Hello friends!
I have completed my read-through of Augustine's City of God — though "completed" doesn't seem like the right word: there is still so much to think about. And indeed I may well return to the issues I have raised, raised but not settled, later. I've given the whole series a tag, which in the future you will be able to use to find any further posts. I do love a good tag.
On Monday I'll be posting some thoughts on one of my favorite novels, Dickens's Bleak House, in which I'll be explaining why I think Esther Summerson is a much-misunderstood character. And that may well lead to further posts on that novel. I like the idea of using my big blog as a way of working through complicated books, slowing down my reading, giving myself the time to reflect and the opportunity to revisit certain ideas. By contrast, I collect curiosities and deploy brief takes in my newsletter and on micro.blog.
After Bleak House, I think I might blog my way through Jacques Ellul's Propaganda. Another possibility is Adrian Johns's new book The Science of Reading: Information, Media, and Mind in Modern America. And some day I will surely blog my way through the whole of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. But if any of you have any suggestions for me, please share them below. Just understand that "current events" are out of bounds. The whole point of my blog is to think about things other than current events — or, it is better to say, to read things that seem to be wholly unrelated to our own moment but perhaps for that very reason illuminate something about our condition that direct treatments of the Now cannot discern.
Cheers to all, and may you stay cool in the hot weather --