Books

I've really managed to find some good books lately, where when I have to stop, I look forward with great anticipation to see what is next.

Most recently, Boethius.  Maybe I'll talk in later posts about specific things I liked.

Jorge Luis Borges.  When was the last time I read such extremely entertaining and thoughtful short stories?

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.  What a well-told story, all around.  Even if the author may not have all that much sympathy for the faith he left, he does a good job of letting the characters be true to it and resists editorializing too much.  Also, even though he thinks that most readers probably won't get all the detail he puts in there about the nuances of the medieval period, the Catholic Faith, historical and philosophical and ecclesiastical controversies, he doesn't content himself with shallow cardboard-cutout people and events, but goes to the trouble to weave those details in anyway - and finding and appreciating them was so much fun for me.  Plus the literary aspects: reading it right after reading Borges was exquisite.  And how entertaining to read a mystery-detective story written by a symbology semiotics expert.

The Arabian Nights.  I have Haddawy's translation of Mahdi's text.  The alternative, apparently, is the more famous in the English-speaking world but oh-so-Victorian Burton translation (of course either one I am likely to get is an edition of selected Nights as the whole thing runs some 16 volumes, it seems).  To be honest, I'm a little bogged down in the middle of The Story of the Slave Girl and Nur al-Din Ali ibn-Khaqan, which is the longest and the least special-seeming so far.  And I didn't know when I ordered the book that to get the stories I've actually heard of - Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Sinbad the Sailor, and Aladdin and the Lamp - I'll have to buy Volume II.  But I'm going to.