(fleeting)

Finished in October

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Finished in September

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Finished in August

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Finished in July

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Finished in June

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Finished in May

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Finished in April

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  1. Evening’s Empire was a long time coming. I checked it out of the library in the spring of 2013, and read maybe the first quarter. I bought a copy a year later, starting over from the beginning. I set it down repeatedly over the next six years, and finally finished the last three chapters in a big push over several days. An absolutely excellent book.
  2. All this Rilke over the last month or so is because of a correspondence course called Rilke by Mail offered by the poet Mark Wunderlich. Rilke was an early and, I see now, extremely strong influence on me when I was a young poet starting out in college.

Finished in March

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Finished in February

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Finished in January

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Finished In December

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Finished in November

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Finished in October

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Finished: Week of 31 August

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I’m suspending the “Finished” project for the rest of the year, for largely the same reasons I stopped this time last year: I tend to focus on rereads in the fall and winter.

There are several longer books I’m slowly working my way through, and I tend to move between them according to my mood each day. And my mood in the darker months is such that I will need my reading habits to serve my therapeutic, self-medicating needs rather than some goal of finishing books and then reporting out about it.

I’ll continue to keep my own log of finished books, and will post a recap of 2020 sometime close to New Years.

Finished: Week of 3 August

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For a few days this week, I thought I would belatedly join in the Sealey Challenge. It did not go well. (I have some Very Deep Thoughts on this, but they will have to wait a few days.)

Finished: Week of 27 July

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Beyond Belief: I bounced off this one hard when I first read it in 2003. I have no idea why, considering how absolutely up my alley all of Elaine Pagels’ books had been up to that point. My guess is that it’s because Beyond Belief is, at times, much more personal than her previous books, which I don’t think I was in a position to appreciate at the time. This book feels different, too, as though she was trying to stay focused yet kept taking in wider and wider vistas.

No Emo joke this week, sorry. And Irenaeus? Yep, still an asshole.

Hillman: Holy shit, is that an actual book of poems? Pledging to finish all the unfinished and unstarted poetry that was lying around is what started this whole thing off, waaay back in January of 2019. And poetry has been thin on the ground for a very long time. Who knows, maybe I’m ready to get back into all that. Tune in next week for another exciting episode.

Finished: Week of 13 July

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Finished: Week of 6 July

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This was my first reread of The Origin of Satan since ’96. Short version: Satan was invented largely by the cononical gospels as a counterpoint to the external enemy of Rome. “Satan” ceased to be the impersonal adversary or debate opponent of the Hebrew scriptures and swiftly bloomed into the personification of the intimate enemy within the then-incipient community of the early Jesus cult: first Judas; then the scribes and Jewish elders; then all Jews; and finally (once it had fully broken away from the Jewish world) any Christian who disagreed with orthodoxy (literally “straight thinking”). Satan is a textbook example of the narcissism of small differences.

Or as Emo Phillips puts it:

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.”

I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.”

I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.”

I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.”

I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.”

I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.”

I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.

Also, Irenaeus is such an asshole.

Finished: Week of 22 June

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Finished: Week of 15 June

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Finished: Week of 8 June

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Finished: Week of 26 May

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Over the last few weeks, I have finally managed to begin focusing on reading in a sustained way again, which allowed me to finish two books. And there are several others I’ve been nibbling at for months that I may actually manage to finish quite soon.

This has been a rough year — and a rough week — for my attention span…

Finished: Week of 6 Apr

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I haven’t managed to finish reading anything since mid-March. My concentration is shot, and so I have been drifting through easy books while rewatching TV shows. I’m trying to make a virtue out of my short attention span by concentrating on distracting things.

Finished: Week of 16 Mar

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Finished: Week of 9 Mar

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