What are you currently reading?

[Henk]

'Minor Ethics: Deleuzian Variations Paperback – 15 april 2021

Alongside the major narratives of ethics in the tradition of Western philosophy, a reader with an eye to the vague and the peripheral, to the turbulent and shifting, will spy minor lines of thinking - and with them, new histories and thus new futures. Minor Ethics develops a new approach to reading texts from the history of philosophical ethics. It aims to enliven lines of thought that are latent and suppressed within the major ethical texts regularly studied and taught, and to include texts and ideas that have been excluded from the canon of Western ethics. The editors and contributors have put Gilles Deleuze's concepts - such as affect, assemblage, and multiplicity - into conversation with a range of ethical texts from ancient thought to the present. Rather than aiming for a coherent whole to emerge from these threads, the essays maintain a vigilant alertness to difference, to vibrations and resonances that are activated in the coupling of texts. What emerges are new questions, new problems, and new trajectories for thinking, which have as a goal the liberation of ethical questioning. Minor Ethics takes up a range of canonical ethical questions and thinks through concrete ethical problems relating to drug addiction, environmental responsibility, xenophobia, trauma, refugees, political parties, and cultural difference. The responses to these concerns demonstrate the minoritarian promise of the opening up of ethical thinking.'

[Todd]

National Security Strategy of the United States of America, November 2025

Section IV.3 is all Elbridge Colby.

[JBS]

[crosspost from the Shakespeare thread]
Almost finished reading this


The opening and closing chapters, which use Shakespeare as a vessel for talking about anti-Blackness in society and literary scholarship in general, are a bit generic. The examinations of Shakespeare's use of race and racial stereotypes in Othello*, Merchant of Venice, and Hamlet, on the other hand, are highly original and thought provoking. It would be nice to see productions of the latter two that incorporate his ideas (that Shylock's Jewishness is a stand-in for Blackness in a Venice where anti-Blackness is already part of the social order and Antonio is the paradigmatic white man, and that Hamlet uses the trope of the violent Black man in portraying both Claudius and Hamlet).  The only cavil I have with his presentation is the manner in which he implies Shakespeare was critiquing/examining/subverting anti-Blackness, whereas he may have merely been using/shaping early racial stereotypes and tropes.
He limits himself to those three plays, plus a few comments regarding Titus Andronicus

So recommended, at least for the portions relating to what Shakespeare wrote.

*A bit confusingly, his discussion about what is in Othello is not in the chapter ostensibly devoted to Othello.

[San Antone]

Shelby Foote : Follow Me Down



Blurb from back of book: "A mesmerizing novel of faith, passion, and murder by the author of The Civil War: A Narrative. Drawing on themes as old as the Bible, Foote's novel compels us to inhabit lives obsessed with sin and starving for redemption. A work reminiscent of both Faulkner and O'Connor, yet utterly original."

[JBS]

Shelby Foote : Follow Me Down



Blurb from back of book: "A mesmerizing novel of faith, passion, and murder by the author of The Civil War: A Narrative. Drawing on themes as old as the Bible, Foote's novel compels us to inhabit lives obsessed with sin and starving for redemption. A work reminiscent of both Faulkner and O'Connor, yet utterly original."

The cover photo is the inside of the Old County Courthouse in Winchester VA, now a museum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_County_Courthouse

Because the city is a focal point in the Shenandoah Valley, it had a very tumultuous experience during the Civil War, with a number of battles close to and even inside the city limits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester,_Virginia,_in_the_American_Civil_War

Some photos I took when I was there in May 2016, including two taken inside the courthouse.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/34574498@N06/albums/72157687647470630/

[San Antone]

The cover photo is the inside of the Old County Courthouse in Winchester VA, now a museum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_County_Courthouse

Because the city is a focal point in the Shenandoah Valley, it had a very tumultuous experience during the Civil War, with a number of battles close to and even inside the city limits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester,_Virginia,_in_the_American_Civil_War

Some photos I took when I was there in May 2016, including two taken inside the courthouse.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/34574498@N06/albums/72157687647470630/

Very cool!

[T. D.]

I think Princeton's Lives of Great Religious Books is an excellent series, based on this and the 2 other titles I've read (Tibetan Book of the Dead and Yoga Sutras of Patanjali). Especially instructive in these cases are the chronicles of how the books became popular in the West.

[Bachthoven]

This is probably going to be even more brutal than his previous novels.

