#lasliterature

[liberalartssociety]

Hello, Adam! Could you give some book recomendations? During the summer I've read almost all fiction my three favourite existentialists: Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus wrote and now I'm really struggling to find something good to read again..

I read the first volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time this summer and it’s worth doing for the pure pleasure of Proust’s prose. The same goes for Mrs Dalloway (or really anything) by Virginia Woolf. 

Non-fiction wise there’s so much to choose from, we really seem to be in a golden age of literary non-fiction. Pretentiousness by Dan Fox is an important and engaging essay I enjoyed, H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald is moving and evocative in so many ways, Skyfaring by Mark Vanhoenacker was a lovely audiobook and I listened to it on a fair few flights, it changed commercial air travel from a chore to something special.

[liberalartssociety]

What do you think of the Paul Mason book? I've been unsure whether or not to buy it; having seen him speak, I found him engaging but too optimistic to be truly convincing. I'm intrigued, though.

I love Paul Mason. It’s so refreshing to find someone talking about a different conception of the world and of economics, one which doesn’t feel like a fudge or a concession.

The optimism is a big part of the attraction for me, I could read a hundred thousand pessimistic books about the future of the world but this summer I’ve been reading lots about post-capitalist and post-work societies and it’s a real breath of fresh air.

Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future feels like pretty essential reading for the engaged person at the moment.

[liberalartssociety]

Do you know any good books on the history of the world?

I really like The Penguin History of the World. It is about five inches thick but it helps illuminate the great narrative arcs of world history. 

[liberalartssociety]

It's interesting to see the thoughts of a foreign reader on Dante. I'm Italian so during the last three years of high school I studied one part per year (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso). I recognize The Devine Comedy as one of the most fine work in literature but its main themes are deeply connected to Christianity/the Italian political situation in XIII-XIV centuries: I think people from other countries and cultures may find it difficult to approach the reading at first. What do you think?

I didn’t come across Dante until I studied the Renaissance in my degree. At school we focused on Shakespeare (as is to be expected in an English school). I found it difficult to read until I began to pick up on the main themes and references to different areas of the Catholic faith. It definitely helped that I’d already read the Bible and Paradise Lost. 

I’ve often said to @nealc25 that I wish I could read Dante in the original Italian. I can tell that something is lost in the translation when I read it in English and I’d like to know what. There is also this Clive James translation which I saw in a bookshop recently which takes a modern approach to translating the text in a similar way to Seamus Heaney.

It’s interesting though, I get asked about The Divine Comedy more than any other book. It certainly has a following!

[liberalartssociety]

Having just finished The Secret History, I find it a little odd how people see these characters as role models or relatable. They’re a collection of murderous, alcoholic sociopaths whose behaviour is completely amoral. I like a panelled room, a cup of coffee and a Greek poem as much as the next philosophy student but ... these are not my role models.

Then again I can never seem to feel much sympathy or empathy toward these sorts of characters like Gatsby or Holden Caulfield. 

[liberalartssociety]

I just grabbed a few of my favourite poetry books and picked some poems I enjoy from them. 

The Metropolitan Railway - John Betjeman / Seascape - WH Auden / Sudden Shower - John Clare / Bridge for the Living - Philip Larkin