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I've been busy with non-reading stuff, mostly work and playing Blue Prince with A (but also I went to Scintillation!) But I do have some books to catch up on.
Nathan the Wise, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, translated by William Taylor. Looking at the Goodreads reviews, it looks like everyone in Germany has to read this for school, while it's much less well-known in the US -- I only learned who Lessing was because of his friendship with Moses Mendelssohn. I knew this was Lessing's plea for toleration between the three Abrahamic religions, but a post on tumblr made me decide to actually read it. Looking at the dramatis personae and seeing that one of the characters was the adopted daughter of a Jew made me concerned about the problematic ways that plot point could go, so I went and spoiled the ending for myself to make sure it would be okay -- the final plot twists take things in a much more interesting direction than I'd been worried about from the setup. The titular character is a bit too much the voice of wisdom (as one would expect from the title) to be the most interesting, but the supporting cast is fascinating.
The Falling Tower, Meg Moseman. A theological thriller about a group of college freshmen, written by a friend of mine from college -- she conveys the college atmosphere both recognizably and warmly, and the story is very page-turn-y. It is modern feminist take on Charles Williams, the lesser-known friend of Lewis and Tolkien, whose work I have not read (The Place of the Lion, about Platonic archetypes showing up in the real world, sounds intriguing, but I also hear it is not as good as its premise), and I'm not sure if I'm more likely to now. It is doing a lot of cool and ambitious worldbuilding stuff, and lets its characters have different relationships to Christianity; the spiritual aspects of the worldbuilding certainly are compatible with Christianity without it being message-y -- this is a story in which growing up in the way that college freshman grow up is more important than finding religion. I hope more people read it so that I can discuss it!
Nathan the Wise, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, translated by William Taylor. Looking at the Goodreads reviews, it looks like everyone in Germany has to read this for school, while it's much less well-known in the US -- I only learned who Lessing was because of his friendship with Moses Mendelssohn. I knew this was Lessing's plea for toleration between the three Abrahamic religions, but a post on tumblr made me decide to actually read it. Looking at the dramatis personae and seeing that one of the characters was the adopted daughter of a Jew made me concerned about the problematic ways that plot point could go, so I went and spoiled the ending for myself to make sure it would be okay -- the final plot twists take things in a much more interesting direction than I'd been worried about from the setup. The titular character is a bit too much the voice of wisdom (as one would expect from the title) to be the most interesting, but the supporting cast is fascinating.
The Falling Tower, Meg Moseman. A theological thriller about a group of college freshmen, written by a friend of mine from college -- she conveys the college atmosphere both recognizably and warmly, and the story is very page-turn-y. It is modern feminist take on Charles Williams, the lesser-known friend of Lewis and Tolkien, whose work I have not read (The Place of the Lion, about Platonic archetypes showing up in the real world, sounds intriguing, but I also hear it is not as good as its premise), and I'm not sure if I'm more likely to now. It is doing a lot of cool and ambitious worldbuilding stuff, and lets its characters have different relationships to Christianity; the spiritual aspects of the worldbuilding certainly are compatible with Christianity without it being message-y -- this is a story in which growing up in the way that college freshman grow up is more important than finding religion. I hope more people read it so that I can discuss it!
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Date: 19 Jun 2025 09:01 (UTC)no subject
Date: 19 Jun 2025 11:37 (UTC)no subject
Date: 19 Jun 2025 15:00 (UTC)no subject
Date: 20 Jun 2025 12:11 (UTC)How wonderful that you got to be a part of your friend's journey in that way.
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Date: 19 Jun 2025 13:07 (UTC)no subject
Date: 19 Jun 2025 14:42 (UTC)no subject
Date: 19 Jun 2025 15:22 (UTC)Nathan the Wise does get staged now and then but in general regarded as a Lesedrama, i.e. written to be read more than to be staged (as opposed to Lessing’s other two most famous plays, definitely written to be staged, i.e. Minna von Barnhelm and Emilia Galotti. So who intrigued you most among the supporting cast?
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Date: 19 Jun 2025 16:29 (UTC)no subject
Date: 23 Jun 2025 09:50 (UTC)I read it because an actor of interest to me—Ernst Deutch—became heavily identified with the role in post-war German theater, performing it for more than a decade in the '50's and '60's. It definitely ends its adoption plotline better than La Juive.
It is modern feminist take on Charles Williams, the lesser-known friend of Lewis and Tolkien
Thank you so much for the heads-up that this book exists, because I have read Charles Williams and a feminist take on his metaphysics would be fascinating and it sounds like it is.
(The Place of the Lion did not take its premise in any of the directions which I would have wanted, but then its author's theology does not run in any of the directions which I believe in, which may have been an impediment.)