On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)

As promised, we tossed the joint yesterday, checking on nightstands, under pillows (and beds), in knapsacks, under chairs, on the library table, and in the bathroom. Here are just a few of the books that have recently become a part of the geography of our imaginations.

Oedipus the King (Sophocles)
Oedipus Tyrannus (Sophocles)
Master M-mv likes to compare versions and translations. Stephen Berg's translation has earned his praise, but the notes and commentary in the Norton Critical Edition are, as Master M-mv says, "just that -- critical."

From the Berg translation:

If I could, I would have walled my ears so they heard nothing,
I would have made this body of mine a wall.
I would have heard nothing, tasted nothing, smelled nothing, seen
nothing.
No thought. No feeling. Nothing. Nothing.
So pain would never reach me any more.

Master M-mv and I have recently finished our self-styled "Job cycle" -- beginning with Rob Lacey's The Word on the Street, moving to Stephen Mitchell's pitch-perfect translation, and concluding with Archibald Macleish's J.B.: A Play in Verse.

From J.B.:

Listen! This is a simple scene.
I play God. You play Satan.
God is asking where you've been.
All you have to do is tell him:
Simple as that. "In the earth," you answer.

Only it's never as simple as that, is it?

We've also begun discussing Ayn Rand and objectivism; our family book club selection for February is Anthem.


[Added at 8:30 a.m.: We interrupt this entry for a bit of shameful self-promotion. "Mental multivitamin" is currently first in the Best of Blogs 2004, Best Literary/Book Blog category. This cannot last, not without your help, anyway. May we have your vote? Many thanks. We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.

Update (added at 10:59 a.m.): And now we're down by thirty votes. How in the world did that happen? Perhaps it would best to step away from the monitor and to resolve to purchase the Kate Atkinson book for myself. That is, after all, the only reason I've been "campaigning" -- Case Histories is listed as one of the prizes for first place. Carry on.]


"For fun," Master M-mv is revisiting some Crichton; Aunt M-mv said she'd send him State of Fear when she's done.

Mr. M-mv is studying for certification exams (again) and has opted for some light fare for his commute: Dan Brown's Digital Fortress. So what do you think? I asked him. "Well, he is not a great writer, but the story's neat, I guess. The author feels like he has to remind us at the beginning of each chapter why the protagonist is in the lab. We already know! Get on with it! The chapters are eight paragraphs apiece, so it's, like, Chapter 80 when he reveals 'The Big Secret,' which we figured out in, oh, Chapter 3. But it's okay."

Don't hold anything back, man. Tell us how you really feel. Heh, heh, heh. Mr. M-mv is always happier when Master M-mv or I select his books for him. For example, he adored Great Expectations, Watership Down, and every other family book club selection. Note to Mr. M-mv: We'll make you a list.

I'm still working on Michael Dirda's An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland, Alberto Manguel's A Reading Diary, and Harold Bloom's Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?

From Bloom:

I have only three criteria for what I go on reading and teaching: aesthetic splendor, intellectual power, wisdom. Societal pressures and journalistic fashions may obscure these standards for a time, but mere Period Pieces never endure. The mind always returns to its need for beauty, truth, and insight.

From Manguel:

There are books that we skim over happily, forgetting one page as we turn to the next; others that we read reverently, without daring to agree or disagree; others that offer mere information and preclude our commentary; others still that, because we loved them so long and so dearly, we can repeat word by word, since we know them, in the truest sense, by heart.

Reading is a conversation.

From Dirda:

If Agatha Christie provided my introduction to "grown-up" fiction, then Fyodor Dostoyevsky deepened the casual relationship into a love affair... Never in my life did a long book move so quickly. Children's stories might allow the occasional speculation about a young hero's pluck or his playground fears, but in [Crime and Punishment] thinking -- brooding, really -- turned out to be as important as talk or action. This was a journey to the center of the self.

Let's see... Einstein: The Passions of a Scientist (Barry Parker) and John James Audubon: The Making of an American (Richard Rhodes) are in queue. Regular readers might already know that Rhodes is one of my companions (which is how I selected his biography of Audubon over this one) and that Family M-mv has begun amassing a collection of bird books and resources. (See photo below.)



The Misses M-mv only gave me two books for our photo shoot, An Illustrated Treasury of Read-Aloud Poems for Young People and The End of the Beginning (Avi), the latter of which they used for a phenomenal readers' theater exercise earlier this week. They're reading other things, some of which I covered here and here.

There are other books; there always are. I'm out of time, though, so I'll leave you with this: According to Sir William Osler, "It is much simpler to buy books than to read them and easier to read them than to absorb their contents. Too many men slip early out of the habit of studious reading, and yet that is essential...."

Don't slip out of the habit, readers, thinkers, and autodidacts. Just. Don't.


Previous "On the nightstand" entries
12.21.2004
11.21.2004
10.12.2004
9.13.2004
8.24.2004
7.19.2004
6.12.2004
5.19.2004
4.22.2004
3.12.2004
2.15.2004
1.26.2004
12.31.2003