More Books
Went to the library yesterday and found a book titled Triumph. It's a history of the Catholic Church that is being heavily advertised in all of the very traditional/orthodox mags about. Picked it up to see what it might be like.
Related to the entry on Shakers, our meager library system had a copy of Ronald Knox's Enthusiasm: An Episode in the History of Religion. I'm uncertain about what the book deals with, but it may have much to do with the relgious "revivals" of the 17th and 18th century, including "The Great Awakening," about which I know relatively little.
Also among books delivered in the past couple of days was Balthasar's "Theology of Karl Barth." As if Barth isn't difficult enough on his own, we have Balthasar attempting to talk about how to engage in theological dialogue with Barth. I flipped open to a page with such a thoroughly impenetrable paragraph as to make me doubt my ability to read more than a page.
Finally--also got some books by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, who is one of my favorite writers on feminism. Feminism Is Not the Story of My Life and Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South. Should make for interesting reading over the next couple of weeks.
I thought I was going to be dreadfully bored by Josef Pieper, and am pleased to report that is not the case. The book on Phaedrus is sufficiently interesting to make me consider reading the actual dialogue. I've never been a Greek Philosopher fan, I've read The Symposium and wished I hadn't, and a few scattered bits of Aristotle when I couldn't otherwise avoid it. Mostly I find philosophical reading a vast waste of energy. But there are times when something worthwhile pokes through. If one consider Aquinas philosophy (some do and some don't), he might be an exception. Even so, I recognize that my mind simply isn't bent that way--I find the puzzles of hard-core science and mathematics far more interesting than philosophical fal-de-rol. (I guess Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault will do that for you.
