Libb

Started ‘Till we have Faces’, a novel by C.S. Lewis. I quite like this author and reading the first chapter of the book make me think I won’t be disappointed this time either.

Lewis is the author of ‘Narnia’, but he is also (and, imho, foremost) a christian author that has written really deep essays well worth reading even if you’re not the religious kind of person (I’m not). A book like ‘The Abolition of Man’ should be considered a must read to anyone worrying about the type of society we’re building today.

It’s a (short) collection of 3 (or is it 4?) lectures he did back in 1942 aimed at… British bomber pilots (young people expected to erase entire cities) in which he discusses what it means to educate children and why it should matter how we decide to do it. He also points out how easily education can be used to create… a lesser, smaller, or heartless, kind of humanity, or no humanity. Hence the title of the book. A great book.

This is such a tragedy. And not just in the USA :(

It would be tailored/devised towards being quotable by other researchers in that field, not as being worthy per se.

Consider an alternative research economy where researchers have to pay to cite prior work.

We’re in a system that encourages publishing at all cost as much works as possible, with your system the system would encourage publishing quotation worthy work at all cost and as often as possible. Not sure to see how this would improve the mess we’re in?

Interesting read, thx for sharing. After reading the article, I’m not about that in the book: do they also talk about censoring/banning books from the non-conservative side of the political spectrum? I hope so.

I mean, even as a non-US citizen, it’s hard not to see this is also a (worrying) trend, just this time with different motivations and different books/authors being targeted, right?

The sad thing is that it is not just a US thing. Most Western countries I can think of, for the last 40 years or so, have managed to ruin their educative systems, making sure younger generations become less and less capable when not plain dumber.

Here in France, I would vote for any party pledging to make it its priority to reform back our educative system to, say, its pre-80s state and promising to keep at bay those assholes (and their moronic ideas) who are still ruining it with each of their new reforms.

Sweden figured that out already

I wonder how long my own country, France, will take to wake up from that high tech-venerating educative system nightmare?

Good question. For a similar reason people keep using corporate-owned social media, I suppose?

Mentions in some other book I’m currently reading, reading an interesting review in a newspaper, recommended to me by someone, sheer luck.

Sheer luck? I like to roam used book stores, flee markets, yard sales to find a good deal on a book or two (I don’t buy piles of them, and will consider myself very lucky if I find 1 or 2 books I want to buy). I seldom go looking for a specific author or title and make myself available for unexpected encounters ;)

Right now, I’m reading Jules Laforgue, a French 19th century poet for that reason. I stumbled upon his complete work in a yard sale here in Paris, hidden in a pile of trash there was this 1913 pale yellow cover, from a back then well known publishers whose work I know and respect, from an author whose name was vaguely familiar to me. I flipped a few pages and was deeply impressed by his verses. Purchased it, put it aside and started reading it a few days ago. I’m so lucky I purchased it! I like his poetry.

For non-fiction. I often follow the sources. I will find myself an introductory work on whatever topic I’m interested in, or maybe some book that is considered ‘classical’ work, and from there I’ll follow their own sources. Since I read a lot of classical works to begin with, this means than I’m reading even more of those and (very) old books.

The thing that is helping me a lot in not needing a reading list, and to never wonder what I’ll be reading next, is I always have a pen and paper available while I’m reading and I use them.

I jot down whatever quotation/references/ideas/impressions. And then I carefully store/index those notes with the many pothers I have accumulated along the years. Doing so, I know can always refer back to any notes from any book I’ve ever read, even years later, to quickly find whatever passage I’m looking for, including references to other books I might be interested in. I takes such notes with every single book I read essays, fictions, poetry (yep, I’ve already started taking notes on that Jules Laforgue poetry book I’m reading, and there are quite a few already). Even if on some book I end up not taking any note, I still have a card referencing the book and seeing it empty helps me remember I did not find much stuff in it (which in turns may help me decide I might not wish as much to read more from that specific author).

*This is a fantastic way of creating non-fiction reading lists, but I can’t imagine doing this with fiction–I’m just not that much of a literary masochist.

When you’re not a scholar reading lists,should not be used to inflict yourself any pain (one is not a student in that class) but as an amazing collection of hints to potentially great reads.

