Souls Belated

Eli Schuster's View:

Synopsis: (1899 short story by Edith Wharton) American lovers Gannett and Lydia settle into a swanky Italian hotel. She doesn't want to get married after her divorce, so the two of them deal with society's disapproval by arguing with each other...over and over again.

What I learned: "Nothing is more perplexing to a man than the mental process of a woman who reasons her emotions."

Memorable Line: "It was the kind of society in which, after dinner, the ladies compared the exobitant charges of their children's teachers, and agreed that, even with the new duties on French clothes, it was cheaper in the end to get everything from Worth; while the husbands, over their cigars, lamented municipal corruption, and decided that the men to start a reform were those who had no private interests at stake."

You Might Like This Book If: you're fascinated by the inner turmoil of the Victorian era fashionable set, and you don't own the Upstairs Downstairs DVD box set.

Worth Considering: "I begin to see what marriage is for. It's to keep people away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between them - children, duties, visits, bores, relations - the things that protect married people from each other."

Meditations of a Solitary Walker

Eli Schuster's View:

Synopsis: (Extract from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Reveries of a Solitary Walker") Feeling increasingly isolated from society, philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (self-described as "the most sensitive of beings") takes a series of long walks to commune with nature and "escape from the horde of evil doers."

What I learned: Rousseau was an intelligent and deeply introspective guy with a huge persecution complex.

Memorable Line: "when death is already at the door, is it worth learning how we should have lived?"

You Might Like This Book If: the world is getting you down, and you don't want to go where everybody knows your name.

Yikes!: "I reached the age of forty, oscillating between poverty and riches, wisdom and error, full of vices born of habit, but with a heart free of evil inclinations, living at random with no rational principles, and careless but not scornful of my duties, of which I was often not fully aware. Since the days of my youth I had fixed on the age of forty as the end of my efforts to succeed, the final term of my various ambitions."

Oopsie-Daisy

Whoa...it's been nearly three months since the last posting. What can I say...I've been busy, and so has Anita. We're going to try to post some new mini book reviews ASAP.

- Eli Schuster