Continuing yesterday’s “bucket list” of books to read
before I die –
Non-Fiction
The
Republic (Plato)
* The origin of Philosophy, the root of the great tree
trunk, the germ in the seed. “All of Philosophy is but a footnote to Plato,” as
Whitehead wrote. I’ve read the Dialogues ages
ago for a night school class, but never The
Republic, save for the Cave Allegory in a Philosophy class.
Being
and Nothingness (Sartre) and/or Being and Time (Heidegger)
* Why did Mallory attempt to climb Everest? Because
it’s there, he said. Similarly, these mountains to BEING are there, great hefty
cinder blocks of dense shifting prose, with lots lost in translation. I want to
read them because they are. They exist. They have Being. They mock me.
Histories
by Herodotus / History of the Peloponnesian
War by Thucydides
* These appeal
to my interest in military history, and my interest in the ancient world. Well,
any world besides this one, c. 2018. I started them both years ago during hot
summers, and though I never got more than a few chapters into either, I still
associate them to post-workout walks under scorching suns.
Poems by Shelley / Byron / Keats / Tennyson
* For each of these great poets I have a large volume,
but I’ve only read a handful of poems from any. “Prometheus Unbound” was the
longest, from Shelley, at around 10 pages. And I carefully read it, studied it,
re-read it, savored it like they tell you at Poetry School. And you know what?
I think I caught a glimpse into a brighter, wondrous world. A glimpse, mind
you, but I found it to be quite enticing.
Paradise
Lost
(Milton)
* Supernatural poetry. This deserves a long, lasting
look, with several re-reads.
On
the Road (Kerouac)
* Not sure why this appeals to me. Maybe it’s a ZFG
attitude that is increasingly, though in a very tiny way, creeping into my life.
Oh to be young again, without the mortgage and debt and life insurance and
401(k) plans! Though I never hitchhiked across the country, there were a few
years, 1986 to 89 or 90, where, had I the balls, I could radically change my
life. I guess that’s the appeal. But I really don’t know much about the book.
The Bible – in Latin
* Yep. In Latin. I have a Latin bible. I also have a
very, very sparse working knowledge of Latin. So I’d have to preface this
bucket list entry with a semester of Latin 102. You may think me strange, but
the thought of that gets me more excited than what I normally do 40 hours a
week for a pay check.
Lincoln:
The War Years (Sandburg)
* The poet of “Grass” biographs Lincoln. Two Americans
of old of a like of which can never exist again. The possibilities here, it
seems to me, are transcendent.
Gödel,
Escher, Bach (Hofstadter)
* Want to read this because, like Infinite Jest, this seems to be on everyone’s list. I did once read
about 75 pages of it, and I’m not sure I agree with Hofstadter’s claim we’re
all closed loops (whatever those are, I forget), but I’m always up to having my
mind non-chemically altered.
Reclaiming
History (Bugliosi)
* A prosecutor destroys point-by-infinitesimal-point
the conspiracist’s case in the JFK assassination. Read a hundred-page section
and it, along with Posner’s Case Closed,
thoroughly convinced me of the Lone Gunman theory. Would love the leisure to
read the entire 1,200 page thing one day.
Need to complete:
The
Exegesis of Philip K. Dick
* 400 pages in, 500 to go; plus I’d like to do a
re-read with a pen and notebook handy.
Shelby Foote’s Civil War trilogy
* One volume down, two to go. Problem is, with all its
rich detail, each volume will take about six weeks to get through …
Churchill’s six-volume World War II memoir
* One down, five to go (and of the five, the last two
stare balefully down from a shelf at me every day)
* * * * * * *
By a rough estimate, I think the fiction and
nonfiction bucket list books total to around 35,000 pages. Should be doable; at
a leisurely pace of 20 pages a day, that’ll take me just shy of five years …
No comments:
Post a Comment