Reading for pleasure! What are you reading now?

gig · Eligible to vote! Joined: 24 Jul 2008 Posts: 11 Gender:

I have always found it interesting that some readers are only non-fiction-al while others are fiction-al. Me, I'm a fiction-al kind of gal when reading but I will listen to both...so does that make me auditorially non-partisan?

hegel1066

I have an old habit of always having my hands on about half a dozen things at a time, in the fear that I'll find one of more of the books that I'm reading needlessly repetitive or suddenly unsatisfying.

I'm now reading:

George Steiner's "My Unwritten Books". Steiner was a long time literary critic and writer who wrote some of the most percipient criticism of the last century. I believe he's considering retirement, if he hasn't already retired. "Unwritten Books" is really a crowning gem.

Mikhail Bakhtin's "The Dialogical Imagination". Bakhtin was a Russian Marxist literary critic and semiotician. Much of his work focuses around tropes in literature, and societal forms found in literature, like "carnival" and the "grotesque." His work on the history of laughter, chronotope, heteroglossia, and the dialogic imagination are especially worthy of note.

Michael Taussig's "The Nervous System". Taussig is a brilliant cultural anthropologist who did years worth of research in South America, and now teaches at NYU. This particular text is comprised of nine essays, in which he talks about everything from the way we try to commodify the state to the ways in which we "reify" the state in order to give it our power.Ever the critical Marxist, Taussig focuses on state violence and force to achieve its ends. To quote Benjamin, "To live in a state of emergency is not the exception, but the rule." (How pertinent is this today!)

Eric Auerbach's "Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature". I can't say anything that hasn't already been said in praise of this fantastic piece of literary scholarship. It's exactly what it says it is: a history of representations of reality in Western literature. ALL of Western literature - from Petronius and Tacitus to Virginia Woolf. A must-read for any serious fan of comparative literature.

Alberto Manguel's "The Library at Night". I bought this late one night while I was browsing through a bookstore. It is an incredible collection of short essays on different books, and the idea of the library, and what they mean to the author. The author, it seems, is a veritable polyhistor, which I greatly appreciate.

George Bataille's "On Nietzsche". Read with caution. Bataille was one of the progenitors of postmodern thought. He has some ... er, interesting, but not unwelcome interpretations of Nietzsche.

gig · Eligible to vote! Joined: 24 Jul 2008 Posts: 11 Gender:

I think a reader always has more unread books on hand than he needs to... much like an overstocked refrigerator...however, books never spoil....I can count on one hand how many books I have started and didn't finish...although as I get older and time becomes more precious I have to admit I have become pickier ...and fatter!

Penelope · Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2008 9:23 am Post subject:

At least books are not fattening and they don't damage the teeth!!!

gig · Eligible to vote! Joined: 24 Jul 2008 Posts: 11 Gender:

Penelope, have you read anything by Benjamin Black? I know its a pen name ...but for the life of me I can't remember his "real" name.

Penelope · Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2008 1:17 pm Post subject:

gig - No, I haven't heard of Benjamin Black, but I work in a very large bookstore....so I will look out for him....and add him to my pile...piles of books don't eat anything either.....fortunately for me. Smile


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