Back to being a little ahead again!
Quick review on this week's readings:
Feb 26 Preface to Cromwell by Hugo: 2/5 The assorted contradictions (perfection of pastoralism vs truth of Christianity) here are interesting to think about, but overall not a particularly interesting or well written piece.
Feb 27 Assorted Poems by Longfellow: 5/5 I think this is the first 5/5 I've given, and it's to poems. Just goes to show strong writing is still great, even if its outside your normal genre.
Feb 28 “On The Institution and Education of Children” by Montaigne: 2/5 We had another education piece on Wednesday. Like a lot of the other essays (particularly by the French writers) I don't necessarily disagree with most of this, I just didn't need to read an essay so long on speculation and short on actual points.
Feb 29 From Hermann and Dorothea by Goethe: 2/5 Passable "my dad doesn't want me to marry you" story. We get mostly the end, and I'd like to have seen more of the middle. Interesting dialogue
Mar 1 “The Spectator Club” by Richard Steele: 3/5 I'm more interested in reading some of the later Spectator pieces than this one, but I can respect the desire to grab an introduction.
Mar 2 From Two Years Before The Mast by Dana: 4/5 I'm still amused that the first excerpt we get here has them off the ship for 90% of it, but a good piece overall.
Mar 3 From Life of George Herbert by Walton: 1/5 Poorly written and uninformative biography.
Weekly Average: 2.7 Pretty average week overall. Not to repeat last week's summary, but I don't really get a lot of Elliot's selections here. Hermann and Dorothea, "The Spectator Club", and Two Years Before The Mast feel like odd excerpts to pull out, and Life of George Herbert is a bit like like picking Measure for Measure as the only Shakespeare in a collection.
Overall Thoughts on The Project:
The best part of any reading list is getting to find pieces you wouldn't normally read, but wind up enjoying. Second is giving you an excuse to read something that you've wanted to for a while, but never got around to. This week had both with Longfellow and The Spectator in the first category, and Two Years Before The Mast in the second. This is the second or third time a poem selection has surprised me in T5FSOB, and I'm glad I'm getting a chance to appreciate poetry a bit more, and to start to identify what I like (and why I dislike so much poetry). On the whole, I think it comes down to both subject and format. So much poetry is just overwrought and cliche. Great, you love X a lot. We get it. No one else has ever loved something as much as your love X. Mmmhmmm. Combined with shoehorning in words that don't really fit to match rhyme or meter schemes that make them awkward to read, and it's not a fun experience. When we get poems with more interesting/aspirational content, and either a looser pattern (or just make better use of the existing one) I enjoy them more. It's interesting, since I broadly like the use of limitations in art (found footage/epistolary, rough pencil sketches, etc.) but the rules for poetry generally don't seem to pay off.
It occurred to me this week that I never really explained my scoring system. In truth, I don't think I ever really thought it through myself. Moving forward, I'm going to attempt to calibrate it as follows.
1/5: Should not have been included in T5FSOB in the first place. Poorly written, not particularly intellectually stimulating, historically unimportant.
2/5: Valid for inclusion in T5FSOB but not a good selection for the reading list. Might be a poorly chosen excerpt from a stronger piece, or an okay piece that has value but not in the top 20% or so that a piece (by napkin math) should be to get into the reading guide.
3/5: A passable choice for the reading guide. Well enough written, and at least somewhat historic or thought provoking. While not spectacular in and of itself, suitable as a starting point to discover other pieces or start thinking about a subject.
4/5: Actually good. A selection that works without needing other pieces to prop it up. Writing quality is decent, and it has some sort of critical/educational value.
5/5: The best of the best. Something that immediately prompts me to want to find more on the subject/author or otherwise changes my perspective on life.
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