Having acquired more critical thinking skills over the course of my college education, I don’t think I’d profess a belief in any sort of “magic” now. Nor do I reify human consciousness anymore (which had been a product of my Platonist tendencies). It’s very fashionable in science these days to call consciousness an [...]
Well, I suppose I can provide an explanation of phenomenonology now, albeit not a concise one. There has been some progress in my education in the past five years.
[The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays by Albert Camus (trans. Justin O'Brien)]
Camus has now discussed how the phenomenologists end up escaping the absurd in a [...]
A Bed of Earth, by Tanith Lee: I remember reading Saint Fire, the second book in the Secret Books of Venus by Tanith Lee, about six years ago, and I’ve been meaning to finish the series ever since. Much to my delight, the other three books are at the local public library. Set in Venus, [...]
It still makes me wince to realize how patronizing I sounded at almost-seventeen. I wonder if I would understand Camus better now if I were to read the essay again.
[The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays by Albert Camus (trans. Justin O'Brien)]
I am still in the middle of The Myth of Sisyphus, by [...]
In the interests of consolidation, I will be reposting entries concerning books from my LiveJournal under the category “memory lane”. For those of you who have already read these entries, I apologize for the repetition.
The Ladies of Grace Adieu, by Susanna Clarke: A collection of short stories set in the same universe as Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. (Well, one is supposed to be set in Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, but it still reads very much like the other stories in the book.) I’m perpetually delighted by the attention Clarke [...]
The Extraordinary and Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lyle, by Catherine Webb: Pei Yi and I had a book swap, where I sent her Ted Chiang’s short story anthology, and she sent me this book by Catherine Webb. Lucky for me because as far as I can tell, the Horatio Lyle books aren’t published in [...]
The perennial question: will I ever catch up on the year-long backlog? Who knows? But in the meanwhile, I’m attempting to prevent the backlog from increasing by updating with the books I’ve read in August.
The Lions of Al-Rassan, by Guy Gavriel Kay: About two years ago, Sai compiled a beautiful, haunting fan [...]
I’ve been dragging my feet on posting here for nearly a year now because I haven’t had the time to face down the immense backlog of books, and I have this irrational compulsion to review books in chronological order. Sometimes I think my life would be a lot simpler if I weren’t so neurotic. [...]
The following books were read in May 2006. (I’m still catching up on the backlog.)
His Majesty’s Dragon, by Naomi Novik: Dragons in Europe during the Napoleonic Wars. The main character being a Royal Navy officer, Laurence, who stumbles across an egg of a rare Chinese breed, originally promised to Napoleon himself, and finds himself [...]