I’m excited to be co-leading a reading group on Thomas Mann’s wonderful novel The Magic Mountain this summer. The novel is truly delightful: long, funny, and strange; a novel that explores pre-WWI Europe. If you’re looking for a big book to read this summer, take a look! 📚
I wanted to create something useful and practical, you see… And since I also loved books, I was determined that they be as beautiful as possible. That’s all there is to it.
~ Jacques Schiffrin, qtd. in “On Founding One of Literature’s Most Beautiful Collections” 🔗 📚
Publicly manifested prosperity might well hide a deeper sorrow than we at first could imagine.
~ Fr. James V. Schall, on the moral vision of Samuel Johnson’s essays 🔗 📚
I’m re-reading a favorite novel, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, preparing for a reading group this summer.
Looking for a good summer read? I’d highly recommend *MM*—you can’t go wrong with a long, philosophical novel about time, sickness, & death. (It’s funny, too!) 📚
Here’s a delightful symposium on personal libraries. The best entries, in my opinion, are those from Sarah Ruden & Peter Travers.
The symposium inspires me to write the story of my own personal library. I’d love to read others from the microblog community, as well. 📚
Recommended: this excellent review of a book I plan to read as soon as possible: Martin Hägglund’s This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom. 📚
I read a wonderful novel tonight, Patrick DeWitt’s very dark & very comedic “tragedy of manners,” French Exit. (h/t the display stand at the local public library.) 📚
I hadn’t heard of translator Anthea Bell until I read her obituary yesterday. But then I realized that the day before, I had started one of her translations: of Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday. So far, the book is profound, tragic, & absolutely captivating. 📚
Happy 85th birthday to the great Wayne Shorter! We mere mortals can celebrate by reading Ethan Iverson on Shorter’s transcendental year, 1964.
While you read, listen to his albums from that year: Night Dreamer, Juju, & Speak No Evil. 🎂📚🎶
I recently finished re-reading David Grene’s memoir, Of Farming & Classics. Grene balanced action and contemplation in his life in a truly remarkable way: he spent half the year teaching classics in the University of Chicago’s fascinating Committee on Social Thought, then the other half farming, first on a small farm in Illinois, then back on small farms in his native Ireland. His memoir is a charming little book. Just 160 pages, it’s focused and delightful, pushing against our assumptions regarding the nature of both farming and education.