Finished the Books

As I create 12 projects for each half-year, one that usually goes well has been a reading quota of three books.  It's not just any three books.  To make it more of an individual challenge, I set rules.  The three works must include a novel that one might find assigned in a college literature class,  a non-fiction work of substance, and a book with a Jewish theme.  Amid the three selections, one must be a traditional book, one an e-book read on a screen, and one an audio book.  Which type goes with which category is flexible but classics often become available as e-books for free.  This cycle, the Jewish book by Adam Kirsch:  The people and the books: 18 classics of Jewish literature came from the local library.  It doesn't really have 18 books in their original texts but a learned commentary on a selection of works written from Biblical times to the early 20th century that either shaped Jewish thought or revealed how Jews in different eras of history adapted Judaism to their circumstances, once their communities stopped being autonomous.  For the audio-book, my daughter had given me Krista Tippet's audio version of Becoming wise: an inquiry into the mystery and art of living.  It comes as a written work but the audio version has the advantage of listening to the actual tapes of her many interviews as a NY Times reporter with the person being interviewed doing the speaking.  I think that's a better format for this than reading the transcript on paper.  If I were still working, the 8 discs would have been run over about two weeks in my daily commute.  Since it did not seem worth the effort to listen to one or two audio bands at a time, I only played it when driving for a half hour or more, which isn't all that often anymore.  Listening in the entirety therefore expanded to two months, though I could have taken the discs from the car and listened on my home computer or other CD access.  While driving seemed the best forum.  The prose and interviews were of contemporary style, never really profound or artistic.  I had tried last year to listen to Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls in the car.  He is a master of language with its subtleties and references that connect better on a page that can be stopped momentarily to ponder what was said or admire the choice of words.  For the novel, I selected Thomas Hardy's Tess of d'Ubervilles available for free.  As I do more of this, I become increasingly convinced there are advantages to having the work written in my native language rather than translated.  I never was an enthusiast of 19th century English classics.  I loathed Dickens assignments in school, kept my own with George Eliot's Silas Marner, and found the stuff I had to read by Tennyson less pretentious than the others.  I paced myself at 18 minute intervals through Tess, admired the meticulous depictions of environment and people and finished with a good understanding of why the Americans and every other colony since wanted out from these ethically bankrupt, pompous English aristocracy types whose most important attribute may have been their yichus.  Most would be better described personally as tuchus.  I would not have guessed the ending which may be why toward the end I kept reading after the timer finished its 18 minutes.  Since the estranged husband aspired to become a gentleman farmer in the colonies, I just assumed it would end as Tess of Hooterville.  It didn't.   I don't know if I would have done better or worse if this work were assigned to me.

As I transition from professional whose knowledge served as coin of the realm to retiree who could devote each waking hour to his highest level of amusement, keeping my mind sharp has shown its intrinsic value yet more of a challenge when not forced upon me.  Classes at the Osher Institute of Lifelong Learning have waiting lists, but fortunately not competitive admissions.  The dozen or so contemporaries in my writing class appreciate the value of words and the ideas that they convey.  That method of transmission has been in place forever.  College assignments make access easy.  Voluntarily seeking out the best in written expression comes less easily but may have more enduring value.