When the sun is suddenly very hot and the sky is now a blinding blue, it’s hard to go into the study and work on the PC. It seems rather a waste! So I have been busy with other things. The last day or so was spent in buying and setting up a mobile air-conditioning unit for a member of my family. I shall spend this Friday driving around the countryside and the roads, taking a friend to see my mother. We’ve meant to do this for years. In this sort of weather it is good to be in the air-conditioned car with the open road ahead.
I do need to return to collating the text of John the Deacon’s Life of St Nicholas, but not today. I have three early editions and nine manuscripts open, in PDF, in Acrobat. Each one is positioned at my current location. I have bookmarked each chapter as I reach it. But I’m becoming a little frustrated at the way that Adobe Acrobat Pro 9 tends to simply crash if left open for long enough. For of course, when Acrobat crashes, I have to reopen them all, and then tediously find the exact position again. To avoid doing this, I tend to put the PC to sleep at night, rather than shutting down. But after a day or three I tend to find that Acrobat has mysteriously vanished. It’s usable, but could be better. But all this really feels like a winter task.
Meanwhile I’m getting a fair bit of email correspondence, and doing my best to keep current. Some of it relates to rather old posts, or material that I put online more than twenty years ago! It’s good to see that it still has value.
A little while ago I ordered a cheap second-hand copy of Paula Skreslet’s The Literature of Islam: A Guide to the Primary Sources In English Translation. This has resided on my breakfast table since, and I am slowly working through it. It is really a very good guide to early Islamic literature and where to find it in English. Indeed it comes down to modern times also, complete with Muslim Brotherhood material, although that lies outside my interests. It also gives useful information about Islam itself. I had not realised that the Koran is only part of the source material for Islamic doctrine. The life of Mohammed himself is, apparently, an example to be followed, as recorded in all sorts of sources, and transmitted from one identified person to another. It is frustrating that such a useful source is not online. Fortunately it is in print, for $38 for a paperback – although $64 for kindle (!!!).
Trying to read this at breakfast led to the unwelcome discovery that I badly needed new reading glasses. Like most of us, I have worn glasses since the age of ten. While working as a computer programmer I used to have two or three screens side by side. This arrangement makes varifocals useless. It was far better to get a very cheap pair of prescription computer glasses, for a few dollars, and just leave them by my terminal. Indeed I got half a dozen and scattered them around the house, in my car, and in my suitcase. They have served me well. But sadly they are done; and I bought the first new set – again cheaply – last week. I wear them as I type. I shall order more.
Another second-hand book that I ordered, for a shamefully small sum, was a biography of Ritchie Blackmore, the Deep Purple guitarist. I thought this might be interesting to read once, after seeing a quotation from it, and a hardback was cheaper, by a fluke, than a kindle download. This was advertised with free postage, and even a small complimentary box of decaffeinated tea! I’ve not read it yet, so it too sits on my table at breakfast, until I have finished with Skreslet’s book.
I saw online yesterday a claim that academics never read books; they only read the opening portion, and the conclusion. I wonder if that is true?
“I saw online yesterday a claim that academics never read books; they only read the opening portion, and the conclusion. I wonder if that is true?”
Second-hand books bear witness to this: very often you only find marks in the introduction and first chapter. An item description I just took at random from Amazon reads “Hard cover, first edition. Has underlining and marginal notes in the first 40 pages, otherwise Good condition with no dust jacket, as issued.”
Hahaha! That’s a very good point. I think C.S.Lewis mentions a similar find in a book once owned by a prominent scholar who written articles about the book: “Thus far into the land, and no further.”
I have caught myself quoting papers and books I have only read in excerpts. Of the 100 or so bibliographical entries I cited for my thesis I have read completely only a dozen or so. Even that is generous estimation.
It is a bit sad, but time is finite, labour immense and writing often riddled with unnecessary fluff.
In fairness the content of a lot of books and articles is merely detail backing up the conclusion. Unless you need that detail, then so long as you know that it is there, why bother?
Mr. Pearse, May I ask: Was it this one? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Knight-Ritchie-Blackmore-2006-09-04/dp/B01K3L5HPI/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2TJJEJIDMCA8P&keywords=ritchie+blackmore&qid=1686711173&sprefix=rithie+blackmore%2Caps%2C232&sr=8-1
Interesting man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqaBG3pv_K0 Dr. C.R. Golightly
Yes, that’s the one. An intelligent man who knows what he’s doing, Ithink.
Not true, unless it is clear after reading the opening portion that the rest will not be worth bothering with. (And even then one has to read on to the bitter end if one’s been asked to review it.) It is, however, true that some books may be read selectively, i.e. reading only those sections that are relevant to one’s immediate purpose. Then they can sit on the shelves, and perhaps in twenty years one might need the other bits.
I have a feeling that the saying originally referred to undergraduates.