Jastrow Online

Over the past few days I have been obsessively going through the free downloads on Google Books. In general, I am a huge fan of the Google Books project - it is a dream of mine that I could do complete library research (with downloading and printing) while sitting at home (preferably in pajamas).

Google has been trying to scan books into their online engines; personally, were I a man with power (=money/elected office), I'd make a law to have every new book loaded online into the Library of Congress. Not scanned - like the googlers - but the actual text: since every book passes through a word processor at one point, this shouldn't be so hard.

Yeah, I know, Napster has killed popular music (note, it hasn't as far as I can tell), so Google Books will kill books. Bull-sheisse. Every author I know (including myself), while they naturally like money, like fame even more. And if a book is available to EVERYBODY at all times, like it would if it were online, then fame is as rapid as a key-word search.

Ahem. Anyway, Google, as part of their book project, has been scanning into downloadable PDFs as many books as they can that have lost their copyright. Which means many century, or more, books are now free for the taking. This includes a lot of Judaica, and that's what I've been plundering over the past few days.

One of the best finds? One half of the famed Jastrow Talmud dictionary is online, free to download: Jastrow: A Dictionary of the Targumim,etc. vol. 2

Volume 1 is still missing as a bulk download (but each page of the original is available here - but grabbing it page-by-page is too arduous for even this obsessive).

John Updike, Dead at 76

The obituary: from the New York Times

Update: From Sullivan, a set of links of online works by Updike:

1. Atlantic
2. The New Yorker
3. New York Review of Books
4. The New Republic
   

Book Widget

One thing I would love to design for online use: a book widget where I could enter in a set of ISBN numbers and the widget would search out where to buy them all at the cheapest prices - taking into account the different shipping policies of different sites. Some places have free shipping (like here, yay!) and most have discounts for multiple purchases from the same shipper. When I learn to program, this is the first project.

For Dummies

I really can't stand the title conceit for the "_ for Dummies" book. I guess it was cute for the first 15 minutes, and maybe it still helps give people a good shot of modesty. But, yeah, really? It's just insulting. And there have been some good authors who write these books and yet who can read a book that says "Judaism for Dummies/Complete Idiots."

An example of the absurdity of the Dummies books is this one: "Endometriosis For Dummies" Let's be serious here: how many people are not, uh, "dummies" when it comes to this topic? I have no idea what it is, and I'll be damned if I'll let an arrogant yellow book call me stupid.

Update: It can also lead to some VERY insulting titles, like this here "Alzheimer's for Dummies" or "Baby Names for Dummies" (e.g. my favorite? Moron P. Mouthbreather III) or its followup "Infertility for Dummies" (doesn't that just break the ice for a crushing emotional burden? "Here ya go dummies... kinda glad you can't breed!")

Dwight Macdonald

I stumbled across this book review by Dwight Macdonald - who was described as a "critic's critic" - or something like that. Since (a) I'd never heard of this influential man of letters from the 40s and 50s and (b) I aspire to me a critic's critic's critic, I felt I should read more of the dude. I came across this essay, his evisceration of an attempt to create a definitive Great Books collection: "The Book-of-the-Millennium Club."

So, as a long delayed student of Master Dwight, I have to say that this guy is one-thousand percent spot on. I have spent many years trying to understand Greek philosophy (and only so I can try to understand Maimonides) and Macdonald gets the problem with books about the Ancient Smartguys correct:

A fifth of the volumes are all but impenetrable to the lay reader, or at least to this lay reader -- the four devoted to Aristotle and Aquinas and the six of scientific treatises, ranging from Hippocrates to Faraday. "There is a sense in which every great book is always over the head of the reader," airily writes [series editor] Dr. Hutchins. "He can never fully comprehend it. That is why the books in this set are infinitely rereadable." I found these ten volumes infinitely unreadable.

There is a difference between not fully comprehending Homer and Shakespeare (in that one is always discovering something new on rereading them) and not even getting to first base with either a writer's terminology or what he is driving at. Aristotle and Aquinas should have been included, I would say, but four volumes is excessive. Furthermore, no expository apparatus is provided, no introduction relating their Weltanschauung to our own, no notes on their very special use of terms and their concepts. Lacking such help, how can one be expected to take an interest in such problems, vivid enough to Aquinas, as "Whether an Inferior Angel Speaks to a Superior Angel?," "Whether We Should Distinguish Irascible and Concupiscible Parts in the Superior Appetite?," "Whether Heavenly Bodies Can Act on Demons?," and "Whether by Virtue of Its Subtlety a Glorified Body Will No Longer Need to Be in a Place Equal to Itself?" In fact, even with help, one's interest might remain moderate. In the case of a philosopher like Plato, essentially a literary man and so speaking a universal human language, the difficulty is far less acute, but Aquinas and Aristotle were engineers and technicians of philosophy, essentially system builders whose concepts and terminology are no longer familiar. [Italics mine]

Replace "Aquinas" with "Maimonides' Guide to the Perplexed" and I could have written that paragraph (and using, presumably, far fewer cigarettes or shots of Rye).

