Hence "fantastical nonsense" and not "fantastical"?

Ah, I get it now. Fantastical nonsense also refers to the crap written in a book by cliché authors. Sorry, I misunderstood you.

The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays
by John Dewey

C.S. Lewis' The Discarded Image, developed from his lectures on medieval literature. It's quite good. He does a good job capturing the sense in which manuscripts we to the medieval a bit like what mainstream science is to us (we might allow that the latter is a better means of discovering truth of course!)

"Lucan and Cicero said it, it must be true and we need to work it in somewhere."

Here is a particularly poignant passage.

The daemons are 'between' us and the gods not only locally and materially but qualitatively as well. Like the impassible gods, they are immortal: like mortal men, they are passible (xiii). Some of them, before they became daemons, lived in terrestrial bodies; were in fact men. That is why Pompey saw Semidei Manes, demigod-ghosts, in the airy region. But this is not true of all daemons. Some, such as Sleep and Love, were never human. From this class an individual daemon (or genius, the standard Latin translation of daemon) is allotted to each human being as his ' witness and guardian' through life (xvi).It would detain us too long here to trace the steps whereby a man's genius, from being an invisible, personal, and external attendant, became his true self, and then his cast of mind, and finally (among the Romantics) his literary or artistic gifts. To understand this process fully would be to grasp that great movement of internalisation, and that consequent aggrandisement of man and desiccation of the outer universe, in which the psychological history of the West has so largely consisted.

Lewis is a keen observer of the same phenomenon Charles Taylor looks at. Although, I think the move is more bi-polar than they let on. Man becomes the sui generis source of all meaning even as all reality (as opposed to appearance) is shifted over to the "world" side of the ledger and man reduced to a mechanistic automaton from the "perspective of the really real." Kant's attempt to save God and free will by casting them into the noumena at the end of the Prolegomena is a sort of rear-guard action on this front. So, man is aggrandized even as he is abased. He is finally freed by some 20th century thinkers, only to have this freedom debased into vacuous, indeterminant potency.

Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah.

African literature is unique and pure. Gurnah only focuses on Tanzania and Zanzibar, because these are the places where he was born and raised before moving to London.
I read 'Paradise' the last year and it was outstanding. What I've read thus far, seems to have the same narrative line. A group of helpless young people who had the bad (or good) luck—depending on how we interpret it—of experiencing the beginning of African decolonisation.

I always recommend reading Gurnah. A deserved Nobel laureate and a nice person.

Rethinking Marxist Approaches to Transition: A Theory of Temporal Dislocation by Onur Acaroglu

A Harlot High and Low
Honoré de Balzac

Collingwood and the Crisis of Western Civilisation: Art, Metaphysics and Dialectic
Richard Murphy

@Moliere My (long) rambling review of Byung-Chul Han's The Burnout Society

The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. I love his clear writing style and his precision. The speeches are amazing too!

:up:
The effortless grace of it is scary.

Listened to it. It sounds like a complex and meaty book that I'd be interested in.

One critique: I would not reduce the negation of the negation to Nietzsche's Will to Power. But I could just be misunderstanding too.

I read it a while ago and only skimmed over it before I did the review. Certain parts I will need to read soon.

o yeah no worries. You said as much in your review.

It definitely sounds up my ally. I just haven't gotten around to reading the pdf yet is all.

Agreed! I'm in awe

It definitely sounds up my ally. — Moliere

"Up my ally" is what is going to happen to Europe when Trump retakes office.

What was your main take away from it other than the style of writing?

Echoes of Gogol continue to rebound. I just read Kafka's Metamorphosis for the first time since I was a nipper. Back then I found it frustrating, but now I love it. Very reminiscent of stories like "The Nose" and "The Overcoat", with a similar humour and creative joy.

I'm not finished yet so we'll see if I have any takeaways. I think he does a good job at portraying what governs human decision making especially in times of war. He definitely has a certain idea of human nature, but I don't get the feeling that what he says is ever baseless.

The fascination also comes from the fact that despite him writing about events that took place thousands of years ago, it still feels very relevant.

Do you guys prefer to read a lot of books at the same time? Or do you prefer to focus on one, finish it, and then move on to the next. I'm trying to do the latter because it lets me immerse myself a bit more, but I have my moments of weakness!

It depends, but I also prefer to focus on only the novel I am currently reading. However, if I am also interested in poetry, I do not mind flicking through it at the same time.

Same here. Maybe I'll read an essay or two but I try to focus on one thing at a time.

What's some good poetry you've been reading?

Several at a time practically always. Some I get through quicker than others though.

My rule is basically to try and read two or three different viewpoints on the same subject at the same time to weigh and value the ideas better, and to guard against instilling biases.

What's some good poetry you've been reading? — Jafar

I mostly read haiku. But I recommend you give a try to Sikelianos' poetry. A wonderful poet. There is a 1996 edition of selected poems that is pretty good.

That makes sense. What subjects have you been focusing on recently?

Haikus are lovely! I'll check out Sikelianos too.

Presocratics, Philosophy of Religion and Mnemonics.

Do you guys prefer to read a lot of books at the same time? Or do you prefer to focus on one, finish it, and then move on to the next. I'm trying to do the latter because it lets me immerse myself a bit more, but I have my moments of weakness! — Jafar

I tend to read fiction one book at a time, but non-fiction; generally science, sometimes philosophy; I often read in episodes. If I really want to read a book that is slow going or takes contemplation, I'll read 20 pages a day and then let it sit while I read other things. That way I'm less likely to get discouraged and it lets my thinking about the book percolate while I'm not paying attention.

What translation are you reading? I have just downloaded copy of 2015 Wilder Publications

The Oxford Classics version by Martin Hammond. I recommend it