Read read read

Yep...I spent the Holiday reading...finished up The Rule of Four, and then read Introducing Sartre.

I had been eyeing The Rule of Four ever since reading The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons. Got it for Xmas, and took the long weekend to tackle it. It gets a thumbs up from me...though the end is reminiscent of my problems with the Deat Poet's Society. To the protagonist...all I can say is, "tough break...now get on with your life, you sorry piss of shit." Bad/sad things happen to lots of people, how come characters in books seem so weak and can't move on like everyone else in the world?

Introducing Sartre was my first stab at looking at existentialism. Boy was he a pessimistic guy. Don't think that he and I would have spoken much at the local coffee shop had we crossed paths. (Okay...he died when I was 10, so highly unlikely.) And I have to agree with d'Estaing that Sartre would never have been able to write what he wrote had he been born into and lived in a true Socialistic/Marxist society that he idolized. Funny how he (and others like him) never moved to these *promised* lands.

I need to finish The Confusion (> halfway complete) and then The System of the World before I tackle another philosopher.