What are you reading right now?

[Vive]

Welcome to the 'What are you reading right now?
(which is a thread idea that is completely original

Please share your thoughts on the bundles of horizontally aligned graphical morphemes that pass through your retina, or in other words: the books/novels/manifestos/and so on you are reading.

In order to prove your dedication to the literary arts, it would be appreciated if you add a quote from whatever it is you're reading.

For me, today's delightful poison is:

Marcus Aurelius - Meditations

And our dear old stoic would like to share something:

Thou sayest, Men cannot admire the sharpness of thy wits.- Be it so:
but there are many other things of which thou canst not say, I am
not formed for them by nature. Show those qualities then which are
altogether in thy power, sincerity, gravity, endurance of labour,
aversion to pleasure, contentment with thy portion and with few things,
benevolence, frankness, no love of superfluity, freedom from trifling
magnanimity. Dost thou not see how many qualities thou art immediately
able to exhibit, in which there is no excuse of natural incapacity

I think this neatly summarizes the values Marcus deeply admires.

Now, give those ol' books a dust-off and give me a slice of your own reading adventures.

[ledyanoy]

have read - just that they were not in the last year and a half.

[Animal]

Yup I've had the same issue where I used to read avidly but it became more difficult. Granted I am also editing a complex book and my eyes get tired of words.

[ledyanoy]

[MountainFlower]

7 that I am, I usually have some 5+ books in current progress at any given time - a couple on audiobook and the rest hardcopy (to maximize the amount I can consume in as short a time as possible). However, I am kind of a slow reader, so I don't get through near as many books as I would like.

I am in a book club for works by the world's greatest authors... the must-read-before-one-dies kind of books. This month, we are reading Milton's Paradise Lost. It is a painful read to me. I think Milton tried way too hard to be supremely poetic. That and I'm not especially thrilled with the somber/dry/serious biblical plot. The Bible itself is more pleasurable to read XD

Which brings me too... the Bible! I am not Christian, but I think it is important to be familiar with the great spiritual texts of the world. I don't expect to be finished with this one for quite a while. I'm reading small chunks and consulting loads of supplementary material to get the most out of it.

Other books I am currently reading: The 4th Book of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, An anthology of articles from the Spiritual Naturalist Society (SNS), and The Stones of Time by Martin Brennan (an academic read about ancient stone complexes of Ireland). If magazines count, I'm also reading through last month's National Geographic History.

Most inspiring atm have been the SNS articles. A couple of quotes I found most poignant:

Strain, DT. Exploring Spiritual Naturalism, Year 1: An Anthology of Articles from the Spiritual Naturalist Society (pp. 57-58). Lulu.com. Kindle Edition.

Which ties in nicely with this one:

Strain, DT. Exploring Spiritual Naturalism, Year 1: An Anthology of Articles from the Spiritual Naturalist Society (p. 86). Lulu.com. Kindle Edition.

Even when the soil is fertile, as presented in the first quote, one ought not come to the discussion with the assumption that they alone carry the Truth from the get-go. Listening is indeed important, and a challenge itself for many, but humility is especially essential.

[PleasureToBurn]

Rereading:

Everything In This Country Must (novella and two short stories) by Colum McCann.

The stories deal with the Troubles, the political strife between Northern and Southern Ireland. He's probably one of the greatest living writers today and his stories are powerful and deeply moving. Here's a passage from his story, Everything In This Country Must:

Father sat down on the riverbank and said Sit down Katie, and I could hear in Father's voice more sadness than when he was over Mammy's and Fiachra's coffins, more sadness than the day after they were hit by the army truck down near the Glen, more sadness than the day when the judge said Nobody is guilty, it's just a tragedy, more sadness than even that day and all the other days that follow.

Bastards, said Father in a whisper, bastards, and he put his arm around me until Stevie came up from the water, swimming against the current to stay in one place. He shouted up at Hayknife Her Leg's trapped and then, I'm gonna try and get the hoof out. Stevie took four big gulps of air and Hayknife was pulling on the halter rope and the draft horse was screaming like I never heard a horse before or after. Father was quiet and I wanted to be back in the barn alone waiting for drips on my tongue. I was wearing Stevie's jacket but I was shivering and wet and cold and scared because Stevie and the draft horse were going to die since everything in this country must.



Where I'm Calling From (selected short stories) by Raymond Carver.

A master of the short story, and a big influence on the genre, Carver's prose is honest and gutwrenching, and his stories are heartbreaking and subtle. Here's a passage from his story, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love:

"What do any of us really know about love?" Mel said. "It seems to me we're just beginners at love. We say we love each other and we do, I don't doubt it. I love Terri and Terri loves me, and you guys love each other too. You know the kind of love I'm talking about now. Physical love, that impulse that drives you to someone special, as well as love of the other person's well being, his or her essence, as it were. Carnal love and, well, call it sentimental love, the day-to-day caring about the other person. But sometimes I have a hard time accounting for the fact that I must have loved my first wife too. But I did, I know I did. So I suppose I am like Terri in that regard. Terri and Ed." He thought about it and then he went on. "There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I'd like to know. I wish someone could tell me. Then there's Ed. Ok, we're back to Ed. He loves Terri so much he tries to kill her and winds up killing himself." Mel stopped talking and swallowed from his glass.



