100-109: Life, the Universe and Anything: General Philosophy

Oh, joy! I finally get to dig into the actual disciplines, starting with the most ambitious, philosophy. More ambitious even than theology, because it also undertakes to study the nature of God, and without benefit of any kind of revelation or Scripture! As I mentioned before, I am reading books from our church library whenever possible, so my selection for this decade is Will Durant's classic introduction The Story of Philosophy. It is available at just about every librare on the title page, and apparently many of the newer print editions are also not very well-made. It is available at just about every library in the old-fashioned, 450-page version.

There are many introductions to philosophy available; I think this one is still attractive because Durant is opinionated and therefore less dry than his subject might suggest. Of course some of his opinions may seem dated, and his choice of whom to cover is a bit idiosyncratic. He himself apologizes for omitting all Eastern philosophers, and of course he can't cover any developments in philosophy past 1920, the date of the book. But the ones he does include, being dead, are unlikely to have changed much in the last 100 years, so I look forward to reviewing them over the next few weeks.

Miniature Books: An Old Tradition Still In Vogue

You can see from this picture that miniature books can be things of beauty. They were first made by those who prepared other illuminated manuscripts and were functional as well as elaborate: missals could be easily carried in a pocket or even worn at the waist or around the neck for convenience of prayer throughout the day. They also were used as practice pieces for apprentice binders-- a use they still have in art school, where students produce books that, if not strictly 'miniature,' are certainly small.

This was a really beautiful book to look at and read parts of. Every imaginable subject and style of miniature book is mentioned, from the aforementioned hand-written prayer books to those novelty items that come packages with a magnifying glass. Certain publishers are famous for their teeny yet readable versions of the classics, which collectors buy for shocking prices: http://www.lorsonbooksandprints.com/raheb.html. This book really focuses on these limited-edition collector's items, but many books, especially children's books, were originally designed to be small. Ant and Bee, Maurice Sendak's Nutshell Library, and the Beatrix Potter books come to mind. Small books are maybe not as useful as they used to be-- with the advent of e-readers, any book becomes portable-- but making something smaller will always make it somehow both cuter and classier, and one advantage of collecting miniature books is that they don't take up much space!

After reading this book, I got a little inspired and ended up spending a few hours and a few dollars at eBay, where miniature books for the casual dollhouse furnisher, the curious collector, and the serious antiquarian are all available. One could start a collection fairly reasonably, for example with items from the Little Leather Library. Of course this house is full of books already, so I suppose I don't really need to take up this hobby, but it certainly is a charming one to read about!

90-99: Books about Publishing Curiosities

In the 090's in a typical library for general use, turns out you can read about all kinds of oddities of publishing: rare books and the people who steal them; weird books and the mysteries surrounding them; banned books; and the two things I chose: literary hoaxes, and books bound in an unusual manner.

Literary Hoaxes is a series of brief articles about all kinds of forgeries and falsehoods, organized by time period or topic (Native Americans and Australians seem particularly to attract printed tomfoolery, for some reason). I'm not a fan of sitting down and reading straight through compendiums like this, but I may need to just read the few pages that reveal that Go Ask Alice was a work of fiction.In fact, I had better at least flip through the whole book, lest I be fooled by more too-lurid-to-be-true autobiographies!

As a former calligrapher and student of medieval books, I am more excited about Miniature Books. What a fun thing to collect! I suppose you could put them on a miniature bookshelf! If you wanted to do it cheaply, you would end up with a lot of children's books-- Beatrix Potter and Maurice Sendak have particularly popular boxed sets-- and a lot of those things they sell near the check-out line at Barnes and Noble. I suspect this book is more about collecting exotic, rare miniatures-- it does seem to be full of pretty pictures. It's also, ironically, pretty big- a coffee-table book about matchbook books!

