Re: What book are you reading? #4

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I just finished a really great book I borrowed from a pal: Triggernometry: A Gallery of Gunfighters, by Eugene Cunningham. Who says you can’t judge a book by it’s cover or it’s title?👍
 
Just starting Rivers of Gold, a history of the rise of the Spanish Empire.
 
Rivers of Gold wasn’t quite firing my mind up, and When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World was even more…nonengaging… Thanks be that I finally have my copy of Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle Earth by Brad Birzer! 😃
 
Bill Kauffman’s America First!, which has already hailed Edward Abbey and is quoting Wendell Berry rather frequently. I love Bill’s way with words, but delight too that he and I enjoy the same company in men like Berry, Abbey, and – women like Dorothy Day. She hasn’t popped up here yet, but she did in Look Homeward, America!:
“The Little Way. That is what we seek. That – contrary to the ethic of personal parking spaces, of the dollar-sign god – is the American way. Dorothy Day kept to that little way, and that is why we honor her. She understood that if small is not beautiful, at least it is always human.” p. 39
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“Kingdom of Speech”, by Tom Wolfe. I’m not finished with it yet, but it seems to be about how human speech defies every “natural” analysis people have tried to apply to it. In particular, he seems to be heading to a conclusion that speech pretty much casts Darwinism and its offspring into the ash can of bad ideas.

Just a little comment on it. All humans who are not somehow physically or mentally prevented from it, can speak. And speech, which is pervasive among humans, is far, far beyond anything “natural selection” can explain, because its capabilities are vastly beyond anything “natural selection” would have demanded for survival. It’s an overwhelmingly gigantic “overimprovement”, so to speak, that has no natural explanation precisely because it’s a gigantic overimprovement over all other natural capabilities, and its limitations always seem out of reach. It’s still beyond the necessities of even the complex world we have devised for ourselves. So, of course, is the human brain. We have not yet “hit the wall” in either case, which requires the question whether there even is a wall. All animals have discernible “walls”. A jaguar can only jump so high. It can only conquer so many kinds of animals. It can make only so many sounds. It can eat only so many things and thrive. It can make itself a bedding of sorts, but only to a clearly discernible degree. No jaguar has ever so much as built itself a mud hut, let alone composed a poem.

Its “walls” are easily evident. But ours? Where are they if they exist, and do they exist at all, other than in a purely physical sense?

I’ll see where he ends up with this. But so far, I recommend it.
 
Tocqueville
de la Démocratie en Amérique

Could there be a better book to read during this election? On the planet? I doubt it.
 
The Truth of Catholicism; Ten Controversies Explored, by George Weigel
 
FollowChrist34 said:
Tocqueville “de la Démocratie en Amérique”
Could there be a better book to read during this election? On the planet? I doubt it.
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How about the Bible? Tocqueville might be a little outdated.
I’m reading “Moby Dick”.
 
zamyrabyrd said:
Tocqueville might be a little outdated.
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Won’t know 'til you read him, right? 😃 You’d be surprised…frankly he comes across as a prophet, speaking of the Bible. Or Cassandra if you want to go classic.

Congrats on Moby Dick. Love it but uneven. Whiteness of the Whale is a high point indeed. I get the book off the shelf just to read that chapter. Melville was reading King Lear at the time he wrote that novel, and it shows, there and everywhere. But all the whale stuff…my God. Kills me. Try Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales if you like 19th century American - I just discovered it last year - the writing and imagery is fantastic. Plots not great, little stiff, but the exquisite, flawless writing makes up for it. I mention it because no one seems to read it anymore - a real treasure.
 
FollowChrist34 said:
Won’t know 'til you read him, right? 😃 You’d be surprised…frankly he comes across as a prophet, speaking of the Bible. Or Cassandra if you want to go classic.

Congrats on Moby Dick. Love it but uneven. Whiteness of the Whale is a high point indeed. I get the book off the shelf just to read that chapter. Melville was reading King Lear at the time he wrote that novel, and it shows, there and everywhere. But all the whale stuff…my God. Kills me. Try Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales if you like 19th century American - I just discovered it last year - the writing and imagery is fantastic. Plots not great, little stiff, but the exquisite, flawless writing makes up for it. I mention it because no one seems to read it anymore - a real treasure.
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I bought Hawthorne’s Tales a couple years ago (on the cheap without a cover) and enjoyed it thoroughly. Melville was not only reading Shakespeare, he was well versed in mythology and the Bible of course.
 
I’m currently reading St Therese of the Child Jesus story of a soul. What a great Saint!
 
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