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Platypus Progressing: The Platypus Reads Part XXXIX


Summer reading rarely goes as planned, and that's the fun of it. Sure, there may be some things you have to read for work or school, but if you have any vacation time, or even if you're just on a day or weekend trip, there's always a place where a good book can be sneaked in. What book? Who cares, so long as it's good!

So, down the winding trails of this summer's reading.

In order to balance out the chunk of Heinlein I started out summer with, I picked up some GKC and CSL. Heretics and The Four Loves are both re-reads, but The Ball and the Cross and The Allegory of Love were both new. B+C was delightful, as Chesterton always is, and A of L was a real mental workout. I'm not a medievalist, but I've read a fair cross-section of the books Lewis is dealing with, and it was good to be able to start forging them into a coherent and linear picture of the development of the courtly love tradition.

After freshening my mind up, I plunged back into the world of 50s sci-fi with Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End. That was a scattered and depressing book. Somehow I don't feel consoled by the idea that humanity will be destroyed in order to produce a hive-mind that seems very much less than human. Maybe that's Clark's point. Who knows. If I wanted pan-theistic metaphysics, I would have read Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus; both of whom I heartily enjoy. Anyhow, if his writing was spotty and his philosophy was third-rate, it was still fun to engage a coherent world picture in writing and that seems largely to have been the point; it's speculative fiction.

Keeping with the sci-fi theme, I moved on to Joss Weadon's Serenity: Volume 2. Not much to write home about, but it does feel just like the series. At a price of ten bucks from Amazon, it was worth it. Keep flying!

In the "unfinished" pile right now goes Reynolds' When Athens Met Jerusalem. It's a pretty good intro to Greek thought. I'll say more when my wife and I finish the work.

Meantime, enjoy the summer!

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Lemming said…
From what you say, Childhood's End seems like it has a similar ideological conclusion to what Asimov proposes at the end of the Foundation series. (Foundation and Earth) It's also interesting to note, that if you want to enjoy the story going on in books like that, it's generally a bad idea to simultaneously be reading something like Everlasting Man by Chesterton. (or pretty much anything by Chesterton) You may find yourself arguing with the book. (Foundation and Earth) Or, at least, I found I was.
9:46 AM
James said…
Thanks for the tip! I could hear G.K.C. in my head as I was reading it. Someday, I will have to pick up Asmov's Foundation books. They were popular when I was in high school, but somehow I missed the boat. =-(
12:51 PM
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