of the plays of William Shakespeare. I'm going to read them in rough chronological order, excepting Romeo & Juliet (which I will read concurrently with my son's class). After Scouse (I think) posted the list of 100 books everyone should read, I realized that I had only read 9 of the Bard's 38 completed plays. And I aim to change that.... The Two Gentlemen of Verona This is Billy's first play and it features the best non-speaking character in Shakespeare: Crab (a dog). A trifle hard to visualize on the page, but on stage the dog has reportedly always brought down the house. He's also got his first woman dressing as a man, garters featuring prominently, and plenty of what would now be called potty-mouthed language. I have to say, I'm enjoying this Royal Shakespeare Company edition, but if it weren't for the annotations I would have no idea just how many sexual innuendos Shakespeare used. It's staggering. I'm maybe catching only 20%. As an aside, when I was in high school, a couple of friends and I came up with our Cliff's Notes for school. If you were ever stuck in biology, the answer was form follows function. If you didn't understand a poem, the author was talking about death, and the answer for any multiple choice test in American history was either William Jennings Bryan or a protective tariff. I need to amend these "rules": Shakespeare is making a nasty double entendre... Most memorable moment: the two gentlemen, Valentine and Proteus are both in love with one woman: Silvia. Valentine had the inside track but is now presumed dead (don't ask). Proteus, overcome with the loss of his friend Valentine and consumed with lust for Silvia, takes her into a forest, and is about to rape her, when Valentine shows up. Overcome with remorse, he pledges his loyalty to Valentine, who is equally overcome by this show of gentlemanly love, and offers Silvia to Proteus. Rape averted, Silvia is reunited with Valentine and Proteus gets his original gal, the one who dressed up as a man to be close to him. Fade to black... Next up: The Taming of the Shrew
I very much liked the first three Thin Man movies, but I never knew that Hammett had written stories for the 2nd and 3rd movies until I found this volume. Unsurprisingly it reads more like a script treatment than a novel. In preparation, I reread The Thin Man. Maybe I need to return to Hammett's other writing too, since it felt very different from what I remembered.
Crud. I can't find my copy of The Taming of the Shrew. So, I had planned on reading a bio of Shakespeare and asked a good friend who is a Tudor scholar for the best non-600 page bio of the guy, and she hasn't gotten back to me. She just knows the wordy tomes, but since most bios apparently spend more time explaining what they don't know about him, or having to work particularly hard to formulate some thesis about the guy, I decided to go with Bill Bryson. I mean, 200 pages and just one of the finest craftsmen of sentences today. And he's funny. As he notes in the body of the work, the world doesn't need another Shakespeare bio as much as this book's series' did.
That's an excellent book, not least because Bryson has also written really solid, entertaining books about the English language as well. If you need other books on Shakespeare that are accessible and interesting, I liked Margaret Chute's Shakespeare of London quite a bit. A lot of background on the London of Shakespeare's day, the theater in London life, etc. A bit more detailed than Bryson, but still not overly specialized. Most scholars will tell you that it's dated, but not in any way that needs to concern people who don't have a Ph. D. This next book was a fun read, too. The author became interested in Shakespeare after he retired, read everything, took classes, went to festivals, visited archives etc. (the whole hog) and then wrote a pretty interesting book about his late-life obsession: Me and Shakespeare: Adventures with the Bard by Herman Gollob.
I have been working my way through Jaspreet Singh's Helium which is a difficult, sometimes rewarding read. The narrative orbits around two things: the narrator's experiences with India's anti-Sikh riots of the mid-1980s (the book is set in the current day during a visit back after decades away) and various scientific principles. It is tough for me to explain. I think I will get all the way through it; I know I appreciate it but don't yet know if I like it, if that makes sense.
Fantastic and I hate autobiographies, one of my favourite opening sentences (or 2) of any book I have read. Mate has an Iranian gf, so I thought I'd read up.
RWE: Representative Men. "These books (of Emmanuel Swedenborg) should be used with caution. . . . True in transition, they become false if fixed."
Just finished: Day of the Triffids Just started: The first one was kind of a yawner, but I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic stuff. The 2nd book splits its time between the story of an early american serial killer and the construction/architecture of the Chicago World's Fair of 1890 something. It's okay.
Empires of the Silk Road is pretty heavy going. It has numerous foot notes and end notes, presumes a significant knowledge of linguistics, and there is a lot of axe grinding going on, but this is one of my favorite historical topics, so I'm happy to stick it out.
Still can't find my copy of Taming of the Shrew, and I visited the library, three used book stores and our semi book store and can't find a copy handy, so... The Complete Works of William Shakespeare... Abridged By the folks at the Reduced Shakespeare Company Funny book on all things William Shakespeare. Main contention is that there is so little known about him, that all bios really out to be under the fiction heading. This is really better read just as going to bed or on the john because the shtick wears thin surprisingly quickly. But fun all in all...
This has been a delightful discovery of sorts. I am reading Amara Lakhous' book Dispute Over a Very Italian Piglet, which takes place in Turin on the eve of Romania's accession to the EU. It centers on a lazy but goodhearted investigative journalist caught up in two events: a hypothetical (?) pseudo-mafia war between Romanians and Albanians, and a dispute between the worshipers at a local mosque and a migrant whose pig (which is native to Italy and happens to wear a Juventus scarf, making it the darling of the protectionists in the country) may or may not have been filmed frolicking in the mosque. It is a wonderful commentary on fears surrounding immigration in Italy, and quite fun to boot.
I sort of promised myself I wouldn't read any books about books unless I was absolutely (however indirectly) being paid to do so, but Northrop Frye's Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake is about three cuts above most literary criticism. I've been making my way through some of Blake's more out-there poems, and this is helping. S
Ok, so today is the "supposed" 450th birthday of one William Shakespeare. I had no idea that the number would be so nice and round when I started on my little journey, but there you go. I say today is the Bard's supposed birthday because we don't know what day he was born on. What we do have is his baptismal record and he was baptized on the 26th of April, and it was customary to baptize three days after birth. And it's facts like this that keep bios of Shakespeare from being, well, good. Case in point: Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt I gather this is supposed to be one of the best bios of Shakespeare, it was nominated for the Pulitzer, but I don't find it compelling at all. Sure Greenblatt will say that we don't have any proof that Shakespeare attended the King School in Straford, but since his father was a rising prominent man about town during Billy's youth, he must have gone there. We know it was considered a good school. And then he's off and running telling us about his education. Same is true for the plays Shakespeare would have seen as an adolescent. Greenblatt acknowledges that we have no idea if Shakespeare saw any of the travelling troupes that went through, but hey, his father was a prominent man and Shakespeare must have seen them because look how closely they must influence his later works. I find it tedious. The book is also not written particularly well. I just don't trust anyone who writes serious history without an introduction. There's no thesis statement for this book. And that's too bad.
I really did not like that book, and I really despise the scholarly movement Greenblatt is credited (largely through no fault of his own) with spearheading (New Historicism). Off the top of my head, a better scholarly book on Shakespeare is James Shapiro's 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, but I don't recall it as being as compelling as Bryson's book. RWE: Essays, First Series "Whilst we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow " ("Circles"). Also, picked this up at the library and read about 80 pages in a quick sitting this morning. Ben Yagoda: Memoir: A History. I think Yagoda, like many readers, went to a bookstore one day and thought, "my God, why are so many people writing memoirs about their unremarkable lives?" and decided to look into it. Turns out, people have been thinking that for coming up on 400 years now.
Finishing this: It feels way too much like the WoT. Great in scope and all the various sub-plots makes me feel like it will drag along like the WoT series did. Hopefully I'm wrong.