A few book reviews.
The first one is By the Sword. It's a history of the sword mostly from a western fencing point of view. Richard Cohen has delightful prose and freely admits when he doesn't fully understand something. In fact, he references James E. Gordon's New Science of Strong Materials, another wonderful book (and brilliant author) but not what I wanted to talk about. Back to By the Sword.He exposes a lot of the misconceptions inherent in classical sword fighting and a few facts, like a lot of The Three Musketeers is based on fact. Ignatious of Loyola (the founder of the Jesuits) was an avid fencer, among many others. All in all the book is amazing (I keep interrupting my wife's sleep with little tidbits). The only thing that annoys me once in a while is the absolute lack of strict timeline. Mr. Cohen places more emphasis on finishing a story than keeping a historical progression going. I highly recommend it.
The other book is Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. This is a collection of informal talks given by Shunryu Suzuki. Since he wasn't planning on having any of this saved for posterity, these essays have a wonderful laid back quality. There's no doubt that Suzuki-zenji was an absolute master. He speaks on a full range of subjects related to zazen and Zen mindset. Each chapter is a single talk, so there's a feeling of continuity. The chapters are arranged by three broad categories, which helps the organization. The preface is by Huston Smith, someone I personally respect, but the actual writings are even better than all of the scholarly achievments. The drawing of a fly in the absolute center of the book (in hte middle of an essay) almost springs enlightenment on you. Sean, don't worry about going out to find it, I owe you a good, long loan; and it happens to be a book on Zen, what kismet.
An interesting site on western swordplay:
Association for Renaissance Martial Arts
So tell me, what have you been reading?
posted by dementia at 7:14 PM
2 Comments:
Um...I read _Orlando Bloom Has Ruined Everything_. It's a Foxtrot book. It was funny, I think. I remember laughing, but WHY WON'T THIS CREATURE LET ME SLEEP? WHY?! WHY?!?
I will say, though, that the excerpts of the sword book which have been read to me were quite interesting.
Sort of a follow up: I admit it, I didn't finish reading the Sword book before I took it back. There's a reason: I don't care about modern sport fencing. I don't care about the greats through the 20th century. Maybe I'm shallow, but I just don't care.
The Zen book is still cool.
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