Currently reading: Toward the Winter Solstice by Timothy Steele 📚
Perfect night for a fire. A zillion stars in the cloudless sky. Some Wolfgang Muthspiel on the speaker. Life is good. 🏡
Finished reading: The Bible and Poetry by Michael Edwards.
A fascinating and very idiosyncratic look at Scripture, from an unexpected quarter: Edwards is a member of the Académie Française and one of the world’s leading Racine scholars. If you’ve ever wondered why so much of the Bible is poetry, and how that fact should influence your reading of Scripture, this is a very good starting point.
Plus, anything published by New York Review is worth reading at least once. 📚
Finished reading: Meet Me at the Lighthouse by Dana Gioia.
A delightful collection of poems, songs, & a few translations. I especially loved the closing sequence, “The Underworld.” I read “The Ballad of Jesús Ortiz” aloud to me daughter, & she loved that. 📚
Tyler Cowen draws attention to the remarkable life and work of the Catholic religious scholar R.C. Zaehner, whose Wikipedia page is, indeed, fascinating and wild. 📚
Currently reading: The Bible and Poetry by Michael Edwards 📚
Finished reading: Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury.
I love Bradbury’s simple, relentless enthusiasm for writing. 📚
A beautiful evening by the lake. I read; the kids built driftwood boats. 🏡
One should act like a man of thought, and think like a man of action.
~Henri Bergson, quoted by Iain McGilchrist in The Matter with Things 📚🏡
Can’t wait to dig into this one. 📚
Some days, you get lucky. Very, very lucky.
Wordle 785 2/6
⬛⬛🟩🟩⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Current listening: Johnathan Blake, Passage. Blake is a master. Always brings the fire. 🎶
True confession: I’m so inept at using the MacOS Photos app that if I want to use a photo, I usually resort to just taking a screenshot of it instead. 😬
Currently reading: Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury 📚
It’s incredible how many good book groups, seminars, & tutorials the Catherine Project is offering this fall—and all for free! I’d love to join them all. 📚
Currently reading: In Search of Lost Time Volume I Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust.
It’s been a decade or so. Just 25 pages in, I can’t believe how many gems I’ve already forgotten. 📚
Current listening: Tyshawn Sorey Trio, Continuing.
Four tracks, 53 minutes. As wide-ranging as ever for this group, which features Matt Brewer on bass and Aaron Diehl on piano. 🎶
Click through for more detail—it’s worth it. Suddenly considering a trip to the Netherlands just to see it.
Finished reading: The This by Adam Roberts.
Lots to think about with this delightful book. Roberts calls it a Hegelian sequel to his Kantian book The Thing Itself. I think it can be equally read as a sort of hellish prequel to Purgatory Mount (is Paradise next?), or as a sci-do cautionary-tale companion to Nita Farahany’s The Battle for Your Brain.
In any case, science fiction at its strangest & best. 📚