what I'm reading
I said earlier that I was planning on using this blog to record the things I was reading so that later I could tally it all up. This, I have discovered, is an impossability. How many books do we half read, and what counts as having read. Okay, so I read Flowers of Evil--that was new. Half of which I put into an audio file. I read the essay Circles by Emerson--I think I'd read that before. I listen-read The Great Gatsby, which is one of those things you really feel you should have read before, and well...I hadn't. I don't even think I've seen the whole movie. I read a long essay by Sokal which was supposed to be the introduction to some book--like most of the other books he writes--but I couldn't tell you what it was called because it was sent to me as a link and I read it on line and then got rid of it. I re-read the introduction to the History of Sexuality V. 1, and a really good book about "the environment poem" (actually I half read that). Lastly, I read The Man With the Blue Guitar, and the Gospel of Mark.
Okay, so what am I reading. I'm reading this book The Nick of Time, which will offer no surprises to anyone who's read Nietzsche, and is even remotely familiar with Darwin. I can't get myself to finish The Red Badge of Courage or this book I have on the Rough Riders, and whenever I get bored I attempt to listen to The Plot Against America by Phillip Roth. It's interesting in some ways, but I can't say I'm leaping with excitement over it. The book that I'm really chugging through at the moment is Native Son, which is incredibly weird in that if it were written by a white guy it would have been literature for the KKK.
Okay, so what am I reading. I'm reading this book The Nick of Time, which will offer no surprises to anyone who's read Nietzsche, and is even remotely familiar with Darwin. I can't get myself to finish The Red Badge of Courage or this book I have on the Rough Riders, and whenever I get bored I attempt to listen to The Plot Against America by Phillip Roth. It's interesting in some ways, but I can't say I'm leaping with excitement over it. The book that I'm really chugging through at the moment is Native Son, which is incredibly weird in that if it were written by a white guy it would have been literature for the KKK.
posted by Monstro D. Whale at
3:36 PM
1 Comments:
When it comes down to it, the list of books is impressive to those who really want to know you have read a big ass list of books -- like instructors who are on your committee. Then comes that point where you actually USE what you have read.
This is where you prove how much the literature actually made some kind of impact on your brain and you remember anything.
Hence, if you are in conversation with a colleague and you pull out an obscure reference to a book in response to his or her obscure reference to a book -- you win big brownie and bragging rights.
Your reading knowledge also comes in handy whilst dealing with some student who happens to have read the book, so that you can pull out the one solitary thing you remember about the book and spend 10 minutes making up some kind of insightful discussion about it so you don't look like a stupid dork in front of your student.
On the whole though, knowing all the damn book is kinda like algebra. If you really need it then you can look the damn book up again.
Post a Comment
<< Home