What are you currently reading?

[Eliza]

The Eternal Woman by Gertrude Von Le Fort.  Excellent so far.

Yeah, it's a great book.

If you like that one, you'd probably like "the privilege of being a woman" by Alice Von Hildebrand. I have read bits and pieces of it, but I intend to read it in its entirety soon.

[maryslittlegarden]

The Eternal Woman by Gertrude Von Le Fort.  Excellent so far.

Yeah, it's a great book.

If you like that one, you'd probably like "the privilege of being a woman" by Alice Von Hildebrand. I have read bits and pieces of it, but I intend to read it in its entirety soon.

I've read the book by Alice Von Hildebrand, too.  Very, very good. 

[Graham]

I know this isn't a movie thread, but I was watching a movie called Fish Tank the other night and it featured a hip-hop song by someone called Nas.  The chorus went:

Life's a bitch and then ya die
That's why we get high
'Cos you never know
when you're gonna go, so
Life's a bitch and then ya die
That's why we puff lye.

It's a little known fact that Nas' next album featured a Traditional Catholic remix.

Life's a bitch and then ya die
That's why we remain in the state of grace
'Cos you know know when you're gonna go

According to Puff Daddy, the flow was awkward, but the theology was impeccable.

[Mono no aware]

 

Graham, I commend you!

[Graham]

Mr. Brocklehurst, who are your favorite cynical/misanthropic/curmudgeonly authors?

[Coastal GA Trad]

"They Have Uncrowned Him" by His Grace Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

[Mono no aware]

Mr. Brocklehurst, who are your favorite cynical/misanthropic/curmudgeonly authors?

Vladimir Nabokov would have to top that list.  He's one of the rare authors to whom cynicism & misanthropy seem to come naturally; so many others are simply trying too hard to affect a pose.  Have you read any of his books, Graham?

Nietzsche rates pretty highly on that meter as well.  Very incisive.  Some of his lines are just hilarious.  He was horribly anti-Christian, of course, but somehow one feels for him anyway.  He was introverted and weird, and I like to think he was tilting against the bourgeois & saccharine Christianity of his day.  He wrote, famously, that "the last Christian died on the cross," indicative perhaps of how high he considered the bar set and how lazy the disciples of Christ were in imitating Him.  Nietzsche had an aversion to pity which I find strange.  Yet his last act before his family had him committed was to run out into the street to console a horse being mercilessly whipped by its master.  He was an enigmatic guy.  And a great writer.

[tmw89]

[Nietzsche's] last act before his family had him committed was to run out into the street to console a horse being mercilessly whipped by its master.

Don't suppose you've seen the Bela Tarr film named after the incident?



Also, re-reading Monsignor Fenton's The Concept of Sacred Theology.

[Bonaventure]

Madman's Diary - Lu Xun


Commie crap.

[Dom Passerini]

Leaving a Trace, by Alexandra Johnson.

I informally keep several journals and was surprised to come across this book on my bookshelf that's all about journaling.  It's something my wife picked up before we even knew each other and I've seen this book on the shelf for seven years, but we have so many books that I never actually even looked at it.  I finally just grabbed it the other day to see what it was all about, and lo and behold, it's about something I already do and have an interest in.  It's pleasant but so far (first 30 pages) are more of a ferverino about journaling than anything else.

"Journal keeping is that rare activity centered in the present, contemplating the past, yet aimed for a future self."

And it's true.  I always enjoy going back and rereading things I wrote or jotted into the margin of class notes in college etc.

I also started rereading The Hobbit, the Fellowship of the Ring, and the Return of the King...simultaneously.

I also do a fair bit of regular reading out of my 1950 copy of The Reader's Encyclopedia by William Benet.

[Archer]

[Mono no aware]

[Nietzsche's] last act before his family had him committed was to run out into the street to console a horse being mercilessly whipped by its master.

Don't suppose you've seen the Bela Tarr film named after the incident?

I haven't.  Not yet.  Bela Tarr makes some of the most difficult films in the world.  He makes Guy Maddin look like Michael Bay.  I have to be in the right mood for that sort of thing, and that mood may never strike again for as long as I live.  But if it does, I'll watch it. 

Do you like Bela Tarr films?

[ts aquinas]

Life of Saint Benedict by St. Gregory the Great

[tmw89]

Do you like Bela Tarr films?

Like?  Well... my opinion varies from film to film.  When his movies work, they're magnificent... when they don't... 

[kayla_veronica]

Acts of the Apostles with commentary (Haydock).