Sunday, November 18, 2007

other people's words

I think of this blog as mainly about words. Written, spoken, sung. I want it to be mostly my words, but I haven't had many, lately. So some other people's.

I enjoyed this review in the Economist about the book, _How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read_. When I first saw the book of that title, I thought to myself, "ha ha," as in, "gee, isn't that funny." After reading the review, "The importance of not reading", however, I want to read the book. Sounds like it could be slyly brilliant.

2 comments:

JimII said...

I sort of had a major academic awakening after reading Mortimer J. Adler's "How to Read a Book." This actually sounds like something similar. Adler had an essay in which he referenced the party game about picking ten books you'd take with you if stranded on a desert island. His point was that in life, you can read more than 10 books, but not more than a few hundred. In fact, you can probably read fewer than 100 really well. To borrow from this link, you can only read a few books well enough to "know them," and maybe none.

I am definitely intrigued.

Josh said...

I'm not familiar with "How to Read a Book." They do sound related.