Summer Reading

It has been a long, long time since I bought books. For me, that doesn't mean I haven't bought an occasional book or two here and there over the last six months. However, it has been months since I placed a big order, you know, ten or more books at a time through Barnes & Noble. The reason I've been holding off was that I've been drafting a book of my own and didn't have the sort of time I wanted to devote to reading.

So there I was at Barnes & Noble this afternoon to pick up a special order that arrived a few days ago. My wont is to browse the magazines for a few minutes, Italian soda in hand, and then pick up the books I ordered and spend an hour or two in the store perusing my soon to be acquisitions. I was chatting with one of the booksellers who was explaining to me that they were moving all the book sections around to different places because the economy. That's what she said. Apparently, what this means in practical terms is that philosophy is given a much smaller section by the bathrooms and the number of Bibles has exploded exponentially. It also means that more of the books I want to read have to be special ordered (which I'm used to) and pre-paid (which I despise). It's not that I mind buying books via the internet or pre-paying, but I very much prefer the fun of picking my books up at the store in person, on the rare occasions that I order brand new books, so as to while away an afternoon and enjoy a soda.

I spent the best part of tonight reading widely among them. I'm in the habit of reading many books at a time. Kathy thinks I'm crazy for this and doesn't understand how I can follow everything that's going on at once. I think of my books as friends with whom I'm having a conversation, with the lovely benefit that I can shut them off at any time or pick up where we left off even if I'm less than presentable or whenever it's convenient for me.

Anyway, here's a list of what I bought today, in no particular order:

1. John Lukacs, Last Rites (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2009). I confess that I am enamored of Lukacs. I think he's rather brilliant. I've read a lot of his work, and unfortunately the first part of this one seems a little repetitive, but there were a few gems, including:

*Knowledge, neither "objective" nor "subjective," is always personal. Not individual: personal. The concept of the "individual" has been one of the essential misconceptions of political liberalism. Every human being is unique: but he does not exist alone.

*It took me, an antimaterialist idealist, perhaps forty or fifty years to recognize, suddenly, that people do not have ideas: they choose them.

*History is larger than science, since science is a part of history and not the other way around. First came nature, then came man, and then the science of nature. No scientists, no "science."

A great introduction to Lukacs' work is his recent essay in the American Scholar.

2. G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World. This was recommended to me by Philip Blond (not personally, but still). See this clip. The other day I read Hilaire Belloc's The Servile State, which I enjoyed very much. I understand that he and Chesterton share a theory about the economy known as distributism. I think I share it, too, although I don't know how much energy I really have for a return to fiefdoms.

3. Moses Maimonides, A Guide for the Perplexed. I have no idea when I'm going to have time to read this enormous book, but I hope I do. I read the first few chapters and it whetted my appetite for his scriptural interpretations.

4. Hesiod, Theogony, Works & Days, and Testimonia, Edited and Translated by Glenn W. Most (Cambride & London: Harvard University Press, 2006). I can't really remember why I ordered this book, but I think it has something to do with the titles of the works - all concepts I'm interested in - and my understanding that Works & Days is an early argument for the fact that hard work is somehow connected to justice.

5. Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983). Ginzburg's The Cheese and the Worms is one of my all time favorite books. Ever. Aune said this one measures up well with that one. 'nuff said.

6. Slavoj Zizek and John Milbank, The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009). This book is much bigger than I thought it was: tiny print and 303 pages. I like the idea of a postmodern atheist and a theologian debating God, and the one saying to the other: "in my atheism, I am more Christian than Milbank." At first, that intrigued me, but now I think it's a rather stupid thing to say. I hope I have time to read it soon.

7. Mark C. Taylor, Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World Without Redemption (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2004). I really should've read this sooner. I thoroughly enjoyed the Preface and the Introduction. The Preface is more the kind of writing I like, personal and direct. I don't believe we're in a world without redemption, but I am provoked by the connections Taylor promises to draw between markets and religion:

In retrospect, it is clear that God did not simply disappear but was reborn as the market. In contemporary society, the market has become God in more than a trivial sense. The terms many economists and analysts use to describe the market implicitly suggest language once reserved for God: the market is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. Since the market knows best, it should be allowed to operate according to its own principles with minimal interference from humans, whose knowledge is unavoidably limited.

Funny, not a lot of people are talking about markets that way now, but still, it's a critique of the dominant theology of the day.

8. John Milbank, The Future of Love: Essays in Political Theology (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2009). Wow, now you don't see a lot of books published in Oregon. Anyway, I'm excited to read the first essay: Divine Logos and Human Communication.

9 & 10. Volumes II and III of Philip Rieff's trilogy Sacred Order/Social Order: The Crisis of the Officer Class: The Decline of the Tragic Sensibility and The Jew of Culture: Freud, Moses, Modernity, both published by the University of Virginia Press. Volume I was a rare treat, indeed. If these are half as good . . .

11. John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997). Not only did I get to meet Caputo and hear him speak in May, but this book was recommended by Adam as one of the best books he'd ever read.

When I placed the order a few weeks back I picked up The Philosopher's Quarrel, about Hume and Rousseau, David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, and Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. I will have no shortage of new things to read this summer. I'm sure I won't tackle all of these, or perhaps even most of them, before school starts in the fall. The good thing is I have no compunction about unread books on my shelves. It's a sign of days ahead, of hope, and of a longing for leisure. May you have many days of reading pleasure this summer is my prayer.