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Books 2010: 133
nonfiction
133. Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Oxford UP, New York and London, 2009. Edited with introduction and notes by Tone Brekke and Jon Mee.
Mary Wollstonecraft had an interesting life and an interesting turn of phrase. These letters, written for publication, manifest both her prejudices and her convictions in a manner that, while original, is also very much of its time. Wollstonecraft believes in progress.
She also has a fine eye for landscape, but also a convinced superiority as concerns society in the Scandinavian countries she passes through. The last few letters take a jaundiced, though most likely accurate, view of commerce.
An interesting piece of work. The appendices provide contemporary responses, among other things.
I am, it must be confessed, disinclined to work tonight. Well, I've been disinclined all day, to tell the truth. Perhaps instead of perusing the Timaeus I will shelve books instead.
My present project - the thesis - requires that I read all those Greco-Roman classics which I have til now successfully avoided. (This is sometimes a great pleasure, and more often a vast pain in the unmentionables.) In addition to reading specific blokes like Galen and Hippokrates (and getting a reasonable selection of the Galenic works is remarkably awkward, actually). And my personal inclinations are pushing me towards thinking about reading as widely as possible - maybe Chinese, Indian, Arabic sources in translation? - to look at how other societies may have conceptualised healing and access to the gods.
This is awkward, god knows, because material from contemporary or slightly later societies isn't available in translation half as readily as most of the Greco-Roman stuff - and considering that there's a whole bunch of Greco-Roman stuff (not the famous lads, but some of the lesser or later - i.e. Late Antique - fellows) aren't available in any translation later than the 1920s, this is not a minor issue.
Oh, well. I suppose I must count my blessings, and not my eggs.
nonfiction
133. Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Oxford UP, New York and London, 2009. Edited with introduction and notes by Tone Brekke and Jon Mee.
Mary Wollstonecraft had an interesting life and an interesting turn of phrase. These letters, written for publication, manifest both her prejudices and her convictions in a manner that, while original, is also very much of its time. Wollstonecraft believes in progress.
She also has a fine eye for landscape, but also a convinced superiority as concerns society in the Scandinavian countries she passes through. The last few letters take a jaundiced, though most likely accurate, view of commerce.
An interesting piece of work. The appendices provide contemporary responses, among other things.
I am, it must be confessed, disinclined to work tonight. Well, I've been disinclined all day, to tell the truth. Perhaps instead of perusing the Timaeus I will shelve books instead.
My present project - the thesis - requires that I read all those Greco-Roman classics which I have til now successfully avoided. (This is sometimes a great pleasure, and more often a vast pain in the unmentionables.) In addition to reading specific blokes like Galen and Hippokrates (and getting a reasonable selection of the Galenic works is remarkably awkward, actually). And my personal inclinations are pushing me towards thinking about reading as widely as possible - maybe Chinese, Indian, Arabic sources in translation? - to look at how other societies may have conceptualised healing and access to the gods.
This is awkward, god knows, because material from contemporary or slightly later societies isn't available in translation half as readily as most of the Greco-Roman stuff - and considering that there's a whole bunch of Greco-Roman stuff (not the famous lads, but some of the lesser or later - i.e. Late Antique - fellows) aren't available in any translation later than the 1920s, this is not a minor issue.
Oh, well. I suppose I must count my blessings, and not my eggs.
