"A screaming comes across the sky." Opening line to a truly mesmerizing, infinitely detailed book. And I mean infinitely as in "Moving towards in infinity through means of theoretical calculus that eventually brings you to the point in which your present and past selves collide and you exist at all points in the universe for one second." Worth the read simply for that and the Adenoid subdued in a man's dreams with buckets of cocaine.
2Violence and the Sacred - Rene Girard
Changed the way I thought about scapegoating, ritualistic killing in primitive cultures (and our own culture) and the psychological price of mimetic desire. Not that I had really thought deeply about those things before I read this book, but now I feel like I understand them in a completely different way.
That being said, Girard's sentence structures could use a ton of work, despite the often brilliant ideas and theses they contain.
Imagine Rashomon, except told literally through the many perspectives of so many disparate and destructive characters. It's unbelievably confusing at first, and then harrowing as things become clearer and clearer.
Joyce was an absolute master. That's all I can really say about this book right now, since it's staggeringly intricate and beautiful.
5The Way of Love - Luce Irigaray
Irigaray is a philosopher and advocate of Gay and Lesbian rights...in this book, she puts forth her thesis for no less than a real overhaul of our language and discourse in order to create a greater equality between the sexes by emphasizing personal autonomy in loving relationships. If you remain your own person, while being very dedicated and empathetic of your partner, a new kind of well-adjusted love can and should flourish between two people. Women need to be more appreciated for their role in society through this new understanding of autonomy.
Even the author admits that this translation is very, very tough to understand because of the density of her language and thoughts being transmogrified from French into English. But, there are some real gems and truly captivating/endearing ideas in here if a reader is so inclined to fight through all of the tough language to get to the emotive/intellectual bedrock of the material.
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