Reading Clint's wish list makes me wonder if some of Kahlil Gibran's other books deal with some of these issues. I shall investigate.

However, I think that there is a compositional reason that these topics were left out of The Prophet. I feel like this book is supposed to be a handbook of humanist philosophy; that is, I think Gibran intends that by reading this book, the reader might get an idea about how to live. I feel like he would have declared war to be outside the sphere of individual (well, most individuals) influence, and therefore out of place in The Prophet. All in all, I think the book is more properly thought of as a guidebook rather than musings. I don't much go in for books like this at all usually, but this book seems to merit further consideration. Maybe it's just so short that I didn't have time to get irritated.

Summarizing this book on the way back from DC, I said that I thought the general thesis of this book is that, in order to best live, we ought to maximize our humanity -- we should completely engage in all these things that Gibran would say are essential to being human.

Here are the things that the Prophet didn't talk about, but that I would have liked to have heard his opinion on:
Technology
Humor
Boredom
Dating/Sex
Television
Education

I am Secret!

So, since I'm the only one posting, I thought I'd add something else on which I was hoping for input. What do we think is the Prophet's "deeper secret"?

These things he said in words. But much in his heart remained unsaid. For he himself could not speak his deeper secret.

From page 7 of my edition, in the first chapter, after the ship comes in and just before the elders address the prophet.

I'm tempted to relate this to my earlier obsession with Almitra, but that may just be me.

Once when I was in San Diego I almost bought some Calamity juice.

I'm finishing up The Prophet and will get my post on this weekend. I hope everyone's enjoying it. For next time, I vote for Calamity Physics, because I like the title. That is all.

jeniscrazy...crazy about tagging!

Oh, um, by the way. I am a new-wave digital librarian. I like tagging and so on. So when you write new posts, try to fill in the the "labels for this post" with tags/labels/metadata, whatever you want to call them. You can make up new ones or whatever, but try not to duplicate-with-slight-variation or anything. For instance, I've been using rules, suggestions, voting, and now theprophet. So you could add one like jeniscrazy or pomo or intertextuality or homoeroticism or something, but (for example) don't add election or prophet (unless this last one is about the character of the prophet or something). Super fun, right? All the labels can be seen if you click the "show all" link next to the label box, or if you click "edit posts" under the "posts"/"posting" tab on the dashboard. If you click on a label, it will show you all the posts with that label. And so, in a few months, we can check back to see how much we talked about homoeroticism or how jeniscrazy, or (more usefully), see all the posts containing book suggestions. Mmm, classification goodness!

I've sort of...um, been editing other people's posts to add labels. I feel sorta bad about that. I can't help myself! The post looks so lonely when it's not labeled correctly! I may continue this trend, and maybe we should just say that anyone can label anyone else's post with a topic, if they feel as though the original poster forgot something, or if a new topic comes up in comments or something. Or, we can declare even this minor sort of post-tampering verboten, and I'll try my hardest to resist the siren's song of folksonomy...

Gender and Almitra

Okay, gang, I'll get this started with a small thing I noticed, about the questioners.
Almitra is, of course, the only one given a name. Most of the other chapters are given over to a character defined only by his (or, rarely, her) profession. I was interested in the few chapters given over to generic "man" or "woman": unidentified women asked about Children, Joy and Sorrow, and Pain, while an unidentified man asked about Self-Knowledge. I actually discount the On Children woman in this discussion, because she's identified as a mother and lord knows that was/is considered a female profession.

So! Did the women not get titles like "priestess" in these cases because there just weren't job titles enough that women were considered able to fill? Or is it supposed to be woman's lot to care about sorrow and pain, but man's lot to care about self-knowledge? Luckily you can make the argument that many of the profession-identified questioners are gender-neutral, or you'd be getting a big heap o' commentary about patriarchy and misogyny right about now.

And then there's Almitra herself. She opens the chapters on Love, Marriage, Reason & Passion, and Death. It's sort of a fun exercise to go through her chapters, and her appeal to the prophet in the first chapter, and pull out all the love-related terms. In her first speech, you've got "longing," "desires," "love," and "needs," as well as the somewhat loaded phrasing of "our children." I imagine it's not a great leap to say she's supposed to represent a sort of Mary Magdalene lover-of-the-prophet thing, but that makes her question about Death even more interesting.

