Tocqueville

Since my last post, I've read an issue of Hello Canada, two issues of OK Magazine, an issue of The New Yorker, three issues of Eclectic Reading, and two issues of The Economist. I also started reading more of Tocqueville -- his analysis of the United States really is outstanding. Some BBC reporter whose name I forget now said that Tocqueville wrote the best book ever written on the United States, and he was not just the reason I am reading Tocqueville, but he was also right. The second volume of De la democratie en Amerique is not only excellent even today, it is free of anti-Americanism, something quite rare now. I also read Tocqueville's memoirs.

Tocqueville, Bossuet

Since my last post,I read an issue of Electic Reading, an issue of The New Yorker, an issue of Vanity Fair, and an issue of The New Scientist. I'm in the middle of an issue of The Economist. I also read My Memories of Six Reigns, by HH Princess Louise, which was bland in the extreme, the rest of Bossuet, sermons, panegyrics, and essays, and then the first part of Tocqueville's book on the US. There was nothing striking in any of this that I want to share.

La Bruyere, Bossuet, Diane Vreeland

Since my last post I've read an issue of The New Scientist.

I also read the complete works of La Bruyere, which didn't make much of an impression on me, and the memoirs of Diane Vreeland, D.V., which were very badly written indeed.

I had the pleasure of reading the funeral orations of Bossuet, famous in French literature, and I found them extraordinary, and moving when I knew who the dead person was...I didn't always. My reading has slowed considerably as I ramp up to the teaching part of the year.

Solzhenitsyn, Jelinek

Since my last post, I've read two issues of Eclectic Reading, an issue of The New Yorker, and an issue of The New Scientist. I also read two books by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Cancer Ward, depressing but impressive, and The First Circle, which I enjoyed less. Solzhenitsyn has the Russian eye for the telling detail, like Tolstoy, like Grossman. Both books were, of course, withering denunciations of the Soviet state.

I also read several of Elfriede Jelinek's novels. I had read Women as Lovers earlier, but now I've read The Piano Teacher, Lust, Greed, and Wonderful, Wonderful Time. They also are harshly truthful, and about realities of life that are in themselves harsh -- mental illness, sexuality as power, etc. This is not the idea of Austrian culture that I have had, possibly as a stereotype, until now.

Finally, I read Intellectual Character by Rittchard, which I enjoyed less than the gripping other teaching book, but was useful nonetheless.