Between Here and the Yellow Sea (short story collection) by Nic Pizzolatto.

This was his first book of short stories and they are emotionally raw, meditative, and deep. He would go on to write and create HBO's True Detective, but I think his real gift is as a writer. Here's a passage from his story, Wanted Man:

"I'm just drunk," the old man muttered. Wes moved past him. "Where are you going? They's a Ranger's game later on." Wes didn't answer. He closed the front door behind him.

Grazed by sharp, bending blades, Wes cut through the grass and walked to the lake. The refineries resembled a pipe organ, and nothing had lived in the lake for many years except a black and purplish layer of algae. He sat on the moist shore with a beer, crossed his legs.

Time, as in his childhood, could smear here like liquid in sluice, the beat of moments passed by making observations, watching things. Grass, stone, water, cloud. Each observance demarked time and gave him possession of it, became something he inhabited. Sun and sunset, light-dappled water. He could fold time here and have it pass without feelings, turn hours into a moment, feel the stone, and disappear while the daylight crushed down, thick as wax.

Mosquitos and the overwhelming urge to piss woke him from his trance. A couple hours had passed. He walked inside and found his father sprawled across the floor, the oxygen tank upended and two empty bottles of Dickel beside his body. Wes continued past the body to the bathroom, relieved himself, and sometime during the process he realized the old man was dead.

He walked back in the room and stared at the body. A pool of dark vomit spread under its face, but none of the liquor looked spilled, and so he concluded that his father had emptied both bottles into himself within the space of a few hours. He meant to die, Wes thought. From the moment he woke up this morning.

It was a little like the day the refineries had exploded.



First read:

Lovely Dark Deep (short story collection) by Joyce Carol Oates.

Oates is up there with Carver as a literary legend, especially when it comes to short stories. The stories in this collection deal with The darker side of contemporary American life, lurking just under the surface. They are subtle, but they linger. Here's a passage from her story, Things Passed on the Way to Oblivion:

She'd been touching the tattoo area, that throbbed and burnt her fingers. She was sure this had to be the infection. But to call 911 -this would be an irrevocable decision.

She wondered if she was being ridiculous -Carroll would laugh at her.

She thought If an ambulance comes for me, that will be a process I can't stop. She thought of her father in Chilmark, how upset and anxious he'd be to learn that Leanda had been admitted to a hospital in Manhattan, with an infected tattoo. Her father had become increasingly irrational in his dislike of Manhattan he called a hellhole, in summer a sauna. He'd resent feeling that he should travel all the way to Manhattan to see his daughter in the hospital, if the ER didn't discharge her. She thought He will hate this. He will know how weak I am.

At some point that night Leanda lost her balance, slipped and fell heavily on the hardwood floor. Her stupid bad luck, she missed one of the rugs and struck her knee on the floor, stunned with pain. She began to weep, helplessly.

You deserve this! Whatever it is.

Glimmer Train (literary magazine of short stories).

[BalalaikaBoy]

Just finished "The Madness of Crowds" by Douglas Murray. Other than that, I'm chipping away at "The Age of Faith" Volume 4 of Will and Ariel Durant's "The Story of Civilization"....but that's literally a 60 hour audio books, so I'm reading it in pieces along with other work.

[Mahat]

I read Wretched Of The Earth maybe 4-5 years ago but I never finished it.

[Mahat]

https://link.springer.com/article/10...40-019-00039-w

Making the goal to read 1-2 academic articles a week.

[PleasureToBurn]

Just started reading All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. Set in Nazi occupied France, it's about a blind French girl and a German boy. It won the Pulitzer for fiction in 2015. I'm only 10 pages in, but already I can tell this is high quality literature.

[Vive]

I've read this. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

[Vive]

I'm currently reading: Plato - The Republic.

Absolutely loving the Socratic dialogues, although on occasion they can get hard to follow.

I thought this was a great bit:

"the good aren't willing to
rule for the sake of money or honor. For they don't wish openly to ex-
act wages for ruling and get called hirelings, nor on their own secretly
to take a profit from their ruling and get called thieves. Nor, again, will
they rule for the sake of honor. For they are not lovers of honor.
Hence, necessity and a penalty must be there in addition for them, if
they are going to be willing to rule-it is likely that this is the source of
its being held to be shameful to seek to rule and not to await
necessity-and the greatest of penalties is being ruled by a worse man
if one is not willing to rule oneself. It is because they fear this, in my
view, that decent men rule, when they do rule; and at that time they
proceed to enter on rule, not as though they were going to something
good, or as though they were going to be well off in it; but they enter on
it as a necessity and because they have no one better than or like them-
selves to whom to tum it over."

[Mahat]

https://opensciences.org/blogs/open-...EIVzWaK2npTn9E

This since I found it on facebook

[inkreservoir]

Currently An Actor Prepares by Konstantin Stanislavsky. It's the seminal text on method acting which I'm still not sure is really my jam but the book is packed with different exercises and ideas.

[BalalaikaBoy]

the study course for the SIE (stock certification) exam.
#GammaLife

[Animal]

Good luck!