Reading Rat September 6, 2009

Updates to my recommended reading ... first postings on these authors: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected Pope Benedict XVI, once said that Steppenwolf is among his favorite books because it "exposes the problem of modernity's isolated and self-isolating man". The protagonist, Harry Haller, goes through his mid-life crisis and must chose between life of action and contemplation. His initials perhaps are not accidentally like the author's. --Petri Liukkonen, Authors' Calendar (2008) [See recommended reading by Hesse] (via Rick Brookhiser at The Corner) First published in 1909, the Five-Foot Shelf was conceived by the Harvard president Charles W. Eliot as “a good substitute for a liberal education” for a growing middle class eager for knowledge. All the big names and important ideas were here: Sophocles, Chaucer, the Constitution, three treatises on smallpox for good measure. Ordinary men and women who had never set foot in Harvard Yard could now stake a claim to the peaks of Western civilization. --Alexander Nazaryan, Reading to Live, The New York Times, June 24, 2009, review of The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else, by Christopher R. Beha [See recommended reading by Charles W. Eliot] Updates to my recommended reading ... added to posts on these authors: John C. Briggs on Shakespeare and Abraham Lincoln Joseph M. Bessette on the presidency and Thomas Jefferson