Personal Notes

-Finished John Sandford’s latest book, Phantom Prey, yesterday. It’s his normal pageturning-crime-thriller novel, finished it inside the weekend. This book is like every other of Sandford’s “Prey” novels only this one has a bunch of Goth culture stuff in it.

-Finished Francois Rabelais’ Gargantua last week as a part of the ongoing ten-year reading plan of the great books of the western world. I was supposed to finish both Gargantua and Pantagruel, but I barely managed to finish Gargantua. This is the first time I’ve failed to get a book done since I started the series. This December I’ll revisit this book.

Originally, I didn’t understand some of the criticisms the Great Books series received when it was initially released. It’s a natural thing for me, the reading of ancient philosophers from poor translations. Doesn’t bother me a bit. But Gargantua and Pantagruel are supposed to be literature. Fun and easy to read. Just the story of a couple of giants in a mixed up world of cake makers and monks. This was a terrible translation, unreadable, unenjoyable. Mind numbing. A friend of mine is also working through the ten-year reading plan and he really enjoyed these two volumes. He also had a modern translation (which I’ll be begging to borrow sometime in December).

From what little I got from struggling through this book, it was clearly a seminal work of the French Renaissance. Historically important, and entertaining. The crudities, the poop humor, the harsh satire of the Catholic Church (Rabelais was a Franciscan Monkfor a while, left the monastery but had the favor Cardinal Jean du Bellay which helped him avoid heresy issues and presumably kept him somewhat Catholic his entire life) and willingness to target his quill at anyone all point to this being a great book. If only I had a decent translation from someone who learned English sometime in the last century.

-Also, I finished the DailyLit wikipedia tour of Ancient Greek Mythology. I was really disappointed when I found out the true origin of Hermes, Juno and Nike. I’ve actually never studied Greek Mythology so this was a lot of fun and very informative. The way the program works, they send you a short summary and then it links you to the full wikipedia article. While the Tour really isn’t a book, it is a good opportunity to review DailyLit, a website which chunks books into quick daily reads and emails them to you. I think it’s a great tool to increase the amount of reading you can get done and so far I’m very happy and endorse the website fully.

-Finally, there is a good debate happening between myself and former college buddy of mine in the Conservative Canon post on Pat Buchanan. His position is Pat Buchanan shouldn’t be on the tour at all for some of the controversies which have followed him over the years; my stance is I want some authentic paleocon works in the Canon.  You know, isolationist, protectionist, non-interventionist paleocon stuff.  Just something from that perspective.  I don’t agree with Paleocons but I don’t want to ignore them either.  I would happily adopt some other works of paleocon whatnot but I can’t come up with anything, so I’m compelled to offer some defense of including two of Pat’s books (neither of which could be called nazi-ish or anti-Semitic) in the ConCanon.  Maybe some of my readers could help me and provide some clarity to the issue.

(So far, everyone I’ve asked, including Captain Bogs, sides against including any Buchanan stuff in the ConCanon, so I’m willing to back off defending Pat at this point.  What I’d really like is a replacement.)

-My Internet at home is down, so I’m stuck doing all my blogging at work.  I have a few posts scheduled to publish but don’t be surprised if I fail to post later in the week.