Date: Mon, 11 May 98 10:25:59 EDT
From: Sarah Khan <sfatima-AT-clam.rutgers.edu>
Subject: the books we read


Hey guys what do you think? This is totally off topic- but I think it's a
human issue.

I think when we read a book- all we get is a literary experience- the
author's interpretion of the facts and you're forever lost in his
exposition and only if you're lucky you can salvage what the subject
really means.

I think a better way of learning from long books treating a subject- full of
the authors personality strangling you is gulping down handbooks. You have
the different facts in balance and you can interpret them directly- using
the inherent "pointing to truth" ability every human possesses. Besides
starting to learn the vocabulary of a subject (as handbooks have
vocabulary) it opens up the whole subject much faster than being a passive
observer of some author's interpretation.

I know authors can go seriously wrong while interpreting a subject and
confuse you even more- when it doesn't connect to what you know about the
world-  because I write email about my world and I seriously go wrong all
the time. And if people thought I was a moral authority and they were
prone to error instead they would all be committing suicide-because no
one's inherent truth gauze could get them to conform to what I was
writing.

Also notice how authors are very zealous about their subjects and are
extremely critical of some anonymous "people out there" who do "certain bad
things"- that actually shows more about the author's state of mind than the
truth out there- it just shows the author is some bitter, skeptical dude who
you really wouldn't want to be around. Because wouldn't you think if they
were happy loving authors they would have interpreted the world in a happy
loving way? Like if I was happy and loving I would be writing here, "oh books
are lovely to read- such marvelous intellectual coquetry I swear" rather than
"these guys have problems" like I am now?

from,
Sarah