something substantial?

Maybe you haven't noticed, but I am lacking (slacking?) in substantial writing on this blog. I've been putting up a lot of pictures lately but not felt like writing here (although I've had lots to say on my art history blog). Maybe it's the laziness that comes with summer. I don't know. Anyhow, I thought I'd write down a couple snippets of half-baked thoughts. Hopefully the combination of a few snippets will end up being a substantial post.

I finished reading John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress last month. I'm glad that I read it, especially since this book has been so influential for other works of literature, film, etc. (Case in point: just yesterday I opened a George Eliot novel that alluded to Bunyan's city of Destruction.)

However, I have to admit: some of the conversations between Christian and Hope are really dry and boring. I felt like I got only a few more insights from reading the original book than from the children's version of the story that I read as a girl. My recommendation to others: read the children's version first, and then decide if you want to brave Bunyan's tedious conversations and rather awkward poetry verses in the original story.

I'm still reading The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed. It's a pretty dense book (literally and figuratively), so it's taking me a while to get through it. I found out the other week that this book was picked as the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for History. Boy, do I feel current and with-it. That never happens with me in regards to books. I'm always reading something that was published 100+ years ago, or else I think I'm reading a "recent" novel, only to find out that that it was published in the '90s.

Anyhow, this book is really interesting - it revolves around Thomas Jefferson's long-term relationship with Sally Hemings (his slave). I'll have more things to write about this book when it's finished, but I'll just write one thing that has struck me: I never realized that even though some Founding Fathers were abolitionists, they were still racists. Gordon-Reed brings up the example of the Adams family members, who opposed slavery yet were characteristically racist in their 18th century mentality (p. 195-97). For some reason, I guess I assumed that racism and abolition were mutually exclusive, but it makes sense that they aren't.

Another random thought: I couldn't sleep the other night because I was thinking about the Dewey Decimal System. (The strangest thoughts keep me awake at night.) I know that books are placed on the shelf from left to right, in order of the increasing decimal number. I wonder if the left to right order was established because English is read from left to right. But what if the Dewey Decimal System was used in another country where one reads from right to left? Or from top to bottom? Would books be shelved in those directions? Part of me doubts that is/would be the case, but I had a fun time thinking about Chinese libraries with their books shelved from top to bottom. (And then what would those bookcases even look like?)

And my final thought is on male harpists. I realized last night that men don't play the harp. (Does anyone here know a male harpist personally?) Anyhow, I researched male harpists this morning and found out that Harpo Marx got his nickname because he played the harp. He was self-taught and was an amazing jazz harpist. You can see a clip of him playing here:



Pretty fun, huh?