Out of my books

Charles Trenet, French entertainer, commemorated at Aire de Narbonne-Vinassan.

So I began with Memoires d'un cure de France, and when I'd read a chapter or two I moved on to Scott's first big poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel. Then I read all the rest of Ken Edwards' marvellous eight + six, began it again, began Scott's poem again, meanwhile "soldiering on" with the Life of Bonaparte (now back in Paris after his Palestinian troubles) .. Meantime I had acquired some books in Spanish. I had a look at a book on animal behaviour, and now I'm reading about Heidegger Arendt and Jaspers in Mark Lilla's Pensadores temerarios, i.e. Reckless Thinkers.

[Mark Lilla's pro-capitalist liberalism is an excellent vehicle for his discussions of old philosophers, in part because its broad but limited point of view makes for a smooth uncomplicated narrative of highly abstruse people. Its limited insight on other topics can be sampled in this fine current essay, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, about the white president:

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/537909/?t=1&cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw%3D%3D&refsrc=email&iid=6960bdd253a441bab39d3fe79de8ea80&uid=262558974&nid=244+272699400

]