Ashleigh wrote:I am now onto the Iliad by Homer. Told you my interests were varied.

Here's a coincidence. I'm reading The Odyssey. I read the Iliad a few months back. Somehow I missed out on Homer in school and I wanted to fill in the gaps of my education. Beowulf is the next classic on my list.

I read the Odyssey for uni last year. I meant to read them in high school as extra reading for Ancient History but I had too much else to read for my other subjects. The Odyssey is really good, by the way. Really interesting.

Hegel1066,

You sound as if you are studying in a department similar to the Comparative Literature Program here in Eugene. (About 15 years ago...) I loved sections in The Dialogic Imagination and I recall in particular a section about laughter and how it can be used to safely question power, to bring an otherwise lofty object close so that it can be prodded and investigated and made free with by the rude and common public. Also just the way that the general argument about multilayering of voices and tones in a text is what makes it novelistic fits in nicely with the theme of Mimesis makes them good to read together. Are they together on a course syllabus or did you create that pairing yourself?

Ashleigh in particular might be interested in the chapter of Mimesis on "Odysseus' Scar," since she's reading the Odyssey. It's books like these that make you realize a text can be a "secondary text" and still a classic piece of writing and thinking in its own right.

About what I'm reading for fun now, on a less nosy note, I had taken out about a dozen books to browse through before going to sleep, but I have set them aside to read the books this site is featuring in this and coming months. I may return them without finishing them. They include My Name is Chellis and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization by Chellis Glendinning. I loved this other book she had written called Chiva about a New Mexican village resisting the international heroin trade. It had a beautiful structure which told about the history of the heroin trade through a nested set of histories in concentric levels of the personal, the community, the country, the world. She tells the story of her partner's heroin addiction and attempts at recovery over a lifetime tying it in with where the heroin was coming from, globally, at each of his phases of relapse. It's really an amazing perspective. And to think I first picked it up and looked at it because she has such a melodious name. Hmm. I'm a lucky reader, like Mr. Magoo in traffic.

Ashleigh wrote:The Odyssey is really good, by the way. Really interesting.

Yeah, I'm almost finished. I actually read it out of order because my high-school aged son was reading it for school and I wanted to be able to discuss it with him. So, I started with Books 9-12, jumped back to Books 1-4, then ahead to Books 21-24, then to Books 5-8, and now I'm on the final stretch, Books 13-20!

Cool! From the sounds of it, your son did the Books of the Great Wanderings, also known as the fairy tale books.

I just finished Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, and am currently reading (as I mentioned in another thread) a biography on England's King Henry I. In between the biography I'm also working my way through the two most recent issues of Analog.

Artemis Fowl, book 5. Light, Harry Potterish reading. Then Brisingr, book 3 of Eragon. Then back to philosophy. Might read Objective Knowledge by Popper again. He goes pretty deep.

Interbane wrote:Might read Objective Knowledge by Popper again. He goes pretty deep.

Hi Interbane. How does this stand against your 11 October comment that "Popper was incredibly stupid"?

I am reading a book by one of my favourite atheologians, Christopher Hitchins, God is Not Great. He has some choice comments about my semi-compatriot Mel Gibson. I was intrigued to see Hitchins quote Maimonides who thought Jesus should be boiled in shit for all eternity (although I disagree . ) What would Leo Strauss think of that?

On my nightstand right now are books by a bunch of new authors. As a new author myself, I am part of an amazon discussion forum where new authors help and support one another. We read and review each others manuscripts and books.

Two new books that I just finished and think were excellent are: Soul Identity by Dennis Batchelder and The Samson Effect by Tony Eldridge.

I write sports myteries but i'm not writing this to promote my work.

I'm reading a few books at the moment.

The Appeal by John Grisham
The Waste Lands (Book 3 of the Dark Tower Series) by Stephen King
IT by Stephen King (I've discovered Stephen King this year :laugh2: )
and I'm going to start Lolita tonight.