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Author Topic: What Book Are You Currently Reading?  (Read 397171 times)
World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #25 on: June 17, 2013, 10:33:10 PM »

Sonnets from the Portuguese. I'm exactly halfway through.

Seriously overrated, like all Melville.

I'd like to register my disagreement here.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #26 on: June 18, 2013, 11:43:39 AM »

I liked Moby Dick but it's not the greatest American novel I've read, for sure.

Really liked The Plague. Didn't know Camus could feel like some kind of atheist Victor Hugo. Tongue

Followed up with To Kill A Mockingbird. I sense that one ought to disapprove of it but I'm a sappy romantic so I just loved it.

Now I'm returning to Graham Greene!

I don't think one is supposed to disapprove of To Kill a Mockingbird. At least if one's American one's not.

What Graham Greene are you reading?
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #27 on: June 24, 2013, 04:49:04 PM »

I've finished Sonnets from the Portuguese. The next thing I read is likelier than not to be either Steinbeck's The Red Pony or Herrick's Hesperides, but there are other possibilities as well.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #28 on: July 04, 2013, 09:52:03 PM »

I ended up on Miguel de Unamuno's Tragic Sense of Life, of all things. So far, I've found a lot in it that I really like and some that I really don't.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #29 on: August 13, 2013, 08:18:07 AM »

Working my way through the Hesperides.

Cathcon, congratulations! What did you think?

Scott, the problem is that the New Testament is really the only place where Jesus as a fleshed-out figure exists at all. Historical Jesus scholarship is basically just guessing half the time, placing Jesus into a social context that can has been established on mostly non-Jesus-related bases the other half, and ideological axe-grinding either way.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #30 on: August 25, 2013, 02:42:55 AM »
« Edited: August 28, 2013, 06:51:12 PM by asexual trans victimologist »

I've read The Red Pony. Pretty good. The second story was probably my favorite; I have a weakness for characters in situations like Gitano's for some reason.

Cathcon, A Canticle for Leibowitz is one of my favorite novels ever.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #31 on: September 05, 2013, 03:23:19 PM »
« Edited: September 05, 2013, 05:09:07 PM by asexual trans victimologist »

Rereading Dubliners in its entirety for the first time in five or six years for a class. There's some...stuff going on in this book that I am honestly thankful I didn't notice when I was in high school and am glad is more obvious to me now.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #32 on: September 18, 2013, 02:52:13 PM »

I've been meaning to pick up Idylls of the King. Is it worthwhile?
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #33 on: September 18, 2013, 07:24:00 PM »
« Edited: September 18, 2013, 07:34:50 PM by asexual trans victimologist »

I've been meaning to pick up Idylls of the King. Is it worthwhile?

Only if you have a thing for turgidity.

It's funny. Tennyson's the kind of poet who should by most sober measures be completely irrelevant to my interests and if asked to argue that his verse is overwrought, ponderous, and in general dubious both aesthetically and politically I would be more than able to, but for some reason that I really don't understand I on some visceral level like some of his works (not all!) a lot. The development of Arthuriana is also something I've been interested in for a very long time.

Anyway, on further consideration I'm not sure he's the sort of turgidity I'm looking for right now, but I'll probably read it at some point. Down the list Idylls of the King goes for the time being. In that case I'm not sure what's up next.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #34 on: October 23, 2013, 08:22:16 PM »

Murakami's always felt a little same-y to me, in that he's more influenced than influential and cosmopolitan in a way that seems (for me, and this is entirely subjective) bland rather than cultured. He also can't write women to save his life. He's got really good instincts for imagery and mood, though.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #35 on: November 04, 2013, 04:43:42 AM »

Murakami's always felt a little same-y to me, in that he's more influenced than influential and cosmopolitan in a way that seems (for me, and this is entirely subjective) bland rather than cultured. He also can't write women to save his life. He's got really good instincts for imagery and mood, though.

I mostly agree with this. What's weird though is this: why do women love him so much?

Most women I know who are into literature like Murakami. Most men don't. But to me that's odd.

Now that you mention it, this is true among people who I know as well. I don't know why that might be and I don't particularly feel qualified to theorize about it. It's definitely strange. Murakami's women have always struck me as very female-as-baffling-other-as-seen-by-self-absorbed-straight-male, especially in Sputnik Sweetheart, which one might think wouldn't have this problem but which, if it was intended not to, backfired horribly.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #36 on: November 05, 2013, 04:54:22 PM »
« Edited: November 05, 2013, 05:00:41 PM by asexual trans victimologist »

I guess it's conceivably possible that Murakami Haruki understands women better than I do but that implies unsettling enough things about my relationships with the women in my life that I'd prefer to look for other explanations. I'd be willing to concede the notion that perhaps most of the women Murakami spends time with think and behave way different to most of the women I spend time with for whatever reason.

Thinking that he has problems handling female characters isn't just a quixotic opinion of mine; it's a frequent criticism of his work. I should point out that the majority of people in the circles I run in who are familiar with Murakami admit, regardless of gender, that this is a problem with his writing, even people who like it otherwise.

