Vol. 38, No. 18

2-18-2009
By:

Booktalk, 2/19/09

Elizabeth Weiser is an associate professor in the Department of English. She has written extensively on the rhetoric of Kenneth Burke, and her book, Burke, War, Words: Rhetoricizing Dramatism, was published in November.

What are your five favorite books and why?
This year?
Homer’s Odyssey, no question.  Unless it’s the Iliad. “Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story...” I could read these over and over again — I love the rhetoric and history of these ancient stories, I love the sublime prose and the timeless bold characters. I can completely understand how they could last for 3,000 years.

The collected poems of Emily Dickinson — so many amazing little gems. I return to them seasonally, and something always speaks to me.

Probably Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red. I love and hate Pamuk — when he’s good he’s so good, and then he just goes on and on. But in this book he reins in the excess and tells a great story layered with tremendous insight into the complexities of East and West during the Ottoman Empire.

Mark Slouka’s The Visible World — a recent book by a University of Chicago professor — he manages to capture Prague during the war, the pain of enduring loss, a gorgeous love story, and four decades of immigrant family life, all in under 250 pages of stunning lyrical prose.

Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Transform America. My latest “everyone must read this now” book.

What is the last book you’ve bought?
 Something not for class or research — hmm, that’s hard! The latest Best American Essays, guest edited by one of my all-time favorites, Adam Gopnik.

What’s your “guilty pleasure” – a book you love but don’t often talk about because it’s not “serious” literature?
Actually, I admit openly that I am a huge fan of Ursula K. LeGuin, the science fiction/fantasy writer. I own her books all the way back to Rocannon’s World,  her essay collections, even her commentary on the Tao. I would live in her mailbox if I could.

What “important book” have you not read and why haven’t you read it?
Oh dear. James Joyce’s Ulysses.  Yes, it’s hugely important to modern literature; yes, it loosely follows the Odyssey (see above). I’ve read all about it, I know the plot and I’ve read all the “most quoted” bits — isn’t that good enough? Each summer it stares at me anew, daring me to try yet again.

What book would you most want your kids to read?
My daughter is 7. I want her to read A Wrinkle in Time, to see that she can be brave even when afraid and trustworthy even when doubting, and to believe that she is part of a universe of good always striving to love in spite of evil.  

What classic novel was a disappointment to you?
Poor Tristram Shandy. I could tell Laurence Sterne was trying to entertain me. I would rather describe one surprisingly delightful classic: The Knight of the Burning Pestle, a comic play written about 1607 that could have been written in 2007, if anyone today were as clever and funny.


To nominate an Ohio State faculty or staff person for a future Booktalk column, e-mail harris.587@osu.edu.

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