My first post in more than a year

I was hesitating about returning to this blog, having lost my enthusiasm for it, but now I feel I can return. What have I been reading since the last time I posted? Well, I've taken to reading collections. I have completed since last week the entirety of the Pleiade collection published by Gallimard, and plan to keep up with their new publications once a year. I read all of The Great Books list, which was popular in the sixties. I also read Yale's English Monarch series, which I began as light relief but which proved much more politically minded than I expected. I read all the Harry Potters, just to see what the fuss was about. I embarked just this past week on a list of the Western canon, not the 100 book list set by Harold Bloom, but the massive 700 book list loom produced. As a result I am reading the best novel I've read in some time, His Daughter, by Yoram Kaniuk. I find myself back in Israel, after 20 year. It is very keenly observed.

I still regularly read The Economist, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and The Utne Reader. I still re-read some of my favorites for relaxation.

Mags, Cambridge History, Newman

Since my last post I've read 4 issues of Eclectic Reading, two issues each of The Economist, The New Scientist, one issue each of Esquire, New York times Magazine, Chatelaine, The New Yorker, The Star, The Globe, The National Examiner, and The Examiner. I also read volumes 5,6 and 7 of the Cambridge New Modern History, and John Henry Cardinal Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua. I am now reading the Cambridge histories in philosophy, in particular the first, about Hellenistic philosophy. Certainly makes me realize I know nothing about Hellenistic philosophy in general, even I have read many ancient Greek philosophers.

Free-Thinkers, Best-Sellers, Fantasy

Since my last post, I've read an issue of The Economist, and an issue of The National Enquirer.

I have also read a volume of authors who wrote bestsellers in the XVIIIth century in France, and that was fascinating in itself. The most popular one was about the loves of nobles at the English court. I also read a collection of books from free-thinkers, about magic, about sexuality for women, etc. Two of them were written by the actual Cyrano de Bergerac, later immortalized in the rhyming play. Finally, I am reading the second volume of a collection of fantasy novels written by Germans in the XIXth century. That also is fascinating -- it gave rise to a whole current of literature that I knew about, having read many fantasy novels, but about whose roots I knew nothing. Who knew?