A common man marvels at uncommon things. A wise man marvels at the commonplace. CONFUCIUS

Tuesday 27 August 2013

A Lifetime's Literature

I want to say a little more about the incorporation of my blogs Turnstone and Words and Silence within my main blog The Solitary Walker.

Turnstone was a repository for all sorts of extracts and quotations I came across, found memorable, and wanted to record. As I stated in the blog's strapline, it was a home for Shards, Sweepings, Stealings, Sayings, Secrets. Sometimes I would add a short commentary, or a few words of expansion or explanation from my own viewpoint.

Words and Silence was more of a personal and introspective blog, covering subjects such as mysticism, music, the emotional life and . . . dieting! The strapline, rather grandly, was A Journey towards Ecstatic Truth.

Bringing everything back together under the one roof I find an exciting and liberating prospect. And one of my great desires is to widen, deepen and enrich the vein I'd already started to mine in these two satellite blogs. Walking, hiking, pilgrimage, photography, music and my other passions will still predominate. But I want to add another theme, a theme which is the theme of a lifetime, or many lifetimes: the exploration of literature, literature in its widest sense.

The books I choose may be novels or short stories, poetry or play collections, biographies, essays, books on history, natural history, travel, popular science, philosophy, myth or religion. Or whatever I feel like reading, in fact. I'll be led in my choices by a lot of whim and serendipity, but certain sub-themes and connections should emerge.

Why don't you travel along with me? Related posts will necessarily be erratic, but I hope they will be a mainstay of this blog for many years to come. This will be a personal journey of discovery for me, and if it becomes a journey of discovery for others too, then it will be twice-worthwhile.

Pointers towards future posts: I've just finished reading Henry Miller's Stand Still like the Hummingbird and Dark Night of the Soul by St John of the Cross. I'm now looking at The Interior Castle by St Teresa of Ávila and Karen Armstrong's A History of God. If anyone wishes to read any of these texts alongside me, then that would be an added bonus.    

6 comments:

Dominic Rivron said...

I like the "one blog" idea. One never knows what is going to pop up next. Book-reading, recipe, walk, etc.

Anonymous said...

I'm spending quite a bit of time with Teresa and John at the moment in preparation for some study leave (making sense of why they speak so essentially to me in this very different context)- very happy to be part of a conversation about this

Andy

The Weaver of Grass said...

Yes Robert, having just read Dom's comment - please don't leave out those recipes - I have tried one or two and they are always good and also reliable.

Vagabonde said...

It’s exciting to start a new type of blog – well they are your different blogs put into one so it has a new form. I don’t think I’ll read the books you are reading – they look too religious for my non-religious mind (prayer, submission, purification et plus.) Then I have so many books around me that I cannot look at others, although I still buy some. Last week at an estate sale I found a 1970 paperback edition of Hemingway’s In Our time, his first short stories published in France in 1925 before they were published in the US. I finished it last night. Then today I received Wine and War: The French, The Nazis and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure by Donald Kladstrup. In addition this coming week-end is the Decatur Book Festival – a town on the other side of Atlanta. It is one of the largest, if not the largest book festival in the US – and then the week-end after that it is the University Women Book Sale where with thousands of books starting at 50 cents! Temptation, constant temptation… and I usually do not resist if I find books in French.

The Solitary Walker said...

Dominic and Pat (Weaver): the blog won't change all that much except for regularly sporadic stuff on literature and the books I'm reading. The recipes will remain!

Andy (Pilgrimpace): You're on, but it won't be just yet.

Vagabonde: so many books, so many books. There's just not time to read them all. I do like Hemingway, and try to learn from his concision and understatement. And that book about the French Occupation sounds interesting.

Loren said...

I like the idea of all in one blog, too; I do have links to the other blogs but I still tend to miss stuff there whereas I read everything that appears here.