Holiday Reading

First Book- 'Unholy Night' by Seth Grahame Smith 

Picked it up in Waterstons for entertainment weekly's review 'Akin to fusing Game of Thrones with the Gospel of St Luke' which is basically what the book is in a nutshell. The story follows a thief in his quest for revenge and his encounter with Mary, Joseph and their baby but essential is a fantasy retelling of the birth of Jesus and his escape from King Herod and the Romans. It's pretty interesting as it takes the traditional story of the 3 wise men and it expands it, the wise men are not wise men but rather on-the-run convicts disguised as wise men. Miracles and magic happen in equal measure and you are never really certain of the validity of each event due to some very trippy epically written dream sequences. As a brief warning the book is violent and well very Game of Thrones in places.    

The setting is interesting (if not historically accurate ) and historical characters such as King Herod, the puppet king put in place by the Romans to rule over the Jews during the rains of Julia Cesar and then after the civil war Augustine Cesar.

Second Book 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein

I have no idea why I'm doing this it is so hard to read and just so annoying as a result of it also being so interesting.

Quote from the introduction

'The whole sense of the book might be summed up in the following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence'

thus the aim of the book is to draw a limit to thought, or rather - not to thought ,but to the expression of thoughts : for in order to be able to draw a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought ).

Do I understand much of it ? no not really am I going to try to at the expense of sleep and sanity YES. I will attempt to read a bit at a time over till I believe that I understand it and then I shall blog about it and then hopefully Miss Price shall tell me what it actually means.

Interesting side note the book is written almost in bullet points which I think reflects greatly on Wittgenstein's nature.