summer reading wrap-up

My summer reading list was a cross-section of texts I've been anticipating for quite some time. Among the many false starts (failed attempts at reading Joyce's Ulysses, Jean-Luc Marion's God Without Being, and Ernst Bloch's Atheism in Christianity: texts which will no doubt be attempted again), I actually did finish reading a few books that were on my list.

For me, summer reading projects are always more successful when others readers are involved. I was part of reading group for Dante's Divine Comedy (something I've tried and failed at reading in the past), which led to a series of posts on the Inferno, Purgatorio, and some reflections on Milton.

I finally got around to reading Violence by Slavoj Zizek. Thoroughly enjoyable, not least for passages like this: "The characterization of Hitler which would have him as a bad guy, responsible for the dead of millions but nonetheless a man with balls who pursued his ends with an iron will, is not only ethically repulsive, it is also simply wrong: no, Hitler did not "have the balls" really to change things. All his actions were fundamentally reactions: he acted so that nothing would really change; he acted to prevent the communist threat of real change. His targeting of the Jews was ultimately an act of displacement in which he avoided the real enemy -- the core of capitalist social relations themselves. Hitler staged a spectacle of revolution so that the capitalist order could survive."

I did some proofreading at my previous job and was therefore given the opportunity to read through The Gift of Difference: Radical Orthodoxy, Radical Reformation, edited by Chris K. Huebner and Tripp York.

Finally, two days ago I finished Moby Dick, which is quickly climbing the list of my favourite novels. Today, by happy coincidence, Brad Johnson over at AUFS, posted a link to a PDF download of his dissertation entitled, The Characteristic Theology of Herman Melville: Aesthetics, Politics, Duplicity.

But now I must begin reading for my courses. To work!