The Nerdy, Wordy, Reading Life
I finished Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy last night. I quite enjoyed all three volumes. They were not the most absorbing books I’ve ever read (I give them a collective grade of 3 stars out of 5), but I found them very interesting. Asimov’s vision of the Galactic Empire, fundamentally secular and very concerned with the fate of [...]
My most bookish (and Wolfe-ish) friend loaned me Gene Wolfe’s first novel: Operation Ares. It was quite disappointing for a Wolfe. Of course, Wolfe himself has made efforts to keep the volume out of print, as it endured a brutal editing process (103,000 words to 60,000!) without Wolfe’s input, and he is not proud of it. [...]
This Gene Wolfe novel was a quicker read than most of his books are for me. Like the Wizard Knight duology, Pirate Freedom features a contemporary young man transported out of this world. This exploration of the golden age of piracy offers a meditation on morality, wisdom, and free will. The perspective of the narrator [...]
I’ve been reading The Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin and I’m in the middle of the fourth book now. As I started it, a few days ago, I noticed one of the blurbs inside the front cover. Newsday says “…Most fantasy writers follow the battle-of-good-and-evil model of their great predecessor, J.R.R. [...]
So, I’ve been selected as a judge for the 2011 INSPY (“The Bloggers’ Award for Excellence in Faith-Driven Literature”) awards in Creative non-fiction. I’ve never been an official judge for anything before but I think I’m opinionated enough to pull this off *wink*. Most of the long-list is new to me, and I don’t know what [...]
We spent the weekend (Friday evening through Sunday afternoon) camping at a place called Willow Creek. We went with some good friends who just happened to be friends with other good friends of ours (our town is a small town in many ways). The trip was peaceful and pleasant in many ways. It is also [...]
Not bound by my word, I have strayed from Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and read THREE other books in the last week. First, I wolfed down Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird which I found stimulating, intriguing, and true. It was also slightly depressing, much like the writer’s life. Second, I scrambled through P.D James’s The [...]
I enjoyed last week when it seemed I finished a book every day. Right now I’m a bit bogged down in two books. I’m reading a collection of Gene Wolfe’s short stories and Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. It’s not these books’ fault that I’m slogging through them. They are both lovely, brilliant works, however, [...]
From the estimable C.S. Lewis: There is no clearer distinction between the literary and the unliterary. It is infallible. The literary man rereads, other men simply read. A novel once read is to them like yesterday’s newspaper. One may have hopes of a man who has never read The Odyssey or Malory, or Boswell, or [...]
Here are the books I need/want to read in the next four weeks. From bottom to top:Â Summa Theologica by St. Thomas, The Discarded Image, Medieval and Rennaissance Literature, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century-all by Lewis- The City of God by St. Augustine & A Book of Hours by Merton. I’ve already read most [...]