Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges

Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Read this mostly in English. I recommend reading Tlon, Herbert Quain, The Library of Babel, The Garden of Forking Paths (maybe), Funes, and The Secret Miracle. The rest I could have lived without.

1. Tlon (5 stars)- Fantasy about an alien world which is really a commentary about our own.

2. The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim- I can't even rate this one because it went completely over my head. Completely.

3. Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quijote (2 stars)- Interesting idea, but mostly hated reading this story.

4. The Circular Ruins (3.5 stars)- This is a very "La Vida es Sueno" type story. It's lovely though not earth-shattering.

5. The Babylon Lottery/ The Lottery in Babylon (3 stars)- More of the ideas of infinite choices and possibilities expressed in The Library of Babel and The Garden of Forking Paths. This is not my favorite execution of Borges's ideas about possible futures and philosophy.

6. An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain (4 stars)- Another review of a fictional author's work like in "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim." I like that he got to write about super interesting plot lines without actually having to write them. Borges describes a detective story "The God of the Labyrinth" in which the solution given is wrong, but the reader can figure the real solution out from the clues. I also like the idea of "April March," a novel with nine different beginnings going backwards in time.

7. The Library of Babel- (5 stars) Amazing thought experiment/ work of philosophy. (Note: The library in The Magicians anyone?)

8. The Garden of Forking Paths (4 stars)- One of the things that is particularly interesting to me about this story is that its concept of time has been hypothesized by the multiverse theory of physics. The first person to propose information that would later lead to the multiverse theory was Erwin Schrödinger, in 1952, some years after Borges wrote this story.

9. Funes (5 stars)- Love hearing about a completely different way of perceiving, understanding, and analyzing, but in real life memory experts do employ similar tactics to Funes. See eg, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything.

10. The Forms of the Sword (4 stars)- An interesting story about cowardice, Christianity, and shame with a Borges ending. Though I was surprised Borges spelled out the ending so clearly even though it was already clear. He usually trusts his reader more.

11. Theme of the Traitor (3 stars) - Ha! Clever and politically astute.

12. Death and a Compass (3 stars)- Read in Spanish and in English. Erik Lönnrot tries to solve murders which seem to follow a kabbalistic pattern. This one seems to be a favorite as it appears in all three of my Borges anthologies, but it's not one of my favorites. It's tricky and clever but I don't get much more from it.
"... la realidad no tiene la menor obligacion de ser interesante."
"... reality does not have the slightest obligation to be interesting."

13. The Secret Miracle (5 stars)- I read this in Spanish and English. It is my favorite Borges story and it has stayed with me since I first read it in maybe 1998. I love its conception of reality, time, God, purpose, and the ephemerality of our work on Earth.

14. Three Versions of Judas (2 stars) - There's not too much I can say about this one.

15. The End (2 stars)- Just sad and weird.

16. The Sect of the Phoenix (2 stars)- Another not-good one.

17. The South (3 stars)- I read this in Spanish and in English. It's sad and and a strangely normal story for Borges.

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Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald

Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Very thorough and interesting account of all the myriad of things that went wrong at Enron and Arthur Anderson. The culture is very familiar to me from my days in big law.

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20 Poemas de Amor y Una Canción Desesperada by Pablo Neruda

20 poemas de amor y una canción desesperada by Pablo Neruda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this in Spanish, and I generally enjoy Neruda much more in Spanish. The problem here is that good poetry in Spanish is very difficult for me, and I might be missing something significant here. Ideally, I'd read this in both Spanish in English, so I'm off to find an English copy.


Current favorite line, Poema 14:
"Quiero hacer contigo
lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos."

As an aside, he really loves the word "crepúsculo" which mean twilight in English. Crepúsculo crepúsculo crepúsculo.

Here's an online copy of the poems in Spanish if anyone is curious: https://www.poemas-del-alma.com/20-poemas-de-amor.htm.

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Love Poems by Pablo Neruda

Love Poems by Pablo Neruda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this in English and in Spanish, and I wasn't crazy about this collection. I thought the poems were just a little better in Spanish. I especially liked the laughter poems in Spanish better. I find the English easier to understand because I'm more comfortable with it, and the Spanish a bit more musical, but there's not a huge difference in these particular poems for me. Love is a maybe the most difficult topic for poetry, and this just left something missing for me.

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City of Illusions by Ursula K. Le Guin

City of Illusions by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a thousands-of-years-later sequel to Planet of Exile, so I recommend reading that one first, though it's not strictly necessary, as all the Hainish Cycle books stand alone pretty well. The beginning is a pretty straightforward adventure fantasy book with a hero on a quest, but soon becomes more of a puzzle that the reader has to engage with, while simultaneously pondering what constitutes a person's identity.

