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bookblogging
Feb. 5th, 2009 07:16 pmNovels/prose books:
Jaspers, Karl: Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus (from The Great Philosophers, Vol. 1)
(just the bit on Socrates. I'd've liked to read the rest, but classes started last Tuesday).
Plato: Dialogues of Plato: Selections from the Translation of Benjamin Jowett, Late Master of Balliol College & Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford; Edited with an Introduction by William Chase Greene, Assistant Professor of Greek & Latin in Harvard University
(In Cataloging class, we learned about the weight given to a book's title page in the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules for creating a bibliographic record, possibly the legacy of Sir Anthony Panizzi, whose 91 rules of cataloging, codified for the benefit of the tetchy and interfering British Museum Trustees during the creation of the British Museum Catalog of 1860, which are the direct ancestor of the AARC, made a book's title page the primary source of the book's entry in the catalog.
The translation is from 1893, but the introduction is from 1927, and makes snarky, disapproving references to decadent modern culture with its godless theater and its science fiction. I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but really, it was a hoot.
I actually only checked the volume out of the library to read The Apology and Crito (regarding the rest of the book, see above). But I wanted to type out that title page, because it's awesome, and because Balliol is of course the alma mater of my favorite fictional detective, Lord Peter Wimsey).
Ong, Walter J.: Orality and Literacy
(well, that was mind-blowing.
I was so excited to see David Henige cited; it was in great part his book on oral historiography, which I read for a paper in Archives class, that made me interested in the differences in the way that oral and literate societies remember things. They are qualitative, they are profound, and learning more about them has really firmed up my belief that literacy is really, really not over-rated, and not a good thing to abandon once you've got it. To lose literacy is to forget everything).
Jacoby, Susan: Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism
(this was a delightful read; it's very well-written, with lively prose and evident love of subject. Embarrassingly, despite being a lifelong Unitarian Universalist, I had not realized just how intertwined both Unitarianism and Universalism were with the presence and development of rationalism and secularism in public life throughout the entirety of American history.
Never let anyone try to claim to you that America was founded as a Christian nation. It's a lie and a blatant insult to the memory of the founding fathers, who knew exactly what they were doing when they drew on Enlightenment rationalist principles to create a new government, and who, if they were transported in time and could walk through our modern cities, would still praise and defend those principles and ideas.
Man, 19th century American history engrosses me like nothing else).
Jaspers, Karl: Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus (from The Great Philosophers, Vol. 1)
(just the bit on Socrates. I'd've liked to read the rest, but classes started last Tuesday).
Plato: Dialogues of Plato: Selections from the Translation of Benjamin Jowett, Late Master of Balliol College & Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford; Edited with an Introduction by William Chase Greene, Assistant Professor of Greek & Latin in Harvard University
(In Cataloging class, we learned about the weight given to a book's title page in the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules for creating a bibliographic record, possibly the legacy of Sir Anthony Panizzi, whose 91 rules of cataloging, codified for the benefit of the tetchy and interfering British Museum Trustees during the creation of the British Museum Catalog of 1860, which are the direct ancestor of the AARC, made a book's title page the primary source of the book's entry in the catalog.
The translation is from 1893, but the introduction is from 1927, and makes snarky, disapproving references to decadent modern culture with its godless theater and its science fiction. I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but really, it was a hoot.
I actually only checked the volume out of the library to read The Apology and Crito (regarding the rest of the book, see above). But I wanted to type out that title page, because it's awesome, and because Balliol is of course the alma mater of my favorite fictional detective, Lord Peter Wimsey).
Ong, Walter J.: Orality and Literacy
(well, that was mind-blowing.
I was so excited to see David Henige cited; it was in great part his book on oral historiography, which I read for a paper in Archives class, that made me interested in the differences in the way that oral and literate societies remember things. They are qualitative, they are profound, and learning more about them has really firmed up my belief that literacy is really, really not over-rated, and not a good thing to abandon once you've got it. To lose literacy is to forget everything).
Jacoby, Susan: Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism
(this was a delightful read; it's very well-written, with lively prose and evident love of subject. Embarrassingly, despite being a lifelong Unitarian Universalist, I had not realized just how intertwined both Unitarianism and Universalism were with the presence and development of rationalism and secularism in public life throughout the entirety of American history.
Never let anyone try to claim to you that America was founded as a Christian nation. It's a lie and a blatant insult to the memory of the founding fathers, who knew exactly what they were doing when they drew on Enlightenment rationalist principles to create a new government, and who, if they were transported in time and could walk through our modern cities, would still praise and defend those principles and ideas.
Man, 19th century American history engrosses me like nothing else).