And as much as On Marriage reads like a Dear Almitra letter ("I love you, babe, but I've gotta be free..."), it's also interesting to compare his emphasis on individuality in that chapter with his declarations that so many other "dual" things are unified--life and death are one, sorrow and joy are one...plus, he's advocating all this socialist sort of "we are all one people" business in On Giving, On Buying and Selling, On Crime and Punishment, and probably elsewhere--and yet, the lovers are separate.

Anyway! That's just the first few bits I've been thinking about. What did you guys think?

Go!

All right, let the discussion/voting begin!

We have six candidates for next month's book. Hooray! I vote for:

THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS
SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS

Deadline to vote is the 27th. I, for one, have like totally read The Prophet now, and will have some thoughts up within the next couple days yo.

The rules

Jen, Jen, Jen. If the "What are we doing for New Year's Eve?" debacle has taught us anything, it is that the way to achieve consensus is through a bald dictatorial assertion of power, not a coy series of honest questions. In this vein, I declare: January is the month of The Prophet. Buy a copy, read it, blog about it. Moreover:

READING/DISCUSSION: As a general rule, you should try and be finished with the book around the early 20s of the month, and blogscussion will begin around this time. Since The Prophet is short, I don't think our late start this month should be too much of a problem.

CHOOSING NEW BOOKS: Each poster will submit ONE suggestion for the next month's book (or none, if they so desire). The last day for suggesting a book is the 20th of the preceding month (which is around the time people should start finishing the current month's book). Starting the 21st, people will vote in the following way: Vote for as many books as you'd like on an approval basis, i.e., if you list a book, you're giving it a thumbs-up. The book with the most approval votes wins. In case of a tie, winner is the first book formally suggested. Last day to submit your vote(s): the 27th, one week after the last day to make suggestions. Along with being sort of easy to remember, this gives people a few days to go out and buy the book, or order it online, or whatever.

LETTING NEW PEOPLE IN: Seriously, is our book club that awesome that this is going to be a problem?

I forgot if there were any other issues. Complaints about this method can be posted and, if they reach critical mass, we can tweak. But I think my system's pretty good, don't you?

In which she makes use of her MLIS

OK, to get the book suggestions started, here is a list published by the American Library Association:
Notable Books for Adults, 2006
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is on that one, Emily.

And, just because I'm me, and I like young adult novels:
2006 Best Books for Young Adults
I'm especially intrigued by The Lightning Thief: Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan and Are We There Yet? by David Levithan.

There's also Outstanding Books for the College Bound, though I hasten to point out the subtitle "and Lifelong Learners." That's us, guys! Lifelong learners! The list does recommend Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, though, which I must say is a pretty intense read.

I've also heard Special Topics in Calamity Physics and Absurdistan bandied about as excellent reads. And The Omnivore's Dilemma is supposed to change the way you eat, or something. Aaand I already suggested Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus once, but once is never enough.

First Things...

It's all well and good to pick a book to read, but how are we going to run this show?

Are we going to get more people involved? Michael, Robyn, Steve, and Megan never replied to the blogger invitations, and I wasn't sure if anyone else was going to be interested. Oh, and I propose a group vote for any new members, so we can be exclusive and catty.

Are we all going to read the book-of-the-undetermined-amount-of-time and then post responses? Or are we going to discuss as we go? How soon can people get The Prophet read, if that's the book we're going for at the moment? Or, will this be a more informal "read what you want, when you want, and post about whatever you happen to be reading" sort of thing? That could work too, though conversation may be somewhat hampered. And then it's not so much a "book club blog" as...a blog about books. Without the club!

Also: seriously. Suggest some more books for later. I need time to find them at Half Price, because I am putting myself on a strict book budget after the $100+ book buying extravaganza that was Christmas Break.

Yes, this is Jen being a rule-focused downer. I'm sorry. I require structure. Surely you've noticed by now.

The Prophet

I just used my flashy Barnes & Noble gift card to purchase a copy of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. In as much as I'm able to like any philosophy book, this is certainly my favorite. May I persuasively suggest that we read this book for our first month? It's quite short (about 85 pages), and very profound. Any takers?

Post the first

"What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books." - Thomas Carlyle

Read a book, and the group reads with you. Suck, and you suck alone.
Suggestions welcome.