What are you reading right now?

I decided that I should start reading books again.

This morning, I read Anthem by Ayn Rand without stopping. It's about this guy whose born into this terrible one world society where there's no individuality, jobs are assigned to you, and there is a brotherhood where there is no I but only We. Science and technology have been forgotten and looked upon as evil. But one man finds that there is more to life than the brotherhood.

I won't share any more in case anyone wants to read it for themselves.

Oh, and it's only like 66 pages, so it doesn't take that long to read.

ooh, sounds cool!

I'm reading a book called About Grace by Anthony Doerr. It's about a man who occassionally has clairvoyant dreams, and in one, his infant daughter dies in his arms in a flood, so he believes that leaving his family is the only way to save her life.

I like the writing style, it's very melancholy and understated.

I read that a year ago. My son has college English courses. He has since entering high school. This was a required reading for him. He also had to read 1984 & another one along the same lines. I read everything he has to. I love to read.
Oh it was Anthem I am speaking of.

I read About Grace a few months ago...I too enjoyed his style. Right now I'm reading 18 Seconds but I can't remember the authors name and it's out in my truck and I'm too lazy to go out there. I'm also reading Shadow of the Gargoyle which is a compilation of short horror stories all related to gargoyles. When I'm done with 18 Seconds, which is about a blind woman who can see the last few seconds of a dead persons life when she touches them, I'm moving on to Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver.

If you haven't read it I highly recommend The Poisonwood Bible by Kingsolver.

I've got stacks of partially read books scattered by my bed. Some of them include:

The Road of the Heart's Desire by John Donne. Sounds like Joseph Campbell, and it is good spiritual reading. The books is slim, but very dense.
Heyduke Lives - going through an Edward Abbey phase.
The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: The Hidden World of a Paris Atelier - if you have a passion for pianos
The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin - a good start for those studying the Nichiren schools of Buddhism
Bible - I'm reading it again, straight through from Genesis

Hester and I share the same tendency to start many books at the same time! There are at least three stacks by my reading chair and two more stacks in my office! I love books, book stores and libraries! What is the fascination? I read a wide variety of things. Right now I am reading some true crime works by Dominick Dunne, which are as much about our legal system as they are about the crimes .

I posted this on another board. I love looking at these fabulous libraries!

http://www.sheilaomalley.com/archives/007385.html

Ish......

Shaman, Healer, Sage by Alberto Villoldo. Also anything by Eckhart Tolle.

Ish,

The libraries are gorgeous. Can you imagine the uplifting effect that might have on someone studying in such an environment? Each work of art, the splendid architecture or the written word, can be appreciated alone, but the combination can heighten the aesthetic experience. Likewise, I've always enjoyed those beautiful leather-bound volumes with gold leaf. Fingering them, almost feels too decadent, like indulging in a triple chocolate torte.

INFP, you inspired me to read something by Ayn Rand. Our library had "The Fountainhead", so I'm trying to plow through all 727 pages! The theme of the book might be more relevant today in some ways....."An uncompromising, visionary architect struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism despite personal, professional and economic pressures to conform to popular standards."

It's interesting to review the actors chosen for the movie version at the time............Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, and Raymond Massey!

Ish.....

Rama and the Dragon by Edwar al-Kharrat

a multi-layered novel about the depths of human experience and the struggle between polarities, on the surface presents a love story of unrequited passion between Rama -- the symbol of multiplicity and creativity -- and Mikhail -- the symbol of unity and constancy. Their story reflects the relationship not only between man and woman, Copt and Muslim, but also between Upper and Lower Egypt. Through a delicate grid of intertextual references and juxtaposed narratives, the dreams and hopes, fears and defeats of Rama and Mikhail move from the local to the global, corresponding to human dreams and anxieties everywhere.

In this novel, Edwar al-Kharrat has created a unique form of narrative discourse in which he presents Egyptian realities and actualities of the 1960s and 1970s, with flashbacks to as early as the 1940s, in an aesthetic form that highlights historical moments while blending philosophical, mythical, and psychological perspectives in a literary parallel to the cinematic technique of montage.

