Skip to main content

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!
Labels:

Comments

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
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...
15 comments
Read more

SNES as Money Well Spent: Platypus Nostalgia

I got my Super Nintendo Entertainment System when I was eleven years old.  That's a couple years after it first came out.  The occasion was a little dramatic: to celebrate the end of a two-and-a-half year course of treatment for cancer.  I had no idea that it would be waiting for me at home after the final doctors visit.  It was a nice spring day, the trees were waving gently in the breeze outside the bay windows.  With a cup of tea resting on the coffee table, I set down to play.  What was that first game?  It was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past .  Around twenty years later, my SNES still works as does that Zelda cartridge.  It's been a long way from boyhood in Southern Connecticut to manhood in North Houston, but I'm still playing. Why am I still playing?  There were stretches when I didn't.  Many times, I've just been too busy.  There were also seasons when it felt embarrassing to still be playing video games....
10 comments
Read more

Under the Moon: The Platypus Reads Part LXVI

My wife and I were discussing our favorite books from the Chronicles of Narnia on our way back from lunch.  My wife, true to her sunny personality, is a staunch fan of "The Voyage of the Dawntreader."  I can't argue with that choice but, when push comes to shove, "The Silver Chair" has always been my favorite. I have a bit of a theory.  I think "The Voyage of the Dawntreader" is Lewis' grail legend.  If that's so, then I'd hazard a guess and say that "The Silver Chair" is his "Pilgrim's Progress." -just think about the shape of Puddleglum's hat and the fact that he lives in the Fen Country and you'll see what got me thinking down this line. That brings me to why I like "The Silver Chair" so much.  When I was little, we had a children's version of "Pilgrim's Progress" that my mom used to read to me.  I lived in New England and the Christianity I was raised with had a heavy tin...
7 comments
Read more