Wednesday Reading Meme
Sep. 27th, 2017 11:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Duncan Wall’s The Ordinary Acrobat: A Journey into the Wondrous World of the Circus, Past and Present, which I began with few expectations and ended up really enjoying. The book has that hybrid memoir/history structure that often leads writers astray, but Wall balances it exquisitely. The history sections are meaty and well-researched, and the memoir parts are confined to things that are interesting and circus related, like Wall’s trapeze training. If he dated someone while he was in Paris, he doesn’t even mention it.
(I have a special pet peeve about nonfiction writers who try to cover the deficiencies in their historical research by padding out their books with the dull ups and downs of their romantic relationships. Get a therapist! Or at least an editor!)
And the circus is so interesting! I had no idea it had such a long and complicated history before I read this book. And Wall has such an eclectic and open-minded curiosity about all the circus disciplines. He starts out with a vague dislike of clowns, for instance, but rather than just dismiss them he gets in touch with a critically acclaimed clown and attends an advanced clowning class and reads up on the history of clowning, and by the end is full of respect and admiration for the dedication and craft and vulnerability that it takes to be a good clown.
What I’m Reading Now
Busman’s Honeymoon! I had been saving it, and then yesterday I was at loose ends and couldn’t settle down to anything… until I recollected Busman’s Honeymoon. So far, a corpse has interrupted Peter & Harriet’s honeymoon, and Peter & the chief investigating officer have bonded over their shared love of literary quotations.
I’ve also been reading Stephen Prothero’s God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World - And Why Their Differences Matter, which has an unnecessarily bellicose title for a book that is basically a grown-up version of My Friends’ Beliefs, a guide to world religions that I read many times as a child because that was just the kind of child I was.
Prothero is arguing against the thesis that “portrays the great religions as different paths up the same mountain,” although his own book actually offers some evidence in favor of this view - at least insofar as it pertains to mystical traditions, which do seem to converge on the idea of the divine as a far-distant and yet immanent thing that cannot be explained, only understood through experience.
The “different paths up the mountain” view privileges mysticism as the true path of religion - which might be true in a spiritual sense (obviously this is arguable), but isn’t useful in a sociological sense. Most people aren’t mystics, and religions in their non-mystical incarnations are quite different.
Having said all that, I’m finding this book a bit of a slog. It feels a little too abstract: you can’t really get at the lived texture of a religion by describing it.
What I Plan to Read Next
Elyne Mitchell’s The Silver Brumby is next on my shelf. After that and Busman’s Honeymoon, the Unread Book Club will be FINISHED! *spikes football*
Also, I GOT THE NEW ANNE FADIMAN BOOK FROM NETGALLEY. YESSSSSSSSS.
Duncan Wall’s The Ordinary Acrobat: A Journey into the Wondrous World of the Circus, Past and Present, which I began with few expectations and ended up really enjoying. The book has that hybrid memoir/history structure that often leads writers astray, but Wall balances it exquisitely. The history sections are meaty and well-researched, and the memoir parts are confined to things that are interesting and circus related, like Wall’s trapeze training. If he dated someone while he was in Paris, he doesn’t even mention it.
(I have a special pet peeve about nonfiction writers who try to cover the deficiencies in their historical research by padding out their books with the dull ups and downs of their romantic relationships. Get a therapist! Or at least an editor!)
And the circus is so interesting! I had no idea it had such a long and complicated history before I read this book. And Wall has such an eclectic and open-minded curiosity about all the circus disciplines. He starts out with a vague dislike of clowns, for instance, but rather than just dismiss them he gets in touch with a critically acclaimed clown and attends an advanced clowning class and reads up on the history of clowning, and by the end is full of respect and admiration for the dedication and craft and vulnerability that it takes to be a good clown.
What I’m Reading Now
Busman’s Honeymoon! I had been saving it, and then yesterday I was at loose ends and couldn’t settle down to anything… until I recollected Busman’s Honeymoon. So far, a corpse has interrupted Peter & Harriet’s honeymoon, and Peter & the chief investigating officer have bonded over their shared love of literary quotations.
I’ve also been reading Stephen Prothero’s God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World - And Why Their Differences Matter, which has an unnecessarily bellicose title for a book that is basically a grown-up version of My Friends’ Beliefs, a guide to world religions that I read many times as a child because that was just the kind of child I was.
Prothero is arguing against the thesis that “portrays the great religions as different paths up the same mountain,” although his own book actually offers some evidence in favor of this view - at least insofar as it pertains to mystical traditions, which do seem to converge on the idea of the divine as a far-distant and yet immanent thing that cannot be explained, only understood through experience.
The “different paths up the mountain” view privileges mysticism as the true path of religion - which might be true in a spiritual sense (obviously this is arguable), but isn’t useful in a sociological sense. Most people aren’t mystics, and religions in their non-mystical incarnations are quite different.
Having said all that, I’m finding this book a bit of a slog. It feels a little too abstract: you can’t really get at the lived texture of a religion by describing it.
What I Plan to Read Next
Elyne Mitchell’s The Silver Brumby is next on my shelf. After that and Busman’s Honeymoon, the Unread Book Club will be FINISHED! *spikes football*
Also, I GOT THE NEW ANNE FADIMAN BOOK FROM NETGALLEY. YESSSSSSSSS.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-27 03:51 pm (UTC)Aww, but the human heart is the true mystery! Actually, I don't think I read enough memoir NF for this to be a noticeable problem for me. The main example I can think of is A Moveable Feast, where Hem's infuriating faux naivete about his love life is part of the charm.
The Ordinary Acrobat sounds great, though. Congratulations on being almost done with the Club! I've almost reached my own Mount TBR goal, though I feel like I've probably burned through too many books too quickly as a result.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-28 12:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-28 01:32 pm (UTC)But how do you feel about detective novelists who let the love interest grow like kudzu all over their perfectly promising detective plots?
no subject
Date: 2017-09-29 01:03 am (UTC)However, lesser lights of the detective fiction world ought to confine their romances neatly to subplots, if they must have them at all. I should never be confused about whether I am reading a detective novel vs. a Harlequin romance with a little detecting thrown in for flavor.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-29 02:37 pm (UTC)I suspect both Hem and Sayers would look a little askance at being put in the same sentence like that, but literature = strange bedfellows.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-27 04:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-28 12:41 pm (UTC)But then you have religions like say Buddhism where this impulse seems to be absent, so that's a difference. And there are religions where proselytization is important (Islam, Christianity, Buddhism) and religions that don't really do that (Hinduism, I think Judaism? I haven't read that chapter yet...) Or attitudes on suffering: Buddhism sees it as a thing to be avoided, Christianity (certain types of Christianity, anyway) see it as a potentially ennobling/purifying force.
I think it's a bit like comparing systems of education. They're all trying to teach you things - and I think most systems of education do have what one might call a "mystical element," the idea that an education isn't really supposed to educate students in facts, but in character. But a Montessori education and a rabbinical education and a traditional Confucian education and a Classical western education are all going to take different paths to climb that mountain, and the character they're hoping to form at the end is not going to be exactly the same.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-28 12:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-29 09:51 am (UTC)I was very fond of The Silver Brumby books - at least, of the ones I read - when I was a kid.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-29 02:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-29 09:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-03 02:57 am (UTC)I read "God is Not One" years and years ago and remember enjoying it.
no subject
Date: 2017-10-03 02:47 pm (UTC)