I am only beginning the climb up Climbing Parnassus by Tracy Lee Simmons. I will have to keep a vocabulary list in the back of the book, but that often happens for me. I think of myself as a person with a decent vocabulary, but I am finding that it is actually very limited. So, one of my self-education goals is to keep learning new words (thus A.Word.A.Day in my inbox each day, and scribbles on the back pages of my current read.)
Some favorite quotes from Parnassus thus far:
"...We ought not to shy away from confronting views of former ages simply because they don't conform to current notions, for doing so exposes us to the most blinding of parochialisms: the glaring assumption that one's own time, particularly our own with all its hypersensitivities, is always right."
"Even if all one has gained from a classical education were to be forgotten in later life, anyone trained, at least for a time, to view the world as the Greeks and Romans saw it may learn to ask pregnant questions. And even if the ancient answers be rejected, the student - of whatever age - will know what they are, and approach his own world with freshened vision, one no longer blinkered by ideology and the reigning fashion. He would have a liberal, because liberating, education indeed. No longer would he be imprisoned exclusively within the velvet walls of his own world's preoccupations and fetishes. No longer would he be just and only a child of his time. (emphasis mine)
One of the books I chose was The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Amanda at Wittingshire answered my, "Tell me what you like about Dorian Gray" question at her blog - here. She's got some great things to say (as always.)
Two books added recently are Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer's Life by Bret Lott and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. They will be great companions on vacation - which starts FRIDAY!!!
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