So, being rather new to the whole blogging bit, it's taking me a little while to figure out the best way to arrange things. I thought it would help keep things organized a bit just to put all my random comments on books on another page, but I've realized just how large that page is already becoming. So I think, from now on, I'll just integrate those in with my regular posts, categorized under "reading." So if you really want to see the whole list of random things which I'm slogging through, you can just check out that whole category.
I've included below the two most recent entries on that page, and will probably convert that page into a "to-be-read" list.
I work in a library. You'd think I'd be better at organizing book-related things.
Recent reading, as of the summer solstice:
Currently working on:
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn.
Finished:
Questions of Evidence: Proof, Practice, and Persuasion across the Disciplines, edited by James Chandler, Arnold Davidson, and Harry Harootunian. (Abandoned, June 20)
Way too huge for me to work through in the amount of time for which I had it out on loan. Most of the essays were originally printed in Critical Inquiry anyhow, so hopefully I'll eventually go to them there. I had only just begun Lorraine Daston's essay on facts, which looked quite promising, before it was due. The collection of essays came out of a large collaborative project in the mid-90s at the UofC (associated, I think with the humanities center) – sort of the preliminary conference to the Fate of the Disciplines this spring. Chandler, Davidson, Carlo Ginzburg, Ian Hacking, Simon Schaffer are among a few of the contributors.
Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis. (June 20)
So when one of my roommates found out I was reading this, they responded "You're reading Lewis?" This is explained by my recent sarcasms about my church's (and evangelicals more generally) "idolatry of C.S. Lewis" and my refusal to do such things as attend the recent series of talks on campus named after this very book. But the deal is that I have a pretty nice edition (from a time when I myself accorded Lewis something like the "patron saint of evangelicals" status), but I'd like to sell it. Having never actually read it, I thought perhaps I should before cashing it back in. For the same reason, Mere Christianity will probably also make it soon onto this list.
I'm not yet sure if I actually liked the book or not. There are undoubtedly some amusing stories and character depictions, but so much of the book is filled with literary references which Lewis seems to assume will be understood and to which he accords much importance (the whole story is something of a literary autobiography as much as a spiritual autobiography), but which I predominately failed to understand. I think it comes of not being an Englishman privately tutored in youth and then schooled at Oxford in the 1920s. I wouldn't mind knowing them, but unfortunately no one sat me down when I was 17 and 18 and made me read through Homer in Greek, Virgil in Latin, Voltaire in French, etc. It seems that the last few chapters are the most substantive, when you feel Lewis really wrestling between conflicting philosophies; and I thought them the most enjoyable. I just also thought it a little unfortunate that I did not gather the same feeling throughout the rest of the book.
