Antiquitopia

I just saw this in Salon , for all of you voracious readers, or anyone looking to expand their reading horizons: .... The grandaddy of them all, however, is the Tournament of Books, mounted by the Morning News Web site and now in its sixth year. Unlike DABWAHA, ToB doesn't offer prizes to readers who make the most accurate predictions, and unlike all the other contests, it doesn't rely on polling readers to determine the winning books. Instead, a single guest judge selects the victor in each bracket, while the tournament's overseers, Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner, serve up commentary garnished with the occasional dab of sportscaster lingo ("quintuple toe loop"?). There's even an official statistician who crunches such questionably significant numbers as (I think I have this right) the ratio of an entry's length to its likeliness to ascend to the next round. The ToB has a healthy sense of its own absurdity, evidenced by the fact that the first round put H...

I have been tagged by Daniel and Tonya at Hebrew and Greek Reader . In this meme, I will give the five books or authors who have shaped my thought the most, whether I like them or not, whether through agreement or opposition, etc. And they can be enduringly or immediately influential. This meme started not too long ago with Ken Brown at COrthodoxy . So, here are my five. For those who read my blog regularly, there probably will not be too many surprises. 1. M.M. Bakhtin . Most immediately, this Russian has profoundly influenced not only the way I approach my work--although he does that--but how I view day-to-day interactions. I was introduced to his thought through his essay on the "Chronotope" in the collected volume, The Dialogic Imagination . I use the Chronotope extensively in my dissertation. Since then, I have branched out to his other works and others' use of him. But even his concepts of the "utterance" from simple day-to-day speech-units to co...

I just realized I had been tagged for a book meme by Daniel and Tonya at Hebrew and Greek Reader . I am supposed to think up the five most enduring or immediately influential books or authors (not necessarily the ones I like the best, but the ones who have shaped my thought through engagement, even through opposition--perhaps often the most important ingredient). I have a few who come to mind immediately, but this is going to be difficult. For a full list or review, I believe I will have to ruminate at least another day or so. If I fail to remember, please, Dan or Tonya, feel free to remind me.

From the NYTimes (I apologize ahead of time for the long block quote, but this just seemed like it would make great spring break reading for many of you bibliobloggers out there): January 8, 2009 Books of The Times A 5th Gospel Can Be Like a 5th Wheel By JANET MASLIN Skip to next paragraph THE FIRE GOSPEL By Michel Faber. 213 pages. Canongate. $20. As part of Canongate’s series of short novels based on myths, “The Fire Gospel” is nominally linked to the story of Prometheus. Like Prometheus, Michel Faber’s main character steals something incendiary and is terribly punished for his transgression. But Mr. Faber’s hapless Canadian linguistic scholar, Theo Griepenkerl, does not suffer the Promethean fate of being chained to a rock and having his liver repeatedly devoured by a bird of prey. His is a different kind of pain. In keeping with Mr. Faber’s more modern idea of torment, Theo has to contend with Amazon.com’s idiotic customer reviews of his book. That book is an earth-shaking religio...

It seems like I am thinking about Babel/Babble lately with my last post and just (re)reading "Library of Babel" by Borges. I had read this short story in college, and it has persisted in my memory ever since. This library is eternal and infinite. Each room is a hexagon with the same number of shelves and books on each wall (except two). Two walls lead to adjacent hexagons, while a spiral staircase infinitely moves up and down to different floors with ever new hexagons. There are no two books alike in the library, but the books contain all possible combinations of twenty-five symbols, with all possible syntaxes, languages, books, writing, and, well, babble. As such, this same blog posting will be already found somewhere in the library (as well as any past and future postings I may write and miswrite). The inhabitants of this library are called librarians. The main character is a librarian who has been searching for the book of books, the catalogue of catalogues, all of...

I think I will just quote from the master of quotes without commentary (or little commentary outside of this sentence), itself Walter Benjamin's ultimate goal, from his own "Unpacking My Library: A Talk about Book Collecting": Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories. For what else is this collection but a disorder to which habit has accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order? ...the acquisition of an old book is its rebirth. To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves. Make your own order of my chaos of quotation, my poaching of words.

How often have you said to yourself, "Gee, I wish I could just buy Jared, that poor bibliophiliac graduate student, a book, but I just don't know what he would like or if he has it already!" Well...this post is for you. I have just added a widget to my site that shows my most recently added items to my Amazon wishlist. I noticed I had about 150 books saved for later in my cart. And was beginning to think this was ludicrous, so I am slowly transferring these books that I cannot possibly buy myself to my wishlist just in case someone out there looks, and thinks, "He hasn't read that! By God, we must get that guy up to date!" Although, I know that most people who read this are themselves poor graduate students or poor professors...but it is still worth a shot! :)