Read more great books

I have recently completed In the Shadow of the Pomegranate by Tariq Ali and am currently reading The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel. Ali’s book is set around 1500 in Spain/Al Andalusia and tells of the final days of Moorish presence in Spain. It paints a picture of an almost edenic Islamic society being put to the sword by a horde of bloody minded Spanish catholics. Werfel’s book is set in 1915 in the former Ottoman Empire and is about the persecution of the Christian armenians by the Moslem Turks.
Both books are exercises in demonizing the “other” while telling the truly sad story of the victimization of one’s own group. The Islam/Christianity conflict is so ancient that it will probably never go away. It is older, even, than the two religions and goes back to the Greek/Persian conflict of antiquity.
My conclusion? The best that can be hoped for is a truce. Not peace, love, and understanding. Just a truce.

As well, I’m reading a few other books, including a comic on Kierkegaard.

I’d read it about a dozen years ago and enjoyed it thoroughly. Now there is a new edition of the translation, so I bought the paperback version and again, enjoyed it thoroughly.
I’ve tried in other place to write long, Proustian sentences that slalom across the page. They were long, but obvious parodies. Good for a laugh and nothing more.
Proust must have been the world’s keenest observer. And the world’s biggest neurotic; the worries with which Swann and the narrator torment themselves are truly brilliant in their craziness and truth to reality.
I plan to read the other volumes over time.

About 15 years ago I read the first volume of the old two volume Moncrieff translation.It was slow going, but I enjoyed it. I would read at least 10 pages per day, at around 6:30 a.m., in the family room, with the gas fireplace glowing: I live in a part of the world where we have long, cold winters, when the sun doesn’t rise until after 8 a.m. long after I have arrived at my office at work,a black coffee nearby to warm my innards, while Proust’s sinuous sentences unwound themselves before my eyes and my inner eye saw hawthorns and I could almost smell the aroma of the chicken that Francois was turning on the spit for the family’s Saturday lunch, always taken an hour early on that particular day,until I was so hungry that I went upstairs and made myself some bacon and eggs, because I was on the Atkins diet, which helped me lose 30 pounds but shot my cholesterol level to such heights that, a decade and a half later, I am still taking a lipitor daily.
Last week, while on vacation, I wandered into a book store and found the new revised paperback of Swann’s Way, and on a whim, bought it and can’t put it down. The flow, the detail, the ironies and side issues. Formidable!

the listing of all the books I read in 2007.

Right now I am working on a three-novella collection from Colette (I have read them before, revisiting because they are so tasty) and I am also reading “Age of Innocence” by Edith Wharton. Both of these certainly qualify as “Great Books” – in fact, I feel like if I read it, it is a great book or I wouldn’t be reading it. So I will mark this done… and continue to progress using the other goal.

I don’t know if this is a great book, but it’s really good. The novel tells the story of a 139 year old con man whose life parallels the development of Australia from the beginning of the twentieth century. The only problem is that, because it is told by a con man, how much can we believe what he tells us? Of course, this is the question that all books raise.

but it is a book that made a lasting impression on me for what the author intended, and that counts for something. Besides, I want to have done with what I started in this case.

The themes of forgetfullness and memory is intriguing to me.

I cleared my desk this morning as a part of “Passion Activator Friday” and there was “Night” by Elie Wiesel.

I had been waiting until it felt right.

It feels right. Tomorrow afternoon, Mr. Wiesel and I have a date.

Is perhaps one of the most significant reads of my lifetime.

I read a poem or two from it daily now and recommend it everyplace.

Phenomenal. Read it!

Have the paperback in my cargo pocket as I speak.

Read the first chapter last night, after I woke up, some time after midnight.