Summer Readings

What’s Hopper been reading lately? Why the scarcity of book reviews at this site?

Well, something shocking’s happened. For the first time in nearly twenty years, I went ten days WITHOUT READING ANYTHING!

Yeah, my unshakable sickness confined me that week-and-a-half to the wasteland that is TV. Hard to read when you’re coughing up a lung every three minutes and can’t get comfortable in any position. So instead of science fiction, military history, philosophy, or any other literary weirdity, it’s been Impractical Jokers, the occasional Tucker Carlson, and Yankee games with my oldest daughter.

That being stated, I have read stuff outside that ten-day period.

I did a second-run through of Homer’s Iliad June 15 to July 10. Not as earth-shattering world-shaking as when I first read it (and reviewed it, here). As a matter of fact, instead of morbid fascination and admiration, I felt morbid disgust. Went from, “Wow, imagine if men like this still populated the earth” to “Thank God men like this do not populate the earth, at least in large numbers.” The cruelty, the taunting, the shoulder shrugging at gore, the placing of honor, bravery, and courage on a pedestal with love, kindness, and mercy as a footstool, well, it was off-putting to say the least. Sure, there is a place for honor, bravery, and courage. But it must be – has to be – tempered with those values Christ taught and emphasized.

Still, though, America 2018 could use a pinch of the Homeric. Or perhaps a whole tablespoon.

After making my way 44 percent through PKD’s Exegesis, I had to put it on hold. Extremely interesting, this “garage philosophy” of a great, if perhaps mentally troubled, science fiction writer. So much so that I went and purchased a copy of it, with a self-promise to pick up where I left off at page 400 sometime in the near future. And I also plan to do a short post on what I’ve gleaned from his visions and explanatory noodlings in the next couple of days. If you come here for the weirdness, you’ll get plenty o’ it in that post. I’m actually excited thinking about what I’m going to write regarding The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. I know I’ll enjoy it.

Been doing a drunken-walk through the Bible, too. I have a couple of versions of the Good Book in my possession; each one yields a different perspective. Right now I’m using a Protestant “Men’s Devotional” Bible, and in the past three weeks I’ve read through the Gospel of Mark, the Letter to the Ephesians, Deutero-Isaiah (that’s the second half of Isaiah, believed to be written by someone other than Isaiah), and now half-way through the Acts of the Apostles. Interesting, fulfilling, and uplifting, as always. One of my dreams is to become a Biblical scholar before shipping off this mortal coil. I’m probably about ten percent of the way there now.

Finally, a few days ago I started Napoleon as Military Commander, a book I picked up for myself as a gift at the end of tax season a few months ago. Why the interest in Napoleon? See here. Since mid-March I put away an 800-page biography of the French ruler and a 120-page examination of the battle which finally deposed him, Waterloo. I’m reading this 280-page military history as a prelude to resuming my study of the Civil War, which I’ll probably get to in the fall.