Grab Bag

Since my last post, I've read an issue of Eclectic Reading, an issue of OK Magazine, an issue of The New Yorker, an issue of Hello Canada, and an issue of The New Scientist.

I also read Jose Saramago's Death with Interruptions, a gift from my spouse. As good as Saramago is, I found this to be following the same formula as Blindness -- start with an unusual premise, and go from there. OK, not that much of a formula. It's an easy read. I read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, which I found full of Polonius-like advice -- probably it's the other way around. I also read Locke's Second Treatise on Government, and I was surprise to see how little Locke I've read -- just that and the treatise on Human Understanding. Finally, I read Dazzle' em With Style by Robert Anholt, which was also full of advice that I found a little self-evident, but possibly not if I was a physics students and 24 years-old.

Kafka

Since my last post, I've read an issue of Vanity Fair and cackled over the witty dissection of Larry King Live during June, with all the celebrity deaths; an issue of OK Magazine and an issue of Eclectic Reading.

I've finished off Kafka's diaries. It was much easier to read than I thought, although I admit that he was suffering and depressed throughout. I suppose that he suffered from severe untreated depression, to say nothing of the tuberculosis that killed him so young.

So in my nigh table are the complete works of Tocqueville and Sainte-Beuve, and my spouse Tony bought me Jose Saramago's latest.

Kafka, the end of the Goncourt

I read the novels of Kafka I hadn't read already, Le Chateau and L'Amerique. They are about the horror of the modern state. I also read his stories, including Metamorphose. I found that my usual criteria of only completed works in the form the author wanted couldn't apply here -- most of the works were published posthumously. The journals await me, but first I have also concluded in a rush the more cheerful if cheesier Goncourt diaries. At the close, I am amazed at the sharpest of the comments about people Edmond is supposed to like. I am a little embarrassed at my enjoyment of it all.

I also read Lecturing, by Sally Brown and Phil Race. I am now over 250 pages into the Robinson biography of Charles Chaplin.

Mags and Catty Goncourt Diaries

Since my last post I've read an issue of each of The Economist, The New Scientist, The New Yorker, the Utne Reader, OK Magazine, and two issues of Eclectic Reading.

I have otherwise been reading the Goncourt diaries of the Parisian literary scene of the late 19th century. It's been a ripping good read -- various elderly women are 'mummified', the endless inane conversations at glitterati dinners, Gustave Flaubert's taste for stories of bad bodily odors, complete with fainting doctors and the color and viscosity of effluents. I'm laughing out loud at the description of eye liner on men and wrinkled breasts on women, and catty remarks about writers more successful than the author. Unbelievable, reminiscent of Saint-Simon's portraits, and Proust's gossipy novels, but much much more acerbic. I must be in a rotten mood, I'm loving it all.

Tacitus

I read the complete works of Tacitus since my last post. I find him quite the liveliest ancient writer I've read so far. I also read two issues of Eclectic Reading, and an issue of The New Scientist.

Machiavelli, Spinoza, Saint-Exupery

Since my last post, I've read the complete works of Machiavelli, Spinoza and Saint-Exupery. And I've reached this conclusion -- that I've read a good deal, because I had already read two out of three of Machiavelli, leaving only Titus Livius, and three out of four of Saint-Exupery, leaving Vol de nuit. Spinoza I didn't enjoy -- he is the head of the rationalists, and I find that doesn't suit the theology he produces. But his life story is very inspiring.

I also read a stack of mags: an issue each of The New Scientist, The Economist, The Globe, and three issues of Eclectic Reading.

This is the diet of a voracious reader on vacation.

Lifetime Reading Plan

I read this plan on the web, and I found that I had read almost all of what was on the list. There were only a few items left for me to read, and those are the dribs and drabs I've read since my last post. There are all quite good or interesting in some ways -- Bartleby the Scrivener, by Herman Melville; Hemingway's short stories, which I actually liked better than the novels; Hume's essay on Human Understanding; Emerson's essays, on topics such as history; Herodotus' Histories, which I read quite quickly; and Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tales, some of which touched on the Quakers, but which is primarily important as being an early American writer. I don't expect my pace to pick up, as I'm still on vacation....