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Reading for pleasure! What are you reading now?
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hegel1066
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- Finally Comfortable
- Posts: 51
- Joined: Fri Jul 18, 2008 11:38 pm
- 15
- Location: San Antonio, Texas
My current reading list, as of 7-25-08:
I have an old habit of always having my hands on about half a dozen things at a time, in the fear that I'll find one of more of the books that I'm reading needlessly repetitive or suddenly unsatisfying.
I'm now reading:
George Steiner's "My Unwritten Books". Steiner was a long time literary critic and writer who wrote some of the most percipient criticism of the last century. I believe he's considering retirement, if he hasn't already retired. "Unwritten Books" is really a crowning gem.
Mikhail Bakhtin's "The Dialogical Imagination". Bakhtin was a Russian Marxist literary critic and semiotician. Much of his work focuses around tropes in literature, and societal forms found in literature, like "carnival" and the "grotesque." His work on the history of laughter, chronotope, heteroglossia, and the dialogic imagination are especially worthy of note.
Michael Taussig's "The Nervous System". Taussig is a brilliant cultural anthropologist who did years worth of research in South America, and now teaches at NYU. This particular text is comprised of nine essays, in which he talks about everything from the way we try to commodify the state to the ways in which we "reify" the state in order to give it our power.Ever the critical Marxist, Taussig focuses on state violence and force to achieve its ends. To quote Benjamin, "To live in a state of emergency is not the exception, but the rule." (How pertinent is this today!)
Eric Auerbach's "Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature". I can't say anything that hasn't already been said in praise of this fantastic piece of literary scholarship. It's exactly what it says it is: a history of representations of reality in Western literature. ALL of Western literature - from Petronius and Tacitus to Virginia Woolf. A must-read for any serious fan of comparative literature.
Alberto Manguel's "The Library at Night". I bought this late one night while I was browsing through a bookstore. It is an incredible collection of short essays on different books, and the idea of the library, and what they mean to the author. The author, it seems, is a veritable polyhistor, which I greatly appreciate.
George Bataille's "On Nietzsche". Read with caution. Bataille was one of the progenitors of postmodern thought. He has some ... er, interesting, but not unwelcome interpretations of Nietzsche.
I'm now reading:
George Steiner's "My Unwritten Books". Steiner was a long time literary critic and writer who wrote some of the most percipient criticism of the last century. I believe he's considering retirement, if he hasn't already retired. "Unwritten Books" is really a crowning gem.
Mikhail Bakhtin's "The Dialogical Imagination". Bakhtin was a Russian Marxist literary critic and semiotician. Much of his work focuses around tropes in literature, and societal forms found in literature, like "carnival" and the "grotesque." His work on the history of laughter, chronotope, heteroglossia, and the dialogic imagination are especially worthy of note.
Michael Taussig's "The Nervous System". Taussig is a brilliant cultural anthropologist who did years worth of research in South America, and now teaches at NYU. This particular text is comprised of nine essays, in which he talks about everything from the way we try to commodify the state to the ways in which we "reify" the state in order to give it our power.Ever the critical Marxist, Taussig focuses on state violence and force to achieve its ends. To quote Benjamin, "To live in a state of emergency is not the exception, but the rule." (How pertinent is this today!)
Eric Auerbach's "Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature". I can't say anything that hasn't already been said in praise of this fantastic piece of literary scholarship. It's exactly what it says it is: a history of representations of reality in Western literature. ALL of Western literature - from Petronius and Tacitus to Virginia Woolf. A must-read for any serious fan of comparative literature.
Alberto Manguel's "The Library at Night". I bought this late one night while I was browsing through a bookstore. It is an incredible collection of short essays on different books, and the idea of the library, and what they mean to the author. The author, it seems, is a veritable polyhistor, which I greatly appreciate.
George Bataille's "On Nietzsche". Read with caution. Bataille was one of the progenitors of postmodern thought. He has some ... er, interesting, but not unwelcome interpretations of Nietzsche.
I think a reader always has more unread books on hand than he needs to... much like an overstocked refrigerator...however, books never spoil....I can count on one hand how many books I have started and didn't finish...although as I get older and time becomes more precious I have to admit I have become pickier ...and fatter!
books are like sweets....
Penelope, have you read anything by Benjamin Black? I know its a pen name ...but for the life of me I can't remember his "real" name.
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Penelope
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- One more post ought to do it.
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gig - No, I haven't heard of Benjamin Black, but I work in a very large bookstore....so I will look out for him....and add him to my pile...piles of books don't eat anything either.....fortunately for me. 
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.
He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....
Rafael Sabatini
He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....
Rafael Sabatini
Well I have a few books by my bed. But currently I'm reading a Louis L'amour. 'To The Far Blue Mountains' He typically writes westerns, and I find him a very refreshing writer. I wish more authors were able to write as simply and as profoundly as he can. C. S. Lewis's work is sometimes similar.
I just recently started it, and so far its really good, though different in many ways to his other books.
This particular one is set suring the earlier part of America's history, during the reign of Elizabeth I, and starts in England.
So that's what I'm reading at the moment, and next on the list is something from Father Brown's works.
I just recently started it, and so far its really good, though different in many ways to his other books.
This particular one is set suring the earlier part of America's history, during the reign of Elizabeth I, and starts in England.
So that's what I'm reading at the moment, and next on the list is something from Father Brown's works.
