For those, like me, who begin to feel physically ill at the thought of spending time over the summer in nightclubs and at rock concerts, the supreme joy of the summer months is the chance to catch up on reading. Unfortunately, I have been forced recently to spend most of my time buried in preparatory materials for certain standardized tests. Every time I glance at another book that strikes my interest, I begin to feel a gnawing guilt over my forced neglect of it. I hope for the rest of you that summer affords ample opportunity for wide and deep reading. To that end, there are several books I have read in the past year or so that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in their subjects. This is a purely self-indulgent selection, so I apologize in advance.
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter. I picked this tome up from the library on the advice of a friend of mine. It is a work that defies most attempts at summary, so I will use the author’s own statement: “GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter. What is a self, and how can a self come out of stuff that is as selfless as a stone or a puddle?” In exploring the topic of the emergence of consciousness, he draws attention to the themes of recursion and self-reference in the works of Bach and Escher, and the more arcane (to me) mathematical logic of Kurt Gödel. It is these portions of the book that are the most edifying and entertaining. There are aspects of Hofstadter’s style and carefully designed interludes of dialogue that I found to be a bit over the top and idiosyncratic, but overall this book was a work of scientific and philosophical speculation of the best kind.
Peaks and Lamas, by Marco Pallis. I found this book through references made to it in the books and letters of the famous scholar Ananda Coomaraswamy. Luckily, our university has an old and worn-out copy of it in McKeldin Library. The book was published in 1939 and is structured as a travel narrative. The author spent considerable time traveling and mountaineering in northeast India, especially the heavily Tibetan-influenced region of Ladakh. In addition to a wonderful summary of the fundamentals of Buddhism, the author describes the traditional artistic techniques and craftsmanship of the inhabitants of this region. It is also an amazingly prescient work – Pallis aptly perceived the threat to traditional Tibetan culture and religion before the Chinese revolution had even occurred.
Wuthering Heights, by Emily BrontÃ. I’m sure many of you have had to read this novel at some point in a literature class. I did in 10th grade. I never got to it then, and so I had to rely on one of those terrible online summaries instead. Like “The Telltale Heart,” this fact has driven me nearly mad ever since. If you are reading this, Mrs. Bussart-Walker, I am deeply sorry for my deception. In any case, I was able to redeem myself earlier this year when I read the book. I was doubly ashamed of my earlier delinquency because the novel is so excellent. There is obviously very little of value I can put forth about it critically. I will simply say that it is a masterpiece of storytelling, setting and character.
Our Culture, What’s Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses, by Theodore Dalrymple. This is a collection of essays by British psychiatrist Anthony Daniels, under the aforementioned nom de plume. There are few books that have altered my worldview as much as this one. The range of Dr. Dalrymple’s travel and interests is staggering. He uses the most lucid possible prose in descriptions of his experiences as a prison psychiatrist in an English city. He also presents us with criticism of art and literature joyfully devoid of the noxious jargon that tends to permeate most of this form of writing. His treatment of Shakespeare made a permanent convert of me. Nearly every sentence is pregnant with original insight into the human condition.
Goutham Ganesan is a senior biochemistry and chemistry major. He can be reached at goutham.ganesan@gmail.com.
