Kevin's Watch

Avatar wrote:

ussusimiel wrote:The spark of the divine (even if the artist has no belief in such a thing).

Nah, you miss the point. : We are divine in and of ourselves.

No, you miss the point!

We contain the spark of the divine and some of us just can't handle that and have to rationalise it away

u.

ussusimiel wrote:

Avatar wrote:

ussusimiel wrote:The spark of the divine (even if the artist has no belief in such a thing).

Nah, you miss the point. : We are divine in and of ourselves.

No, you miss the point!

We contain the spark of the divine and some of us just can't handle that and have to rationalise it away

You're both right, Plato and Aristotle.

ussusimiel wrote:We contain the spark of the divine...

Why does it have to come from somewhere else? Are we not wonderful and amazing enough in ourselves that it cannot be ours? But that something else has to instil it in us?

We have both the best of all things and the worst of all things inside us...inside all of us.

To me that is far more inspiring than if it were the work of some external agency.

--A

Avatar wrote:

ussusimiel wrote:We contain the spark of the divine...

Why does it have to come from somewhere else? Are we not wonderful and amazing enough in ourselves that it cannot be ours? But that something else has to instil it in us?

We have both the best of all things and the worst of all things inside us...inside all of us.

To me that is far more inspiring than if it were the work of some external agency.

I suppose the key point for me is that the experience is of being possessed by something external. Thus, no matter how you rationalise it, to be true to the experience the source must remain external.

A source of comfort to me is that if I'm right I'll have the satisfaction of communicating 'I told you so, Av' in some wordless manner. Whereas, if you're right you won't, so you'd better get your told-you-sos in early, Av

u.

Yeah, believe me, I'm well aware of the fact that if I'm right, I'll never know it.

--A

Emperor of the West: Charlemagne and the Carolingian Empire by Hywel Williams.

I dropped the "Making of Europe" and bought this book which has turned out to be the best thing I ever did. Decline and Fall mentions Clovis, Charlemagne etc. in passing, and Making of Europe assumes too much knowledge of the earlier period. Now I'm getting to the nitty gritty. My geography of Europe has improved tenfold (better maps) and the book covers both before and after the Carolingian period (more or less the 700s). This is fascinating stuff!

Supposed to be reading Salman Rushdie's Fury, but I've stalled a few chapters in and read some comics instead.

Just finished "The Scarlet Letter"... I'd never actually read it before.

Was sort of disappointed with most of it, but the last two chapters helped redeem it for me.

deer of the dawn wrote:You would like The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta. The longer I've been in Nigeria the more I realize what an archetypal poor African woman's life this is, and the insights into the culture have all played out in my life here.

Just looked at this thread again.. definitely interested!

dotd wrote:One of the scenes that stands out is when the heroine tries to jump off of a bridge, and a whole crowd gets involved. That is exactly what happens here, there is no such thing as "none of my business". Everyone gathers round and yells until they feel the problem has been solved.

I can sort of imagine that happening...

The Magus by John Fowles.

--A

Linna Heartlistener wrote:

deer of the dawn wrote:You would like The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta. The longer I've been in Nigeria the more I realize what an archetypal poor African woman's life this is, and the insights into the culture have all played out in my life here.

Just looked at this thread again.. definitely interested!

I read The Bride Price by Emecheta in high school. I think it was a very good book. That one ended on a pretty sour note as far as the joys of motherhood go. Actually, that kind of trivializes it. There was hope at the end that was easy to see, but the end was still incredibly brutal.

It is probably not intentional that there is a character in the book who shares his name with the protagonist of Things Fall Apart, another novel about Ibo culture in an earlier time.

If you're into that sort of thing, you might enjoy Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, a Zimbabwean writer.

--A

Man's Search For Meaning Viktor Frankl.

--A

Avatar wrote:Man's Search For Meaning Viktor Frankl.

Good book. I read it a number of years ago. Quite short, you should be able to start and finish it on your lunchbreak, Av

u.

Hahaha. I pretty much did.

Yes, I enjoyed it. Some interesting ideas, several of which I agree with.

--A

Holsety wrote:

Linna Heartlistener wrote:

deer of the dawn wrote:You would like The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta...

Just looked at this thread again.. definitely interested!

I read The Bride Price by Emecheta in high school. I think it was a very good book. That one ended on a pretty sour note as far as the joys of motherhood go. Actually, that kind of trivializes it. There was hope at the end that was easy to see, but the end was still incredibly brutal.

Warning -me- about potential for an incredibly brutal ending is a good idea, though...

The library system of the HUGE suburb I'm in seems not to have a copy of anything by Emecheta... odd.
Especially given that it has a sort of academic literary commentary of various books including "The Bride Price."

That said, if I inter-library-loan "The Joys of Motherhood," both my hubby & I will read it..
And I don't exactly have guilt about being a "drain on the system" w/ regards to Inter-lib loan.
(i think.)

It is probably not intentional that there is a character in the book who shares his name with the protagonist of Things Fall Apart, another novel about Ibo culture in an earlier time.

Did you mean "not intentional" or "not unintentional" there?

Avatar wrote:If you're into that sort of thing, you might enjoy Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, a Zimbabwean writer.

thanks. what a title, for starters...

Toby's Room, Pat Barker.

Freud - Interpreting Dreams

Oyster, Janette Turner Hospital.

Just read a short novel, The Collector Collector by Tibor Fischer.

Strange book...told from the POV of an ancient antique vase. Not great, but unusual.

--A

Currently reading Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land by John Crowley. It's about the discovery of a cipher that translates into a lost novel by Byron along with some notes on said novel written by Ada Lovelace... Byron's novel is written as such, the notes ate placed as end of chapter notes, and the discovery and decoding of the novel is presented as a few email correspondences between the modern characters. I'm throughly enjoying it at the moment.