(The other issue that I have with Murakami is that, to paraphrase Flannery O'Connor, his writing doesn't feel like it's from anywhere; this isn't meant to echo the pat criticism in his own country's literary establishment that his writing is not 'purely Japanese' enough; it's a broader issue than that. Even when images and moods are arresting and well-communicated, I've never felt like a had a good understanding of the general intended milieu of any of his fiction, except maybe Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, which is probably my favorite of his novels that I've read but which still didn't make as much of an impression on me as, I [Inks] you not, an experimental fantasy anime that's strongly derivative of it. His nonfiction is better about this, as indeed it is about most things. Underground is a genuinely great and important book.)

(Anyway there's really no reason to focus on Murakami when Takahashi Gen'ichirō is still alive, except that far more of Murakami's work has been translated.)

Also I'm thinking of starting Mann's Doctor Faustus at some point, probably after I manage to work my way through Yukiguni and Nijūshi no hitomi in the original.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #37 on: November 06, 2013, 04:55:18 PM »

Interesting. I really should read some Murakami.

I can recommend Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World without too many reservations, and Underground and after the quake with none.

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It's my major and I'm a senior! Thank you for the compliment but I actually can't read it all that well; I've read Snow Country and Twenty-four Eyes in English before and this will be my first attempt to read original 'serious literature' (junbungaku) longer than an Akutagawa story.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #38 on: November 12, 2013, 05:31:59 AM »

I just finished John McGahern's The Dark. I'm not quite sure what I thought of it yet.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #39 on: November 27, 2013, 03:32:14 PM »

Continuing my survey of modern Irish poetry by mainlining MacNeice and Heaney; also revisiting some of the Heike monogatari for the first time in a while. I still have some Mann and Greene coming down the pipeline, at least in theory.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #40 on: November 27, 2013, 07:00:39 PM »
« Edited: November 27, 2013, 07:02:40 PM by asexual trans victimologist »

Continuing my survey of modern Irish poetry by mainlining MacNeice and Heaney;

What dost thou think?

MacNeice is a little uneven but there are parts of Autumn Journal that really shine and 'Snow', 'Autobiography', and 'The Streets of Laredo' have been haunting me for days now--it probably helps that I find the original version of 'The Streets of Laredo' haunting as well. He comes across as definitely a creature of Frayn's 'Herbivore Britain', insofar as that term is meaningful. I also definitely appreciate the moments where he recognizes how ridiculously privileged he is. Heaney I haven't read enough of yet to have a particularly strong opinion but so far I've loved 'Churning Day'. Neither is nearly as politically problematic as for example Yeats but I'm not sure either is as artistically accomplished either (although again I haven't read enough of Heaney to say for sure yet).
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #41 on: November 29, 2013, 12:07:43 AM »

I can't really argue for or against Aquinas' position here since I don't know what he means by 'oneness' in this context

If he means anything by one other than one, he never states it.  Perhaps I'm stuck with a bad translation.  I could see him arguing that "God is the supreme unity" far more readily than I could see him arguing that "God is the supreme one" and I can sorta see how a bad translation from Latin might confuse the two concepts.

Based on what I know about Aquinas I'd be surprised if that weren't the issue here.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #42 on: December 08, 2013, 12:47:16 AM »


!!!

What do you think of it?
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #43 on: December 09, 2013, 06:10:57 AM »
« Edited: December 09, 2013, 09:54:12 AM by asexual trans victimologist »


I haven't quite finished yet, but I do think it is a good book with a number of places that have some really great dialogue. Unlike, say Brave New World, I don't think the general premise of society having the life cycle of a phoenix is predictive of the future really, but it's still quite intriguing. I particularly liked the Fiat Lux portion so far and wish Miller would have told us more about how that subplot turned out. I'm appreciating the struggles of the Abbot in Fiat Voluntas Tua against the regime on euthanasia as well.

That's Miller's interest in Buddhism and Buddhist cosmologies seeping through into his Catholicism. You see more of that in the posthumously-published (and really not as good, though still full of interesting characters and concepts) Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman. If 'Fiat Lux' was the part that you liked best then you might want to read Wild Horse Woman, since it follows up on the events of that a few generations later, mostly from the perspective of the remaining Plains Nomads and their allies in the Church. Just remember that Miller was in an even darker frame of mind writing it than he was writing Canticle, and had drifted away from orthodoxy somewhat. (EDIT: Ernest got there first.)

Overall Canticle is one of my favorite novels ever, though obviously not without some flaws.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #44 on: December 15, 2013, 09:41:45 PM »

I've started Le Morte d'Arthur.

It's...certainly something.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #45 on: December 19, 2013, 05:29:26 PM »

Le Morte d'Arthur is actually getting really good.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #46 on: December 23, 2013, 02:53:53 AM »

Checked out the Canterbury Tales from the library today. I'm kind of getting into poetry.

Which translation, and does it also have the original Middle English?
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #47 on: December 23, 2013, 04:53:58 AM »

Reading Sorrows of Young Werther and I find myself identifying very strongly with the protagonist.

I know the feeling but I'm compelled to advise you to check yourself before you wreck yourself anyway.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #48 on: December 26, 2013, 08:19:26 AM »

Checked out the Canterbury Tales from the library today. I'm kind of getting into poetry.

Which translation, and does it also have the original Middle English?
Modern English translation.

Yes, but by whom?
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #49 on: December 27, 2013, 12:07:21 AM »

For the Tales, I think my school just used the Penguin Books (or whatever) translation.

Coghill? Good man.

If I could find a version of the Coghill with the original on facing pages I would be all over it.
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