Shiny books

What to read is a perpetual problem for people who like to read. A lot of reading, for me at least, is magazines, newspapers, bits and bobs on the interwebnet, missives from correspondents, newsletters and that sort of thing; none of this is what I am thinking about, because it is no problem deciding what of that to read.

I mean what books one should read. It's a dreary fact that life ends after seventy or so years (I hope -- I'd hate for it to be shorter and if it's much longer it's going to drag... okay, I'm kidding, I'd like it to go on forever, but forever 30 not forever adding to the score). You can't read everything. There was a time in human history when you actually could. You could read everything that was available if you were keen enough. You could, more or less, know all there was to know. It's said that Francis Bacon did know all there was to know and I can believe it. His humanism definitely sprouted from his understanding of people. The more you know, the more forgiving you tend to be.

I took out a host of library books the other day. I read House of Bush, House of Saud. Interesting but not much new. I read Rogue state, which was screechingly funny (okay, it wasn't meant to be, but if you are going to record what evil fuckers Yanks are, you have to a/ tone down the shrillness and b/ get a SOH -- Bloom has absolutely none). I am reading Dennett's Darwin's dangerous idea, largely because Gould hated it so much, and because there are few people on this planet who can be wrong as engagingly as Dennett. I got a book of "megawords", important terms in critical studies and the like, but it's very hard to wade through, although it's written in clear and easily comprehensible English (I wonder whether I was simply upset by the suggestion that a flaneur is a "shadowy and somewhat pathetic figure" -- I might be pathetic but I don't like to be told so). I got a book on statistics, which I didn't study at school and do not understand. I find it hard going because I am old, and the capacity to learn new things diminishes with age. Still, I know more than I did; at least concepts such as "standard deviation", "normal distribution" etc now mean something instead of absolutely nothing. Actually, I did know what a normal distribution was, or at least what a bell curve is, but I'm still none the wiser as to why things should form normal distributions. I also took a book on London's underground -- the crims, not the trains -- which became less engaging as it entered the 20th century. I've never liked modern history. It seems dull to read about your own world as history. I like social history a great deal more than whatever the other type of history is called (you know, so and so did this and that at this and that time), mostly, I suppose, because I know the outlines of history fairly well and the detail is not fascinating. I find it hard to give a fuck why Henry VIII did this, that or the other because the reason boils down to "he was an arsehole" more often than not, and it says nothing about today. I'm all about today and tomorrow.

What else could I read? I want to read about Jesus, Paul and the creation of the Christian religion. I want to know more about syncretism, gnosticism and the historicity of big J. I would like to read more of the sources of the time. I only know what so and so says so and so says, and I'd like to actually read so and so. At the same time, I want to re-read the Qu'ran so that I can decide more reasonably about Islam (I am positive towards it now because of its many good qualities, but there are many troubling aspects of it). I might try harder to learn Arabic. I'd like to be able to get work as an interpreter at some point, and I think Arabic might be easier than Mandarin, which I am also planning to put more effort into learning. I am planning to learn more about biology, particularly about evolution (in particular about palaeontology and in particular again about comparative palaeontology, how we know that this animal was this animal's ancestor). I want to have another go at quantum physics (I don't mean the layman's version, I know that backwards; I mean the maths -- of course that probably means learning maths).

No novels. I'm off novels completely. The few books I have on my bookshelf that I haven't read are all novels but I just cannot get up the enthusiasm to read any of them. Perhaps it's time at last for Trollope. I've been saving him for just this kind of time.

Then sometimes I think "read nothing". Get back to thinking. Meditate. Put straight what's there instead of adding more confusion.

posted by Dr Zen @ 2:50 pm