5.22.2011

Reading (Zizeck) for Pleasure

I didn't read anything for fun for six years, the six years that happened to coincide with having to read 200 - 400 pages a week of dense academic prose (most of it in French during the latter few years). Now that I'm back in civilian life and I take public transportation every day, I am all about reading for fun. Fun includes the following so far:

  1. The entire Jim Butcher Furies of Calderon series (good fantasy.)
  2. The two amazing novels by Patrick Rothfuss.
  3. The Stupidest Angel and A Dirty Job by Chris Moore.
  4. Zizeck! I'm reading Living in the End Times right now and it's just chock full of radical theoretical giggles. Zizeck is a particularly interesting case for me, because most of the people I studied in grad school loved to read philosophy; they were philosophers who really sincerely enjoyed reading Hegel (which is about as much fun, IMHO, as taking a screwdriver to the soft tissue under your knee cap.) Zizeck is probably the first time I've really enjoyed reading philosophy. Even my dissertation work on Gorz wasn't like this; I liked and admired Gorz as a thinker, but it was still work getting through his stuff. Zizeck is like philosophy candy.
So now you know about that.

No comments: