Althouse: "I'm saving people a lot of time today: You don't have to meditate. You don't have to exercise. Just read some books from Art Garfunkel's list."

May 26, 2015

"I'm saving people a lot of time today: You don't have to meditate. You don't have to exercise. Just read some books from Art Garfunkel's list."

Things heard recently at Meadhouse.

11 comments:

Mary Beth said...: It's a really long book list.; 5/26/15, 7:37 PM
Chris N said...: Nah, man, I'm reading Dylan lyrics, doing Chakra work, and picking up a few dead birds around the wind tower.

Far out.; 5/26/15, 7:53 PM
Saint Croix said...: It's actually pretty interesting to keep track of all the books you read. I do that with movies. I'm almost up to 5000.

What's a little strange is keeping a record of how many pages are in each book you read. I only keep track of how long a movie is if it's Lawrence of Arabia and my ass is in a coma. 4 hours! 4 hours and no women! No women at all!

But the really odd thing about Garfunkel's list is how he doesn't seem to love any of the books he is reading. If I love a book, I want to read some other things that the author has written. I read Rex Stout, and I read another one and another one and another one. I devour them. Wodehouse, Christie, Salinger, Hemingway, Francis. I do a deep dive into all their works.

If I read just one, chances are I didn't love what I read.

So I guess that's my question. Don't you love anything that you read? And when you find some excellence, don't you want to stick around?; 5/26/15, 9:08 PM
traditionalguy said...: 20 minutes of Weight lifting and 30 minutes treadmill at a mile and a half pace with audible books on the iphone ear buds is very, very good for old men.

Amazingly Moby Dick made it on to Garfunkel's list...and Wurthering Heights did too. I feel vindicated.; 5/26/15, 9:32 PM
Etienne said...: The thing about the music business, is that the song writer gets all the money. It generates a lot of jealousy. If you are just a singer, you better be good at it, because you are only getting paid for the show.

Well, there's also the producer who makes all the other money, but the point being singers are a dime a dozen, even if they get all the groupies after the show.; 5/26/15, 10:45 PM
Anonymous said...: It's actually pretty interesting to keep track of all the books you read. I do that with movies. I'm almost up to 5000.

I do too as precursor to databases that will probably never come to fruition. The lists by themselves feel as a sop to ambition.; 5/27/15, 12:32 AM
rcommal said...: Oh, bullshit. I have almost nothing that I'd be willing to offer to silly, dishonest, both mis-educated and under-educated,"peeps".

It is true that I did, in fact, view things differently, for something akin to 20x2 [oh, puh-lease] years.

And it's true that I still, in fact, do.; 5/27/15, 12:33 AM
rcommal said...: Lucky.; 5/27/15, 12:51 AM
Quaestor said...: Garfunkel's favorites are a silly mix. Anyone who puts Erich Fromm on his favorite reads list is slightly silly to say the least. I had to read him for a sophomore history course I took and have mostly forgotten, though I do remember the effort needed to keep "Escape from Freedom" from being flung spinning out my window and into the quad below. Him and Bertrand Russell. The "Principia" is worth a look (very cheekily titled, Bert, as if you're a rival to Newton), then it too must be sent spinning from the window. The rest of the useful idiot's scribblings are utter bullshit. And "The Sorrows of Young Werther" ... did you read it in German, Art? Nah, I thought so.

And Shakespeare... those are plays, Art, not books... they are like long chapters in a nice big book called "The First Folio"... and your choices suck. No history? Nobody knows Shakespeare until they read and appreciate Henry the Sixth, all three parts. Romeo and Juliet is kid stuff by comparison... And Hamlet? That's a play for a poseur's favorites list. In my opinion it's one of Shakespeare's lesser efforts. Just look at that fifth act and tell me truly it isn't a total contrivance, a clumsy rush job meant to bring to a swift end the meandering abortion "Hamlet" has become since Act III. Alas, poor Arthur... He's a jerk, Horatio.

ATTENTION OS X and iOS USERS: artgarfunkel.com contains a malicious HTLM script. If you followed the link provided in Ann's post you should run an in-depth virus scan ASAP. If you're one of those who thinks his Apple product is immune to malware and you don't have virus protection installed, I recommend Avast!. for OS X. It's free and well-respected in the community. For your iPad I suggest Avira Mobile Security.; 5/27/15, 6:24 AM
Quaestor said...: Now that I've derided Garfunkel's list (Did anyone expect hearty approval from Quaestor?) I commend him for two items at least. My mother read to me from "Moby Dick" when I was five or six, the "The Velveteen Rabbit" being much too sad. Anybody who loves that terrifying tale can't be all bad.

Garett Mattingly's "The Armada" is superb. I literally read that book to shreds. I used it as an outline to my studies of the entire Elizabethan period. My highlighting, marginal notes, and spine-bending eventually destroyed my first copy. "The Armada" was one book I have bought three times. Though it was published a few years before some vital state papers of Philip the Second's court were discovered in Valencia, "The Armada" remains a thorough and reliable primer on that fatal year of 1588.; 5/27/15, 6:49 AM
dbp said...: May 1987 Carrie Fisher Postcards from the Edge.

I'll bet he didn't wait long before reading that!; 5/27/15, 1:04 PM