I have been reading a great deal (which sounds remarkably like "I have travelled a good deal in Concord...") and I can definitively recommend the following for a fine diversion, which might come in handy about now, if you are sick to death of politics and politicking and the Cassandrine wails of the media. Yes, I know that titles of books are to be underlined, but I'm on a clamshell terminal here and that is not working out.
"Uncivil Seasons" by Michael Malone
"The Decameron" by Bocaccio
"The Persian Expedition" of Xenophon (I love the little snarky asides -- like the part where he describes the Syrians as very nice but oddly entranced by fish)
"The Red Book Mabinogion"
"The Normans in Sicily" by John Julius Norwich
"Girls on the Run" by John Ashbery
"Local Wonders" by Ted Kooser
"The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" by David Wroblewski (I know, it's an Oprah, but I started it before she signed off on it)
"Genie du christianisme" by Chateaubriand
"Hymn of the Universe" by Teilhard de Chardin
"Akt und Sein" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Isis Unveiled" by Helena Blavatsky (I know, I kept meaning to get to it, and now I did)
books you can skip, if you want:
"Special Topics in Calamity Physics" by Marissa Pessl
"Sweetheart" by Chelsea Cain
This is for those of you keeping score at home. Just doin' my part to keep people reading, in the face of crushing indifference.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
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3 comments:
I feel hopelessly middlebrow now.
Jeez, Bob, no -- it's just that I am like some kind of sick academic magpie. I read anything, everything, all the time, and I read fast. I read lots of stuff that is complete crap in addition to these things -- these are the ones I'm recommending.
You're really recommending Isis Unveiled? OK. I might actually consider reading more than the 2 pages I read 15 years ago.
And yes, I'm with you, Bob, no matter what you say, L.
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