Reading List 2015-11-02:
*Knausgaard, Karl Ove. My Struggle, Book Four (transl. Don Bartlett) (finished)
*Fletcher, John, and William Shakespeare. The Two Noble Kinsmen (Arden 3rd series, rev. ed., ed. Lois Potter) (reread/in progress)
*Vollmann, William. Rising Up and Rising Down, Volume 1 (stopped)
I've already got a major change to my current reading plan--I'm dropping Vollmann's Rising Up and Rising Down. I very rarely do this; I am one of those types who force myself to finish whatever book I start, love it or hate it. This is a bit different. It's not the length alone, although over 3,000 pages is enough to give any reader pause, avid or no. In this case, there exists a one-volume distillation, but I'm not going to read that either. I appreciate what Vollmann is doing (examining whether there is ever an ethical and moral justification for violence), but I just found it unrelentingly grim. I gave it 240 pages, and I just had to stop. Life, my life, right now, is just too short for this. It's really a pretty bleak world out there, and probably every thinking person should be aware of the many issues he brings up. Go for it, and tell me what I'm missing.
No comments:
Post a Comment