Le Guin wrote books 3-5 of the Hainish Cycle first: Rocannon's World (1966), Planet of Exile (1966), and City of Illusions (1967). I've read those and the prequel (book 1) The Dispossessed. So far this is my favorite in the Hainish Cycle. I'm going to read The Left Hand of Darkness (book 6) next.

RIP Ursula K. Le Guin. Thank you for all the books.

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Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges

Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Borges writes philosophical fantasy and sometimes mystery stories.

1. Borges and Me/ Borges y Yo (4 stars)- I've read this one in both Spanish and English. I don't prefer a version. It's a simple short story about Borges's identity as a person versus as a writer that I enjoyed.

2. The Garden of Forking Paths (4 stars)- One of the things that is particularly interesting to me about this story is that its concept of time has been hypothesized by the multiverse theory of physics. The first person to propose information that would later lead to the multiverse theory was Erwin Schrödinger, in 1952, some years after Borges wrote this story.

3. Man On Pink Corner (5 stars)- Rosendo Juarez, men and dogs respected him. A fun little murder mystery. Pay close attention!

4. The Library of Babel- (5 stars) Amazing thought experiment/ work of philosophy. (Note: The library in The Magicians anyone?)

5. Death and a Compass/La Muerte y La Brujula (3 stars)- Read in Spanish and in English. Erik Lönnrot tries to solve murders which seem to follow a kabbalistic pattern. This one appears to be a favorite as it appears in all three of my Borges anthologies, but it's not one of my favorites. It's tricky and clever but I don't get much more from it.
"... la realidad no tiene la menor obligacion de ser interesante."
"... reality does not have the slightest obligation to be interesting."

6. The Lottery in Babylon/ The Babylon Lottery (3 stars)- More of the ideas of infinite choices and possibilities expressed in The Garden of Forking Paths and The Library of Babel. This is not my favorite execution of Borges's ideas about possible futures and philosophy.

7. The Maker (3 stars)- Very short, and I didn't get much from it.

8. The Zahir (3 stars)- Whatever this metaphor is I missed it.

9. The Encounter (3 stars)-Knife-control? Didn't love this story either.

10. The Circular Ruins (3.5 stars)- This is a very "La Vida es Sueno" type story. It's lovely though not earth-shattering.

11. Shakespeare's Memory (5 stars)- I love a lot about this story. I love Borges's conception of personhood. I love Shakespeare. I love the way Borges blatantly shows off his literary chops. Like many of his other great stories, you start to inhabit the story as if you are dreaming it and you lose sight of the real world around you.

12. August 25, 1983 (4 stars)- Hello me, it's future you. Don't you have anything useful to tell me? Nope.

13. The Immortal (5 stars)- As above, I am lost in the dream.

14. Parable of Cervantes and the Quixote (3.5 stars)- A bit of a spin on Borges y Yo basically.

15. The Story from Rosendo Juarez (3.5 stars)- Sequel to a Man on a Pink Corner!

16. The Aleph (5 stars)- What a super amazing story of romance. It is an insane work of fantasy. It's an interesting work of spirituality and philosophy. I love the ending. My heart might explode.

17. Dreamtigers (2 stars?)- He really was obsessed with tigers though. It's in almost all the stories.

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The Republic by Plato

The Republic by Plato
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am reading Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World and pausing to read any of the books mentioned that I have not already read. In this case, I had read most of The Republic before but couldn't remember it so I went back and read the whole thing.

Great Books didn't give me a lot of help in analyzing or dealing with The Republic so I listened to a library audiobook course about The Republic. This definitely helped in understanding all the confusing arguments Socrates makes.

Plato describes Socrates engaging in a dialogue with Glaucon and numerous other Athenians and non-citizens about a number of topics. The first part is about justice and it mostly matches up to a modern (even Christian) conception of justice. Justice is not about the force of the powerful. It's about the soul, goodness towards even enemies, and the rights of weak.

The next part is about the perfect society, but not really, because Plato didn't believe in a modern-day Western conception of legal equality based on human rights. To his credit, his perfect society is feminist- women can do whatever men can do except things requiring a lot of physical strength. Unfortunately, his society is also based on eugenics, hierarchy with little opportunity for social movement, communist, and without families. To modern ears his perfect society sounds like the perfect Young Adult Dystopian Novel; a cross between The Giver and Allegiant. According to my audiobook course, this Socrates's conception of the perfect society is the direct result of Athen's recent defeat to Sparta. Many of the aspects are either taken from Spartan society or a "correction" of something in Athenian society that Socrates perceives to be at fault for Athen's loss.

Socrates also wanted philosopher kings. As such, the book is also about Socrates's conception of making philosophy a fixed study in the way that math and geometry have fixed answers. Which is certainly an interesting concept. Philosophy (at least popular philosophy) has moved so far away from that idea that the idea of real answers in ethics and philosophy is very appealing.

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