planavorel
It might have happened. I might have reached the stage of having too many reading projects. I say this because, as I worked through my morning books before starting the work day, nothing seemed like it was part of or in service of anything. While I was mildly amused by some of the books, a fat biography of Spinoza or a slim history of Hapsburgs looked more appealing than Bayle and the Federalists; even Marx was at his most tedious, with department I and department II and hardly any imprecations against Adam Smith and Ricardo to be found (poor old Say hasn’t shown up for pages). Then, sitting back, I recalled that I was (am) reading selections of Bayle for context on his entry on Spinoza; that the Federalists are part of a broader look at Enlightenment thought (as the carbohydrate layer of a triple-decker philosophical sandwich, but one cannot blame Madison for being starchy); and that Marx, well, does sometimes like to pretend an acquaintance with mathematics, when he is better at polemics. 1 Having managed to enmesh myself in the tangle of my projects once again, I read on with equanimity, if not quite with pleasure.
- The current volume of history is background information to further background information on the Napoleon wars that I wanted to read before finally getting back on track with Tolstoy (I have been planning to read his works chronologically, which I might have mentioned, but I have reached War and Peace (or would have reached it, probably more than a year ago) and wanted more background, even if it is a historical novel and even if Tolstoy is not particularly bothered by questions of historical accuracy) as well as for Marx, but I wanted to know more about the Holy Roman Empire and so had to read a book about that first.[↩]