પુસ્તકો આનંદ

one of the best books I've ever read is the Australian classic, Such is Life (1903) by Joseph Furphy (aka Tom Collins). It's also one of the most - maybe the most - difficult books I've read. It's an Australian classic, true, and it has a deeply Australian flavour, but there's nothing parochial about it. It's a heavy hitter. To my mind, it's up there with any of the classics...it is seriously good literature. 

another book I really like (and actually read around the same time, and for the same course....or maybe it was just relevant to the course but wasn't a prescribed text) is The Story of an African Farm (1883) by Olive Schreiner. It's weird....I don't remember much about the story, I just remember really loving it, and that it celebrated the value of books, which is probably one of the main things I loved about it. 

a writer that I know is one of the greats, but I struggle with, is Thomas Mann. His works are just so long and slow-moving - so ponderous and endlessly digressive, unlike War and Peace, which is very long but surprisingly readable. I think, over time, some books become inaccessible to us, because the modern mind can no longer engage with them. I'm not saying that Thomas Mann was a writer of period pieces - works that are popular in their time but get forgotten because they don't have lasting value. His works are great works of literature // not that I see it - I'm trusting Harold Bloom about it. I like the idea of Mann's The Magic Mountain (1924). Reading Bloom's commentary on it makes me want to read it, because he's so enthusiastic about it, but I've started it before and it didn't hold my interest. I just didn't really enjoy it - didn't get it - didn't see the art in it. It's on my shelf though, and I like having it there. 

that's one of the strange things about collecting books....there's a joy about having the collection that is distinct from the joy of reading all of the books.