24 July 2010

I bought some books last night

So this evil woman thought it would be a good idea to take me to this amazing used bookstore.  Unfortunately, they knew how amazing they were and they charged accordingly.  It took just about as much self-restraint as I had (and the knowledge of only $40 in my bank account) to prevent me from buying $200 worth of books.  That's used books.  And that's before I saw the entire shelf that was devoted to language.

Every time I've heard someone talk about Heidegger I have known that I would love him, but I've never had the opportunity to read him for myself.  I think this will make for some beautiful hammock reading.  And it should be a good introduction for me.  Hopefully I won't need to understand his whole epistemology in order to understand these essays.  That would be bad.

My dad has been telling me all summer that I need to read some Chomsky.  Maybe I can get him to spot me for it.  Nevertheless, I am excited.

So this doesn't look as exciting as the other ones but this is a pretty jam-packed anthology.  Quickly, we have Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Tolstoy (don't ask me), Derrida, Foucault, Freud, Jung, Marinetti, and Kandinsky among so many others.

So there's a story behind this.  My dad has recited "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee" more times than I can count.  He learned them from my great-uncle Jack who would always recite them.  I have a feeling that there are a lot of great-uncles and grandfathers out there who recite Robert Service poetry.  This goes out to all of them.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun 
    By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
    That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights 
    But the strangest I ever did see
Was that night on the Marge of Lake Labarge
    I cremated Sam McGee.

Gotta love it.


Blitzen Trapper!

1 comment:

  1. Dude, you're right about the old men reciting Robert Service--I didn't even know who that was until I read the quote and realized that my friend Marit's dad used to recite that to us every time we went camping. Good times.

    Also: I just saw Blitzen Trapper in concert. Be jealous.

    ~Madeline

    ReplyDelete