This is back from 4/25/07 & finished on 8/8/07 and all I had was the link and the blockquote.

The Scrolls of Lankhmar

To while away the dreadful hours when my allergies or other sundry illness force my brain into stolid unproductivity, I can divert myself with some set amusements. One diversion is the Lankhmar book series by Fritz Lieber.

My diversion interest is arbitray; even though I have the books on a nearby bookshelf I won't feel like reading them until - boom - one day I do. Odd. For example, when I first made this post in April, I was into the books and 4 months later I wouldn't want to read them. For a while. Anyway, a good website of background info and other resources is here: The Scrolls of Lankhmar

Backpost finished 8/21/07.

Bookcloseouts Alert

Bookcloseouts.com is one of my favorite online stores. It's a remainder bookstore, online, that I visit about 3 times a year and receive a big box of cheap books in return. They have a great selection of comic-strip books (e.g. Dilbert, Get Fuzzy).

This month they have a coupon sale. Enter these in and shop away (all expire Jan 31, 2007).

Coupon #1:
Deal: Get $5 off an order of $25 or more
Coupon code: 5off25
Coupon password: bookcloseouts

Coupon #2:
Deal: Get $10 off an order of $50 or more
Coupon code: 10off50
Coupon password: bookcloseouts
Expires: Jan 31, 2007

Coupon #3:
Deal: Get $20 off an order of $100 or more
Coupon code: 20off100
Coupon password: bookcloseouts
Expires: Jan 31, 2007

Another Religious Milestone (Backwards)

Oohhh, this can't be good: ArtScroll.com -- Women's Siddur

Eichlers.com 25% English Sets Sale

The sale ends Tuesday, March 8th - 25% off English sets at Eichlers.com. (The crazy thing is that I own pretty much everything I want on this list... scary)

SOY Sale and My Lists

Living outside of The City for the first time in 8 years, getting to the SOY Sale is very difficult. I haven't missed the sale for all those years; it's like a religious experience!

In any case, going to a booksale unprepared causes me much anxiety. Actually, that sentence made me sound like Yoda, which I guess proves the point. I have stacks and lists of books to buy and smaller stacks of files of the books I own. The danger of buying a book I already own is very high - there's just not enough time for me to keep track of my holdings. I don't know if it's pretentious or pathetic, but I think I need a private curator. My kid is too small for the job (and he eats every single book he gets in his fisty mitts).

My ethic this year is when in doubt, I will not buy a book - which will make my family happy (except for my kid, naturally).

Yummy

Jewish Publication Society: The JPS Bible Commentary: Ecclesiastes

Ahooga! Ahooga! The SOY Seforim Sale

Clear the aisles, I'm a-comin'! (SOY Seforim Sale - Online Catalog)

Attention All English Speakers

The 11th Collegiate is out, and it is filled with many words.

My favorite book buyer

For those who've asked, this website is my favorite to search for books: Anybook4less

Orwell's 100th Birthday

Yay for Orwell. Check out a whole mess of stuff about him (and one of my favorite essays, "Politics and the English Language").

Discuss.

Feldheim Sale

25% Sale at Feldheim Books. G'wan! Git!

Book Store Alert!!

Attention Mr. & Mrs. Israel and all the ships at sea.

A crazy ol' coot in a twilight zonish bookshop gave me the heads-up of the best bookshop in Jerusalem. It's 6 Shatz Street. I was there last Thursday but the store was closed and the only place open was a cruddy little outhouse of a bookshop that I remembered from years ago. The new shop, opened 5 years ago (after I had already left) but expanded only one year ago, is immense. I purchased books I had only dreamt about. Shatz street is near Pomerantz, but don't confuse the two.

The Book Gallery
6 Shatz Street (26 King George), Jerusalem 94267
tel: 02-623-1087, fax: 02-625-5513
info@bookgallery.co.il
http://www.bookgallery.co.il