[Belle]

I'm reading the biography of Max Steiner by Steven Smith, who also wrote an excellent bio on Bernard Herrmann.  What a wonderful life Steiner had and with so many twists and turns.  I didn't realize he'd penned this excellent overture from a film I'd not normally watch, from the early 1930s:  Maxie was a mad gambler and lost much of his fortune playing poker or backing the horses!!!  King Kong Overture:  stunning!  It seems to be falling but is actually climbing:  a perfect representation of the imagery in the film.  Here he uses a chromatic 3-note fall.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fXY0i4AEpE

Steiner was Austrian and his greatest film score was "Gone With the Wind", for which he never won an oscar - but he composed some other excellent ones too:  Mildred Pearce!  And yes he created the music for the WB logo!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-zdqvJ_h2s

What a pedigree:  Ranald MacDougall, Ernest Haller ASC, Hugo Friedhofer, Joan Crawford, Michael Curtiz.

[Florestan]

[Karl Henning]

Not yet watching them, but ...
The Tomb of Ligeia (1964) and The Raven (1963) look to be (shall we say) effusive elaborations upon Poe's Ur-texts, but I guess that's part of the trip. As preparation(?) let me re-read "Ligeia." How long it's been, God only knows.

Just re-read the story.  Poe working a favorite theme (the death of a beautiful woman) possibly his most elaborate story on this head. Technically,  not his best-written story. There is an incipit which reappears twice in the body of the story, and he inserts the poem "The Conqueror Worm." That said (and I understand that this is probably inevitable in a film adaptation) there is poetry in the writing of the narrative which I do not expect to survive translation to the screen. Back when I read this as a teen, I probably would have listed this among his ten best stories (and yet, reading it now, I think I may have skipped bits as a teenager.) I'm not sure I would rank it quite so highly now, though overall it remains powerful.

[Mandryka]

I'm only on Chapter 4 and I'm already get impatient with the omniscient author -- I'm not sure I can go on. If anyone likes it please tell me and I'll persevere.

This is the sort of thing which gets my goat - it's full of it.

The man took the body of the woman and taught it fearlessness. The woman's mouth on the eyelids of the man spoke to him from her consoling depths. The man impressed upon the woman's body his sometimes frightening power and egotism. The woman devoured the man's defencelessness. She could feel the doubts shudder in his thighs, just as she had experienced his love and strength. And out of her she could not wring the love that she was capable of giving, at last, enough, complete as sleep or death.

That being said, what I'm kind of hoping is that it'll turn into some sort of exploration of how the land makes the destiny of the man -- but I don't know whether that's wishful thinking.

[Bachthoven]

As a person with arachnophobia, I'm not sure this was a great choice, but it's pretty compelling (and horrifying!) so far.
 

[JBS]

I'm only on Chapter 4 and I'm already get impatient with the omniscient author -- I'm not sure I can go on. If anyone likes it please tell me and I'll persevere.

This is the sort of thing which gets my goat - it's full of it.

The man took the body of the woman and taught it fearlessness. The woman's mouth on the eyelids of the man spoke to him from her consoling depths. The man impressed upon the woman's body his sometimes frightening power and egotism. The woman devoured the man's defencelessness. She could feel the doubts shudder in his thighs, just as she had experienced his love and strength. And out of her she could not wring the love that she was capable of giving, at last, enough, complete as sleep or death.

That being said, what I'm kind of hoping is that it'll turn into some sort of exploration of how the land makes the destiny of the man -- but I don't know whether that's wishful thinking.

I've never heard of the book. If that's the writing style, I doubt I would have made it past Chapter 1.

[ritter]

...

What surprises me is that nowhere on the cover is the author mentioned. I had to look it up. It's Patrick White, I presume?

[AnotherSpin]

Patrick White is a Nobel Prize laureate in literature. Of course, that in itself is no guarantee of literary quality. I do not recall having read him. He seems to be compared to Knut Hamsun.

[Mandryka]

I've never heard of the book. If that's the writing style, I doubt I would have made it past Chapter 1.

Patrick White - he won the Nobel prize in the 1950s

[Mandryka]

What surprises me is that nowhere on the cover is the author mentioned. I had to look it up. It's Patrick White, I presume?

Vintage White! If you don't know you don't need to know.

[ritter]

Vintage White! If you don't know you don't need to know.

Ah, I see. Very subtle! I thought "Vintage White" were the publishers or the series. After all, the cover is white. 

[DavidW]

Tragic and comic, I'm rereading David Copperfield, and it has been so long that it is like reading it new:



Penguin wisely uses bigger fonts these days. Otherwise, they would lose too many people to just reading the free ebook.