Murtaza, can’t say enough about how much I have enjoyed your book selection and thoughts over the years ever since I found your takes on Goodreads. Bookmarked just now a lot of these.
Two questions for you — what have you thought of William Dalrymple’s travelogues and musings on the Indian subcontinent?
Also curious if you’ve had nietzsche’s critique of the ‘idle reader’ in mind when thinking about the ideal balance made up of reading in one’s life? It’s one that I admittedly felt personally attacked by when I first encountered lol but have over time began to understand the thrust of its argument. There’s certainly something to be said about excessive time spent in passive taking in of media (even reading no matter its literary merit) if it takes away from one’s ability to more actively engage in the world, since there is no substitute for the latter.
I think maybe there’s a healthy balance between more experiential practice and more passive engagement via reading/lectures etc, one suffers through that balance being skewed in one direction or the other.
It reminds me a bit of the symbolic interpretation of heaven vs earth as expressed by someone like Jonathan Pageau, that reading can be sort of like receiving a pattern from ‘heaven’ (something like a Platonic form of sorts that undergirds how the world works) but that that pattern is useless unless it is embodied by us actively within the world which come with our engagement and experience in general w/ the latter through quotidian and nonglamorous work and communion w/ our fellow man. Hopefully that makes sense a little and doesn’t come off as too abstract :)
Love your selections, curious what else didn’t make the post. I’m also thinking I’ll try to read less. I realized I read 70 books this year, which seems excessive.
Can I send you a gift copy of a new book from our imprint for you to read in 2024? The Prophet's Pulpit: Commentaries on the State of Islam https://a.co/d/ilxWLhR
Murtaza, can’t say enough about how much I have enjoyed your book selection and thoughts over the years ever since I found your takes on Goodreads. Bookmarked just now a lot of these.
Two questions for you — what have you thought of William Dalrymple’s travelogues and musings on the Indian subcontinent?
Also curious if you’ve had nietzsche’s critique of the ‘idle reader’ in mind when thinking about the ideal balance made up of reading in one’s life? It’s one that I admittedly felt personally attacked by when I first encountered lol but have over time began to understand the thrust of its argument. There’s certainly something to be said about excessive time spent in passive taking in of media (even reading no matter its literary merit) if it takes away from one’s ability to more actively engage in the world, since there is no substitute for the latter.
I think maybe there’s a healthy balance between more experiential practice and more passive engagement via reading/lectures etc, one suffers through that balance being skewed in one direction or the other.
It reminds me a bit of the symbolic interpretation of heaven vs earth as expressed by someone like Jonathan Pageau, that reading can be sort of like receiving a pattern from ‘heaven’ (something like a Platonic form of sorts that undergirds how the world works) but that that pattern is useless unless it is embodied by us actively within the world which come with our engagement and experience in general w/ the latter through quotidian and nonglamorous work and communion w/ our fellow man. Hopefully that makes sense a little and doesn’t come off as too abstract :)
Love your selections, curious what else didn’t make the post. I’m also thinking I’ll try to read less. I realized I read 70 books this year, which seems excessive.
Can I send you a gift copy of a new book from our imprint for you to read in 2024? The Prophet's Pulpit: Commentaries on the State of Islam https://a.co/d/ilxWLhR