Thoughts of a sentimental humanist

Here are the books I read and enjoyed in the month of June:

Summer World by Bernd Heinrich
Godless by Dan Barker
God is not great by Christopher Hitchens
The Cliffs by Olivier Adam
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
The Rebels by Sandor Marai
All Souls by Javier Marias

All are welcome to join in:

rice week

It was a busy month, but not for reading. I need to pick up the pace in June. Here are the four books I read in May:

The Closing of the Western Mind: The rise of faith and the fall of reason by Charles Freeman
Jacques the Fatalist by Denis Diderot
The Emperor’s Tomb by Joseph Roth
Beauty by Roger Scruton

This brings my total to 34 books for the year, still ahead of pace, but just. Happy reading!

Here are the books I read in April

The razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
Logicomix by apostolos doxiadis
House of Wittgenstein by Alexander Waugh
Ideas that Matter by A. C. Grayling
Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene
Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig

Wow, 9 books read in March. I am ahead of schedule. Here they are:

Fatal Lies by Frank Tallis
Vienna Secrets by Frank Tallis
The Renaissance by Walter Pater
Captain Fracasse by Theophile Gautier
Breakfast with Socrates by John Rowland Smith
The basic writings of Nietzsche by Friedrich Nietzsche
The Man of Fifty by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Immortal Game by Shenk
Evening at the palace of reason by James Gaines

This may be a hundred book year. happy reading!

A little more
ridic audio part 2

Here, in place of an actual blog post, is a page out of my journal dated 31 March 2007. I was in Philadelphia at a classics convention, staying at the downtown Holiday Inn. The hotel, among other bizarre things, looked down upon a graveyard which took the place of any courtyard. And so:

“In Phily for the Eta Sigma Phi conference. this is not the city of brotherly love. My companions miss home, as do I.
Steve jackson and I stood at the grave of Ben Franklin this morning. It was an incredible moment, but how I miss my wife and little girl.
Also, I bought a few books from a great old used bookstore while here. I am discovering that I am starting to prefer novels of nostalgia, quiet tales of the autumn of people’s lives. I like to read about men and women in solitude.
Perhaps, if so very slowly, I am becoming one of these people. I do know that i feel my age surrounded by my young traveling companions. They do not have the weight of family. Yet that weight is no burden. it makes me more substantial than i otherwise would be, more than some character in a book, more than the shade of a great man such as Ben Franklin.Even now in the dark I can look down from my hotel window and see his grave. Where he has gone, I shall follow. But not yet. Not for a while. not for ages.”

February has come and gone, and my personal reading plan has given me wonderful focus so far. Most of the month was spent reading books relating to Vienna, and I foresee much of the same in March, with heavy doses of philosophy thrown into the mix. I have found the Frank Tallis mysteries to be among the best I have ever read, and love the Fin de Siecle depiction of Freud’s Vienna. Here is what I read in February

Books read that are on the list:

Chateau d’Argol by Julien Gracq
Life Ascending: the 10 great inventions of evolution by Nick Lane
Life, Sex, and ideas: the good life without god by A.C. Grayling

Books not on the list but read this month:

On Love by Alain de Botton
Napoleon: a life by Paul Johnson
The Spell of the Vienna Woods by Paul Hoffman
A Death in Vienna by Frank Tallis
Vienna Blood by Frank Tallis

So I’ve read 3 books from the list this month, and 6 out of the 35 on the list so far this year. I read a total of 8 books this month, making 15 total books read so far in 2010. Not too shabby. Onward, and happy reading.

Being my little girl’s daddy and my wife’s hubby are by far the best things I have ever done. here is a little ditty the princess and I sang before nap-time today. No Grammy, but so fun
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Well, one month down and eleven to go. I proposed to read 50 books in 2010, naming 35 of them in a previous blog. So, I need to read just over four books a month, three of which come from the list I set at the first of the year. How am I doing? So far, I am ahead of schedule. Here is what January looked like:

Books read that are on the list:
1. On Love by Stendhal
2. The Red and the Black by Stendhal
3. Histoires Grecques by Maurice Sartre

Books not on the list but read in January:
1. Letter to D. by Andre Gortz
2. The pleasures of growing old by Maurice Goudeket
3. A Lion for Love: a critical biography of Stendhal by Robert Alter
4. Identity by Milan Kundera

So, seven books down (a pretty good month), but February is short and I have a few giants to get through. Happy reading.