I made two good purchases at a half priced bookshop the other day.
1. The Creaky Traveler in Ireland (Clare, Kerry and West Cork) A journey for the mobile but not agile by Warren Rovetch. I love travel books on Ireland, and have been to Clare and West Cork so I’m excited to read his stories and what places there he finds of interest.
2. Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books by Lynne Sharon Schwartz. I’m reading this one now and it’s very interesting. After reading a New York Times piece quoting a Chinese scholar which stated: “belief in Buddhism . . . has curbed his appetite for books,” Mr. Cha says, “To read more is a handicap. It is better to keep your own mind free and not to let the thinking of others interfere with your own free thinking,” Schwartz thought about the whole Zen thing of “empty is full”, and “full is empty”, and writes about all the books that had influenced her life and helped shape her as a person.
You might now thinking reading a book about books is boring. It’s not. I wholeheartedly recommend this book.
6 comments:
I read Ruined by Reading in 1998 and really enjoyed it, though I don't remember that much about it now.
"Ruined by Reading" would make more sense if it were about females who got pregnant back in the stacks of NY City Library.
The Polysylabic spree by NIck HOrnby is a good book about books too
Tree, That's appropriate because the author talks about that very thing---reading a book and then not remembering much about it. She used Billy Budd as an example . . . when her daughter was reading it for school they had a discussion about it and Schwartz talks about how BIlly struck his commanding officer--and the daughter corrects her "he KILLS the guy."
I love Ireland so I'm going to look up those books at the library where I work. Who knows? Maybe I will actually FIND them there.
I'll try and find the Schwartz book, Emmachen. I should read something other than mysteries, and fantasy novels. By the way, are there any good books about travel in Germany?
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