Three Books about Everything by CSLewis, David Rakoff, and Leo Tolstoy

Well, C.S. Lewis is indeed a great writer, although I can't recommend Present Concerns as a starting point. It's really mainly interesting as a window into Lewis's own particular interests, some of which do not seem very contemporary at all: the bad effect that coeducation has had on "serious argument about ideas; why an appalling boarding school is an important experience; the possibility of the elimination of English departments in universities.... Lewis is always literate, always genteel, but sometimes just so idiosyncratic or so much a product of his own times that a collection of ephemera really doesn't hold up all that well.

David Rakoff, on the other hand, is very of the moment. I didn't give him much of a chance, so please feel free to make up your own mind. In my very briefly formed opinion, Rakoff is a great example of that kind of journalism where the reporter is the story, and I'm afraid I just didn't like Rakoff enough to want to read a whole book about him and his adventures. Especially since I did read David Foster Wallace's famous long piece about cruise ships, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." The piece I read by Rakoff just seemed to be doing the same kind of thing only with more crudity, and I just didn't feel like it.

And poor Leo Tolstoy-- I really wanted to like his project, but in my opinion he should have stuck to original writing rather than anthologizing. I might say this collection of excerpts, quotes and original paragraphs was inchoate-- still in a state of preliminary chaos. There were lots of good parts, but they didn't cohere from day to day. The chief difficulty, though, I think is that the selections were not sacred enough to form a devotional, but not secular enough to be attractive to someone who doesn't use devotionals. So the dear old man fell between two stools and ended up with a product that, well, I guess the librarian who bought it liked it...

Spoiler alert: the main topic of the 90s is "Books with interesting bindings". I doubt my library maintains such a collection, and what would be in it, anyway, besides maybe S, that weird novel-within-a-novel that comes packed with inserts...

80-89: Essays, or, Books as Boxes of Chocolates

As far as I can tell, the 80s are dedicated to collections of short works on assorted subjects. The two I chose from the public library were as follows:

Fraud by David Rakoff, which I picked because I mistakenly thought for some reason that he was the author of Every Person on the Planet, which I loved but isn't by him. Also, it is supposed to be funny and has pictures drawn by the author. It's the pictures that really are reminding me of something, although, not, as it turns out, the work of Bruce Eric Kaplan. Did Rakoff ever do cartoons for the New Yorker? Did he illustrate someone else's books? This is driving me slightly nuts, and the interwebs, which usually can answer such a question so quickly, are only interested in his writing, not his drawing, so if anyone can help me, I'd appreciate it. Meanwhile, I am looking forward to enjoying Rakoff's work, which gets stellar reviews. It appears to be a collection of essays most of which were originally written for This American Life, so that's a pretty good pedigree.

A Calendar of Wisdom, which I picked because it was compiled by Leo Tolstoy, who I correctly thought was the author of Resurrection and War and Peace, both of which I had greatly enjoyed. It seems to be a sort of semi-secular devotional, a collection of quotes and short essays by the great man himself and many others about how great wisdom is and of what it consists. Not the kind of thing one reads cover to cover, but I'm looking forward to leaving it around. I'm particularly interested in it because I am trying to write a devotional right now for my own personal use, because I can't find one that is exactly what I am looking for.

Before I went to the public library, I decided that I would try, whenever possible, to read from our own church library. When I hit the 200s, this will be very easy, of course, although pickings are slim elsewhere in the Dewey numbers, and only half our holdings are even assigned a number yet. But it so happens we have one book numbered 082, a slim collection of CS Lewis's ephemera, originally published in newspapers and magazines, and covering a wide range of topics. It is ironically titled Present Concerns even though it is about things people were concerned about in 1945. But CS Lewis was such a great writer he could make shopping for groceries interesting, so I will give it a fair trial.

As always, you can click on the images below to explore these books further.

 

What Now? Blur

I spent a long time with Blur: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload. One thing that was really nice about it was that it assumed that there was such a thing as truth and that the reader might care to know what that was. Previous posts have outlined the authors' strategies for getting at the truth. The authors close by bringing up a related issue. It's good to fact-check the information that comes our way... but it's even more important to make sure we are getting the information we need.

