Thursday, October 25, 2007

Just starting out...

Whew! I'm finally taking the first tentative steps of the journey through the long, dark tunnel of blogging technology!

I've gotten tired of forgetting what I just read last week, even though I wrote the title down on a scrap of a Post-it and put it in my car. I'm sick of giving a reader's advisory to someone, only to forget the author or worse, the title of the book whose plot and characters I remember so clearly.

In college, I read Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies. The first paragraph lays it all out there, just like I want to with this journal, saying:
Following the practice that has become the habit of my life, namely the devoted study of literature, one day as I was sitting in my study, surrounded by books on many different subjects, my mind grew weary from dwelling at length on the weighty opinions of authors whom I had studied for so long. I looked up from my book, deciding then to leave subtle questions in peace and to read some lyric poetry for pleasure...I thought I would browse through it to amuse myself.
I'm not including anything from my graduate classwork unless it's absolutely brilliant, so everything I throw out into the ether is simply something I picked up "to amuse myself." Enjoy!



2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hmm ... titian. Erudite, apt, and intriguingly mysterious. I like it.

Well, through your nine months of blogging, it seems you've stayed true to that first paragraph of Book of the City of Ladies. Kudos.

Oh, and if you'd like, I could teach you to do calculus, ski, ice skate backwards, and play the cello (which is way better than the snooty, over-hyped violin, in my biased opinion).

-- James --

Anonymous said...

Hi James--
I just retraced my steps in my blog and came across your message all these months later...
Thanks for your kind words--any chance that I could take you up on the cello thing? You're right, the violin is way too common, almost vulgar. And the cello is so beautiful.