Your book for THIS week

Didn't see that coming did you?  Didn't think I'd finish another book that fast?  How quickly you have forgotten our old friend Søren.  "Part Two: Containing the Papers of B: Letters to A" calls to me.  

Much like Part One, I started out strong.  "The Aesthetic Validity of Marriage" was only about ninety pages, and was a little snipey, which I like, so I was keeping up at that point.  Then there was "Equilibrium between the Aesthetic and the Ethical in the Development of Personality," which seemed (to me) to wander about as much as the title, which I just read three times to try to remind myself of what it was all about.  I think I might have done that "zoning out and thinking I'm reading while actually just turning pages and thinking of tiramisu" thing for awhile there. 

On the other however, "Last Word" was only two pages and starts out with this gem: 

"Perhaps you have the same experience with my previous letters as I have: you have forgotten most of what was in them." (p. 593)

There's a guy who knows me!  Anyway, he introduces the final bit, by yet another "author": "The Edifying in the Thought that Against God We Are Always in the Wrong."  Having just finished some nice C.S. Lewis, I was well prepared to read and understand a little sermon about how freeing it is to give up control to God, so I got ahold of this pretty well, and finished strong!  

All in all, I think "Either/Or: A Fragment of Life" was a little like the Tour de France for all those poor dudes who AREN'T Lance Armstrong.  Lots and lots of miles of uphills and foreign countryside, chasing after some dude whose process you can barely comprehend, interspersed with the occasional coasting downhill or nice French bakery.  It's worth doing, but you know you're not going to win, so you just have to enjoy your croissant while you have it.

Happy New Year!