Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer...

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Lo these many years ago, after my grandma died, I helped sort out her bookshelves, which held books all the way back from her book-loving aunts and uncles in the early 1900s. As I was at the time in a graduate program, staring down a Ph.D. thesis set roughly in that era, I took a few books that seemed representative, including George Barr McCutcheon’s The Alternative, as McCutcheon was a famous Hoosier humorist of the time period.

So was Booth Tarkington, whose work is still very funny, so I approached McCutcheon’s book with high hopes. However, this is perhaps not the place to start with McCutcheon, as it’s a bit of weightless romantic Christmas fluff that barely cracks one hundred pages despite largish type and beautiful green leafy borders around each page.

Beautifully printed, though. I might keep it just as a lovely example of the printer’s trade.

I’m not usually a bit audiobook person, but when troisoiseaux told me that Michael Schur (showrunner for, among other things, The Good Place) read his own audiobook WITH THE CAST OF THE GOOD PLACE, of course I had to listen to it. A fun romp through the history of moral philosophy, focusing most heavily on Aristotelian virtue ethics, utilitarianism, and Kant.

Schur is good at amusing descriptions of different moral approaches to problems, but less strong when he wanders off the beaten path to discuss, say, what moral philosophy has to say about engaging with the art of terrible people (or chicken sandwiches made by chicken sandwich companies with politics you abhor, etc.). He ultimately comes down on the side of “I guess you gotta decide for yourself,” which isn’t really guidance, especially after he’s just run through why he thinks virtue ethics, utilitarianism, and Kant’s Categorical Imperative suggest that you should give up that literal or metaphorical chicken sandwich. Have some guts, man! Either stand by your moral reasoning, or offer a counterargument why actually it’s FINE if we all chow down on some Chik-Fil-A.

What I’m Reading Now

Padraic Colum’s The Big Tree of Bunlahy: Stories of My Own Countryside. Colum won a couple of other Newbery Honors, both of which I felt were dry and dull, but apparently all Colum needed was the inspiration of writing about his very own corner of Ireland to blossom into a fascinating storyteller. I’m doling the book out one tale a night and it’s still going to end far too soon.

What I Plan to Read Next

Evelina has arrived!