I bought the original Arabic version and the English translation in Cairo, and I'm reading them both next to each other now. I find the story magical, to be honest. I can read a page several times and still discover deeper and deeper layers of meaning. I love those kind of books. It's a slow read, because the author evokes so many images, and it takes time to fully understand the meaning. Also, the feelings that jump off the pages are so intense that I can only handle a small amount each time ^^

I will write here the beginning of the book, to give you an idea.

When he entered the narrow square in Agouza where several side streets met - empty, elegant streets shaded by sycamore, mulberry, and camphor trees - his car flashed into that virginal, sunny morning where sprouts of branches basked, joyfully alert, childlike, around the empty square.

Chirping birds, darting through trees and dozing balconies, made the square feel like countryside, as if the Nile Road, with its narrow and crowded banks - with its charging cars, trolleys, and buses - lay in a different world.
The morning air, thickening but still taut with dew, gushed inside the car's window as he turned the steering wheel with one hand, draping his other hand across the open window port. He was coming out of a transient moment, a faded-blue moment, unreal, entering crowded streets.

He opened his eyes wider.
I am in the midst of a dream, he realized.
It was the same dream that seized him when he fell asleep at night. Just as when he dozed off, he had just called her name in a grieving, tormented tone.
Or had he?

Rama, Rama, do you hear me? Will you answer? I love you.
It seemed as if he were laughing at himself, tearing himself apart.
The walls of his bedroom, unpolished, unadorned except for their fine curved cracks would awaken him, then begin to close in. The room's curtain could not deflect a loneliness thrust from the outside upon him. Neither from the skies nor from the surrounding roofs could anything else enter.

Was love this persistent, unanswerable call that went with him in his sleep - now in his wakefulness too?Was this the call emerging from so long ago - a call without beginning or end?
Every night he died a small death, was resurrected by morning as a ghost.
He was not amused.

I did not suspect such an adolescent in me, he said to her.
In a moderate tone, soft voice as if lined by sarcasm, he said: All this fantasy and pain, all this ongoing talk, this unrelenting daydream - day after day, hour after hour - doesn't all this seem very sentimental and adolescent to you?
Yet in another sense, in a precise, unsentimental sense, it was quite real. Apart from this dream, from his suppressed call, from this painful yearning, everything else was so much floating on shallow waters.

She said to him: But this is a feeling of genuine life, a good feeling. Two days ago while you were away I sat at my desk and wrote a letter trying to tell you how I felt. I wrote half a page then tore it up. I found it quite adolescent.
He was silent, choking. His love had become a prison without window or door.

He said to himself: A childish element exists at the center of all this. I thought I'd gotten rid of it a long time ago. Where does the disease come from? Childhood? Or is it in the dreariness we impose upon ourselves because we are children no more?

But this was no relapse to an old disease. It was nothing but life.
He didn't laugh at himself. Not this time.
He said to her: I don't know how to say it. I don't know what to say.
She said: That is why I love you.

(...)

He said to himself: It is not a matter of relapse into the adolescent. Rather it is the passionate yearning for life, a passion that cannot be extinguished. It is the solid conviction that a man cannot stay alone, that love is not a lie - a conviction denying all fact, challenging all reality.
Wasn't this exactly adolescence?
He became silent, as yet unconvinced either way.
He said to her: Where shall we go?
She said: As you like, my love, I am at your command.
The tea Island?
Yes.

She came before the appointed time. From his table he could see nothing but her. Her beauty created pain. Amid Tahrir Square crowded with beasts and monsters, did this pain amount to a definition of love?

She was wearing her other face. He didn't recognise it. Yet it was always there, as he knew. A determined longing in her eyes, a loneliness refusing despair. Will you ever find what you are searching for, my love? He saw what others could not see: the blue and green waves of time fixed, not ebbing or flowing. In her eyes, the flesh of seaweed dried by the sun - the flesh of hazel weeds maturing by heat and dryness on a rock untouched by water, though its lower masses drowned in an ancient sea.
Her lips, delicate, soft, displayed a neat primitive darkness unspoiled by cosmetic.
My child, how lonely you are. Like me. Lonely in the course of an agitated crowded life.