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My electives keep me sane but they also tear my heart in every direction I read. I run across a good book in one class and I want to gallop off in that direction. This is my reading wish list right now:
Primo Levi
Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma
Dante, Inferno
John Ralston Saul
Norman Ravvin (my favourite human being these days)
If I don’t wander from/add to this list too much in the next two months, over break I can treat myself to one by Saul and one by Ravvin.
More stuff to read.
| Call Number | PJ 5129 S49K513 1962 |
| Author | Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 1904- |
| Title | The slave : a novel / translated from the Yiddish by the author and Cecil Hemley. – |
| Publisher | New York : Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1962 |
You could get out a piece of paper, find a pencil, and write down this call number so that you can find it in the stacks.
| Location | Call Number | Availability (what’s this?) |
|---|---|---|
| Vanier 3rd Floor | PJ 5129 S49K513 1962 | IN LIBRARY |
|
Philip Cushman
I have an inclination to pick out pieces of text I like from the books I read. I remember doing this as far back as ninth grade while reading Catch-22. (BTW, Yossarian lives.) I happily revive the tradition with this spectacular book.
“Life is a very narrow bridge between two eternities—do not be afraid”. Rabbi Nachman of Braslav
“A science without memory is at the mercy of the forces of the day”. Franz Samelson
How are we to decide how to live, if we cannot think that our current configuration of the self is the one, true, universal self? How can we decide how to live when we are not embedded in the kind of enfolding, all-encompassing indigenous tradition that many Western eras were informed by? This is indeed a troubling—no terrifying—dilemma. This dilemma is our fate, but perhaps it is also our opportunity, if we can embrace it”. (p33)
This is something that I spend a lot of time and thought grappling with.
Mark Helprin
…the intellect is of no use unless it’s disciplined by the mortification of the flesh, so that it may serve the soul. (p791)
The difference between classes of men is that the vast majority remember youth as their glory, and the tiniest fraction, in escaping a life of drudgery and increasing difficulty, find something even better. (p787)
I’m taking a religion course called “Stories in Judaism,” so today I find myself in possession of my very own first Tanakh. I can’t describe the feeling I had when I opened the cover to a page that says THIS BIBLE BELONGS TO with a line in it to carry my name. Me! Mine! This is part of me now!
Ironically, earlier today I made a sardonic comment in class about how in capitalist society, identity is largely constructed through consumption. Well, here I am, guilty of my own charges.
I was telling L. the other day that I’m not exactly sure why Jewish stuff makes me so excited. His guess was that in a past life I was an Italian Jew, and that I managed to survive the treatment of my pork-eating oppressors. That’s a good enough explanation for me.
Clara Khudaverdian, my classical social theory professor, says that the thing that will make you most happy is the one that you fear the most. I have the sneaking suspicion that my confusion and being conflicted about so much and so many fundamental questions is a way to keep me from engaging the things I apprehend.
Last night I read Annie Dillard’s “Living Like Weasels” again for the first time in a long while. It reminded me why I was so in love with literature and why I was convinced I would major in it. I realized that my bookshelves were where I acquired my sense of style and my deep appreciation for beauty; when one drinks deep the poetry of language, one seeks the poetry of life.
I miss my books, the companions of my soul. I must not forget to cultivate this part of who I am, lest I let dry, confused, so-called realism convince me of its myopia.
The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems, Raul Prebisch
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
- Bowen, Elenore Smith (Laura Bohannan’s pseudonym). 1964. RETURN TO LAUGHTER: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL NOVEL. Garden City, NY: Natural History Library. [Vanier 3rd floor: DT 500 B6 1964]
- Castaneda, Carlos. 1968. THE TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN: A YAQUI WAY OF KNOWLEDGE. New York: Washington Square Press. [Webster 4th floor: E 99 Y3C3 1990]
- Donner, Florinda. 1982. SHABONO: A VISIT TO A REMOTE AND MAGICAL WORLD IN THE SOUTH AMERICAN RAINFOREST. London: Triad Books. [not at Concordia]
- Jackson, Michael. 1986. BARAWA AND THE WAY BIRDS FLY IN THE SKY. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. [not at Concordia]
- Knabb, Timothy. 1995. A WAR OF WITCHES: A JOURNEY INTO THE UNDERGROUND OF CONTEMPORARY AZTECS. New York: HarperCollins. [not at Concordia]
- Narayan, Kirin. 1999. “Ethnography and Fiction: Where is the Border?” ANTHROPOLOGY AND HUMANISM 24 (2): 132-147.
- Also, RICHARD PRICE has a few, really good ones.
I liked this review of Mark Rowland’s book The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death and Happiness. It reminds me of my philosophy professor who had a beautiful dog that was half wolf. I wonder if he’s read it…
I think that before becoming philosophers, people must first be scientists of some sort. Only after his life as a physicist did Niels Bohr get to say that the opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth. Before sitting around to reflect upon the deep matters of life and the human experience, you have to live, toil, experience and learn first. This is why, before the advent of the term “science,” people who studied the natural world were called philosophers.
I’m coming to the realization that I’m pretty vain about my name.
I’ve already read; I’d like to read.
Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua – Things Fall Apart
Agee, James – A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane – Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James – Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel – Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul – The Adventures of Augie March
Bronte, Charlotte – Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily – Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert – The Stranger
Cather, Willa – Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey – The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton – The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate – The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph – Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore – The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen – The Red Badge of Courage
Dante – Inferno Keep reading
