Reading list for June 2005

Let's start with a confession: I wrote this on July 2 and pre-dated it to appear in June. So shoot me. <sings>It's my blog, and I'll pre-date if I want to</sings>

I have read comparatively little this month, or perhaps I should say that I have been slowly reading difficult texts. Marcus Aurelius' Meditations (which I read in German as "Wege zu sich selbst") are worthy desert island reading, the book is so densely written that every sentence could be the subject of a day's meditation. It is a book to be re-read many times. I wonder whence this compression and refinement of thought comes, whether it was related to the fact of reading in Greek and writing in Latin? Everyone would admit that the quality of one's tools strongly influence the quality of one's work, and language is a tool like any other. It is surely not a coincidence that so many of the great philosophers - up to the present day - read and wrote in Greek or Latin (or both).

The reason for reading Marcus Aurelius and Michel de Montaigne will be obvious to those who have been following this series of posts: last month's re-reading of Alain de Botton's The Consolations of Philosophy (yes, Witho, you were right). He quotes extensively and favourably from these authors (among others), in the course of suggesting how their words might soothe and heal our worn spirits would we but lend them an ear. De Botton has a distinctive and highly personal writing voice, and I can easily understand how it might grate on more vigorous sensibilities, but I find him very readable. There is much felicitous writing and handily collected wisdom to be found in his books; fans of Proust will be enchanted by de Botton's between-the-lines reading of A la Recherche in How Proust Can Change Your Life, but dismayed by the image of the author that emerges: Marcel was a great author but not a very nice person.

Let's end with another confession: I have given up on Wallenstein. It just wasn't gripping enough to hold my attention.

Currently reading
C.J.Koch, Ein Jahr in der Hölle
Michel de Montaigne, Essaies first volume

Recently read
Alain de Botton The Art of Travel

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