[image by Brian]
Goal for June: Read a book a day. Follow my reading list here.
I like giving books away, but I know some of you don’t really wanna give away for free books you paid good money for. In which case you might consider trading up –
Green reading tip: Exchange your books.
You might try PaperBackSwap or BookMooch, both of which require nothing but the cost of postage for the exchange.
Of course, I’d say it’s even more eco and personally rewarding to swap with people in your vicinity — which is why I’m having a book exchange party :)
But as usual the book I read has nothing to do with the advice doled out. I got Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh from the Santa Monica Public Library –
The Way of All Flesh was a bit ambitious for this month, considering it’s a near 400-page book in dense print. Published in the 1900s, it’s also an “older” book than I usually read, published in the early 1900s — so I had some reservations cracking it open.
But crack it I did and got hooked! Considered a sort of anti-Victorian novel, The Way of All Flesh tells the story of one Ernest, the son of a clergyman who slowly claws himself toward an intelligent atheism, through the viewpoint of his playwright godfather. As good literature does, I found myself relating and recognizing so much of the thoughts, actions, and reactions of both Ernest and the godfather. Amazing how religious oppression, guilt, and shame — as levied on innocent children of the evangelical — transcends geographical, cultural, and historical boundaries so effectively!
The book also gives you a gripping account of an upper-middle-class sort of life in Britain at that time, complete with its complicated societal, political, and economic mores that shape the lives and personalities of people thrown into it. Upper middle class is a term used loosely here, as lineage and “breeding” play a bigger role in determining the social strata than simple wealth.
I enjoyed The Way of All Flesh about as much as I did Any Human Heart — a more contemporary bildungsroman of sorts from a similar stratum of British society. I guess I enjoy novels that contend big cities, both my own metropolis and others –
Book read: Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh
June 20th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Marevelous ideas. Personally, I think it is a sin to throw a book away. If my books are in decent shape, I either trade them in at a used bookstore or donate them to my local library. Magazines and books in less nice shape all go to the library (they give away magazines and beat up books and better someone should have a good read than they should go to the landfull).
Cheers!
June 21st, 2007 at 10:54 am
Siel, you amaze me! You must be a speedreader!! It would take me over a year to read a 400 page tome, not to mention one written in 1900.
You’re one smart cookie!
toddy
June 22nd, 2007 at 12:49 am
almost vegetarian — I’ve noticed that a lot of people give away old mags on freecycle too. Might be another avenue to consider :)
I actually read v. slowly — I just devote a lot of time to reading. Really, I should be reading about this much all the time, since I’m a grad student in the English dept and all –