Borrow any book from said list and give it a go. Not just a few minutes, give it a real chance: check the ToC, read the Intro/Preface and read a couple chapters as some books/authors maybe harder to read and to get into than others but still more than worth the effort. If you realize it really doesn’t click with you, that’s no big deal: close the book and bring it back to the library, pick another one from that same list. No harm done and no money wasted. Do you realize it’s an interesting read or that you really enjoy it? Great! You may even decide you like it enough to be wanting to own a copy of that book, or not you will still have read it ;)

That 's how I started reading Milton’s poetry and, many, many years ago, Emily Dickinson’s. Two of those poets that never left me since I discovered their work.

My only suggestion in regards to reading lists, depending the field they claim to cover, is that one may want to show some caution in regards to the contemporary lists as too often they can be very… self-censored in order to avoid any polemic. It’s a sad sign of the sad intellectual times we’re living in, but it is still a reality. Older reading lists, say from before the 80s/very early 90s, will often be richer and much more stimulating and challenging intellectually. More demanding, too. Pre-WWII lists even more so.

Very unexpected take(s). Just ordered his 2 previous books, pre-ordered the 3rd one.

Same answer as with the previous comment: Answering that is almost impossible unless one severely limits the selection. But I will see what I can do ;)

Answering that is almost impossible unless one severely limits the selection. But I will see what I can do ;)

Well I do read them, what I said is that I find very little I think is worth re-reading. My curiosity is not fading away as I grow old, quite the contrary. I’m just more conscious of the little time I have left and the need to be picky.

The saddest thing to me, more than seeing paperbacks getting eradicated in order to allow people to waste more of their time on TikTok is to realize how few of the recently published books I’ve find worthy to own. There are none published last year and there aren’t that many published in the last 10 or 20 years either. Which is sad.

I own a decently-sized library but it’s mostly pre-90ish. Full disclaimer: most my books dates from the 19th century or much older but I still own a decent selection of books that were printed in the 20th century up to the early 00s. After that? Barely any fiction at all, those I will own are essays and things like that, some poetry too.

Which I find sad because it’s not like one day I decided I wanted to only own old novels. It just happens that I feel very little interest in those more recent fictions. I want to own a book when I know I will want to open it over and over again. If that is not the case, why bother with owning it? I can borrow the book from the public library and forget about it after I read it.

Also, the books I do own I want them to not fall apart after a single use… which is another sad reality with too any cheap and even not that cheap contemporary editions.

Says who?

Maybe check your wallet too? I’m quite gifted ;)

As a visual person, I have a hard time imagining (no pun intended) what it is to not have images in one’s mind. I will go read this, thx for sharing.

And now they(1) will tell us we don’t really our own urine, it was just leased to use and we now need to pay premium monthly sub to take a leak?

1: some capitalists/corps owning IP on the process.

wonder how age factors in.

+1

I never felt like electrocuting myself out of boredom. Like, wtf? Shouldn’t that be considered a symptom of some mental disorder?

I also have zero issue being with left alone my thoughts, and never had even younger. Quite the contrary it is something I’m looking forward to.

But I’m also well into my 50s and even though I’ve been using a computer of some sort since the early 80s it was just a tool, next to many others, in my personal toolbox next to many other tools.

The most used tool in my toolbox is the humble notebook + pen, not the computer and certainly not the smartphone as I’m one of those abnormalities that doesn’t need to check my phone’s notifications every odd second. Heck, I don’t even Notifications turned on, and have not installed any social apps either… I even uninstalled the email app.

I wonder if this allergy to being left alone by themselves could (partially at least) explain the fact younger people don’t read anymore, or read a lot less than we used to at their age, and younger?

That’s sad, and frightening… Saying that as a non-US citizen, if that matters.

And that’s another reason why it should be a top priority for parents to own actual books at home, have their own (and uncensored, by any party) library and not be entirely relying on public/school libraries (which should also be defended against censorship, obviously). And then, beside owning those books, they should also show their kids reading is an incredibly valuable activity by actually be reading those books in front of their kids. And do it regularly… I was about to write ‘daily’, but I thought maybe that would be asking too much ;)