On Books

I’m nearly done with Neil Postman’s End of Education and hope to write a real review before the end of this weekend.

But before I do that, I have to say that I think I can finally answer that perennially imagined question, “Who is your favourite author?”

Is it possible to say that after only having read two of his books? I think so.

I think the only other author whose books I’ve eagerly anticipated reading is Nomi Prins. I like Matt Taibbi, too.

But Neil Postman is something else. It’s too bad that he’s dead. I don’t think he’d be too surprised to witness the world we live in today. In fact, reading a book he wrote almost 30 years ago, I couldn’t help but think how smart the man was. Like not just, “I have a PhD from MIT” kind of “smart,” which really means nothing to me anymore. But a wise person. My religious sentiments make me reluctant to call him prophetic, but Postman was prescient.

It’s too bad the intelligentsia of today never heeded his words. But I suppose that’s why I call them the intelligentsia rather than intellectuals. How many real intellectuals do we have today? I don’t think too many of them exist in the halls of the ivory tower anyway, unfortunately (do towers have halls? You know what I mean). I actually do know of some really smart academics or PhD-holders, I should day. But they aren’t the ones who are cited in the popular press whenever a veneer of credentialism is called for.

Oh, the experts.

Anyways, the intention of this post was not to write a diatribe, although I do love those from time to time. As someone whose former AOL screen name included the word “critic,” I realize this need or desire, rather, to write commentaries on topics of cultural importance comes from a young age. I think it might be due to the fact that I am the youngest of my siblings and matured faster (in some ways, not entirely) than my peers.

…

While I struggled to sleep this morning, inevitably my mind went to what I should write about this afternoon. Book review, yes. But then I started to think about books in general.

I saw a post almost accidentally that showed a young woman surrounded by a nicely curated stack of books with a caption that read something along the lines of: “The most wonderful thing about books is that you never know what adventure you’ll go on.”

I don’t know if reading Nietzsche would be considered going on an adventure (to be completely honest, I only bought Thus Spoke Zarathustra last month; I haven’t attempted to read it yet). I admittedly don’t care for adventure books or even fiction books in general. But why is that? Is it because I lack an imagination? Yes, that’s probably true. But I’m not all about cold, hard facts either. I look at peer-reviewed scientific papers and my eyes glaze over.

I guess I like to learn about the world, about society and that’s why the books I enjoy the most are books of history or cultural criticism, but I’m not sure I like the latter term since it’s too limiting.

As I move further and further away from schooling, I realize just how much unlearning I actually need to do. It’s through reading books on finance and central banking that I realized how woefully lacking my degree in Economics was. But I also need or want to fill in the many gaps, gaps in my knowledge of US History, of Islamic civilization, of secularism and liberalism, you know the stuff that shapes our world today that never got taught in school. I only got a small taste of it during grad school, but even that didn’t quench my thirst. It only made me realize how delicious all the new food looked (to continue the food metaphor).

Maybe one of these days I will pick up War & Peace again and actually read it all. But for now, I am too caught up in reading about the Eugenics movement during the Progressive Era and about the “epic” struggle to create the US Federal Reserve.

One day, Tolstoy, one day.