debsbooks

Books on my list for this year

So August is Kaddish, here are some others I've been thinking about:

• The Trials of Lenny Bruce
• Three Plays by George Bernard Shaw
• The Tom Lehrer songbook
• Steal this Book by Abbie Hoffman

The significance of which will be articulated later. I'll think of some more--the problem is finding ones I haven't read that still relate.

Finished Nabokov's Lectures on Russian Literature

This book covered Dostoevsky, Gogol, Turgenev, Chekov, Tolstoy, and Gorki. This was hard to get through but he hit his stride when he was talking about Tolstoy, and by the middle of the book I really enjoyed it. I think I should reread Anna Karenina soon.

This isn't on my official list for this year (see last post), but of course I have to take detours, which my father would appreciate. Next I am going to read Nabokov's Lectures on (English) literature, which includes Jane Austen, Joyce, etc.

A Year of Remembrance

Last month, July 18th, 2005, was the 20th anniversary of my father's death. The Hebrew date is the 1st of Av, 5765, and I commemorated this by saying kaddish on the corresponding English date (or rather, the evening before) August 5th, 2005. I've been trying to think of something significant that I could do in remembrance, something that was not just a one-time thing but ongoing and meaningful. So I decided to read a book a month on topics that are somehow relevant to my Dad and/or my relationship with my Dad, and document it here with my thoughts on each book. I'm appropriately starting with Kaddish, by Leon Wieseltier. More next month.

Finished Shylock's Children

Ick. Could have been 1/3 the size and would have been just as impactful.

Finished Freud's Moses

Finished Freud's Moses, halfway through Shylock's Children. Posting this from Korea. Trying to get all my reading done for my class in September. Shylock's Children is one of those books that endlessly repeats the same point over and over again. Make it stop.