Most of us just kind of let the news flow towards us. Whether it's our Facebook feeds, TV and radio, or even a print source, we expose ourselves to far more than we can really process, but yet are exposed to only what someone else thought was important enough to bring to our attention. So I am hearing a lot about the Ice Bucket Challenge, but nothing about-- well, I don't know, because I'm not hearing anything about it. What's in your feed is determined partly by who else has responded to the items available... you can't respond if it doesn't show up in the first place... so maybe your view of the news is skewed not by deliberate inaccuracy but just by the happenstance of what gets picked up, what gets traction as the flavor of the day.

So what to do? The authors suggest that we make a list of the ten things we are most worried about, interested in, or involved with. We can then seek out the news that pertains to those concerns, and skip what doesn't... although I would have missed a lot of interesting information that way. Maybe an even more interesting question, once I've decided the topic matters, is: what is this piece of reportage telling me? Is there really anything new here, or is it just a rehash? How reliable is the stuff that seems new to me?

Ultimately, if I really want to contribute to the public discourse, just reading The Week or watching the news the same way I read a novel or watch Jeopardy isn't good enough. I have to start asking myself more questions.
 

How to tell real news from fake (More from Blur by Kovach and Rosenstiel)

I'm still reading Blur by Kovach and Rosenstiel. It's great information, but definitely leaves me wondering how I would ever have time to implement all the suggestions they provide for vetting news stories.

For example, one should ask oneself, apparently, where the information comes from. Was the journalist herself a witness or credentialed expert? Were first-hand witnesses the sources for an event? If so, how recently did they see it? How many of them are there? What were their perspectives, both literally and figuratively? If experts are quoted for analysis or commentary, what are their agendas? And are they offering facts, or opinions? What about "anonymous sources? And when opinions and analysis are offered, do the same catchphrases ("death-panels;" "welfare queens;" "boots on the ground") keep cropping up? If so, you may not be hearing sources so much as parrots of official talking points. The ideal source is risking something and gaining nothing by providing information.

These questions only have meaning if you are reading what the authors call "the journalism of verification," whose writers are committed to producing only what they can prove to be true, not what they believe to be true. So all forms of evidence can be tested: what is offered? How was it vetted? Has opposing evidence also been presented? What conclusions have been drawn-- are they supported? Could other conclusions be drawn from the same evidence? Are you getting breaking news that may be incomplete, or something that should have been properly analyzed? This reminds me of the book I read about Confidential magazine, and how for years they avoided lawsuits by meticulous fact-checks of their gossip pieces!

Every communication has three levels: the denotation (what it says), the connotation (what it means), and the annotation (how it feels; the tone). So, does a news story follow the scientific method? Is it true in denotation, that is, are all the facts accurate? In connotation, that is, are the facts assembled to make a true story? Is the tone fair? I think of weather reports, which often exaggerate certain evidence and take on a hysterical tone, because otherwise, why would we tune in?

Perhaps one could also think of the scientific method, which involves forming a hypothesis and then testing it with evidence. We do this all the time in real life: did I leave my keys in the church library? Well, let me go look, knowing it's possible that I did not. Any piece of journalism that purports to be investigative should certainly address the possibility that the hypothesis was wrong.

A lot of what passes for informational programming is just talking heads with talking points and a moderator who discourages moderation. In such a situation, the interviewer or emcee often lets false statements go by, because her job is really just to facilitate her guests' expression of their own ideas. In such a case, we may be in the realm of the "journalism of affirmation," which seeks only to comfort with well-worn ideas and theories. Such "journalism" cherry-picks facts, ascribes unusually evil motives to the other 48% of Americans, and indulges in ad-hominem attacks and ultimately the creation of alternate realities. We like this kind of "news," which is both entertaining and affirming, but let's not kid ourselves that we have learned anything from it!