The hidden gem you didn't know you needed to read
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 มี.ค. 2018
- Editor Greg lets us in on a little known book that's about to make huge waves...
The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt : po.st/LastSamuraiYT
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I luckily found an old copy in a secondhand bookstore. Saw the title, immediately recognized it as a favorite recommendation from I Don't Even Own a Television podcast, grabbed it, read that bravura first chapter, and I knew I had to talk to someone about it. You're the only one to talk about it in booktube, so far, and it blows that nobody else is.
Steve Donoghue loves that book, and he’s on booktube.
I'm excited....can feel the gears swiftly rotating to book research mode.....
(It is pathological at this point 🤣) Thanks for the tip.
I remember randomly picking this book up at the library back in junior high, probably around 2005-2006, in Norwegian. I've read it many times since, mostly in English, and I used to lend it to as many friends as possible until it got lost somehow. I nagged Amazon to get a kindle version for years and years, but I finally got a new print version now. The book hits me differently at 30, than it did at 14, late teens, and early 20's. I bet I'll get something new out of it in a couple of years too.
Thank you for this recommendation!
This book has been recommended to me so many times! I really need to get on it... her new one sounds pretty crazy too.
I absolutely love this book
I am dying to read it now. I have an around the world in 80 books challenge, maybe I will choose this one for England! Thank you so much!
Around the world in 80 books challenge seems amazing because it opens up ones options to other works that weren't thought of before, I might try that out. You came up with the idea or where'd you get it from, I would like to know more? I'm also curious if you read the book in the native language of a country or a translation copy?
Thanks!
Reading it now. I was enamored after 2 pages.
Omg. I don't know how I can move on without living with and through other people who care about this book. I'm a 70-year-old artist desperate to be included in discussions on the level of what I'm reading in this. I have never found anyone who has taken my work seriously even after spending 10 years on a website but unable to reach out because I don't know how to use social media. I know I'm something like ADHD but having a handle on the internet is like trying to read another language. I'm lost. It seems I may go to my grave without anyone ever seeing or caring about my work. Y'all young people can't imagine what it's like. The analogy I have come up with is this other generation is like they grew up in and through this bush and I'm standing next to it reaching my arm in and never able to participate.
And I'm absolutely stunted. Living in a trailer park on Social security desperately trying to figure out how to add to my income without facing injury at the local labor finders. I'm kind of on vacation right now because I'm living with an injury that came from someone having me scrub above my head with bleach until I noticed my arm was on fire. Poor me lol
Purchased.
I am afraid that I am in the slim minority of opinion about this novel. Although Dewitt is no doubt incredibly intelligent, and far more verbose than I could ever hope to be, I find her criticism of western education to be pretentious and unrealistic. I agree with her general perspective about moving away from scripted curriculum and"teaching to the test;" unfortunately this is as far as I go. Rather than embracing self actualization in the child, she postulates a new script based on assumptions of the importance of classic languages and mathematics. I'd wager that pedagogical theorists, lecturers and early childhood classroom teachers would toss this brand out the window in a heartbeat.
At the surface, imbuing a two year old child's daily routine with the Greek alphabet is an enticing proposition; however, in reality, a child seamlessly moving into The Iliad by age 5 is not only tenuous, it demonstrates little with regards to the child's social adaptations, conflict resolutions or actualization.
I'm sure this will be unpopular. Honestly, I went into this novel incredibly excited, as I hear nothing but glowing reviews. Is it a triumph of language? Decidedly. Do I believe its message outweighs the bending of reality required of the reader to connect with or believe in its characters? For me, unfortunately not. To each their own, and I hope this book inspires others to change the way they think about education.
This video is just an advertisement lol the book is okay, very digressive which was all the rage in the early parts of the aughts following the postmodern boom of the 90s. My problem is that while DeWitt's jabs at modern education are completely valid. The people who seemingly agree with her criticism -- that it is stifling student's imagination and potential -- are the type to push public schooling in the first place and ignore the fact that Ludo was being 1) homeschooled and 2) engaging with some foundational texts that not even themselves have read. Were these readers to have these facts pointed out to them, they would remark back with accusations of being a "radical reactionary" or at the very least "pretentious."