Jean-Paul Sartre: Intimacy

I got this book for free, ages ago, while I was still a PhD student and an old professor brought his unwanted books to be picked up for free. And then, faced with a 9 hour flight, I picked it up 8 years later, not expecting too much. However, it is an amazing collection of 5 short stories; it sells as 'The Wall' these days. Short stories are a funny medium, because you never get immersed into them as much as you do in real novels, but on the other hand they offer a variety, which a normal novel cannot (in the sense that it is possible to read 7 short stories in 7 days). Maja was complaining that it is pure and boring intellectual existentialism, but I must profess that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. For example, the last (and the longest) story, "The Childhood of a Leader" presents a perfect timeline of a young intellectual, stuff that we all went through: one is a teenager and then you discover philosophy and then you discover psychoanalysis, and then you try drugs, etc, etc, all these stages a young person goes through, only that the protagonist ends up being an idiotic antisemite in an utter anticlimax of the story. Warmly recommended, I haven't enjoyed reading fiction for some time now!

Sunzi: Umetnost Vojne

Sunzi je famozni kitajski general, ponavadi se ga transkribira kot Sun Tsu. Oboje pomeni mojster Sun. Knjiga je prevod iz angleškega prevoda, torej ni neposredni prevod. Prevod je tu pa tam tudi malo labav. Celoten tekst se ponovi dvakrat. Prvič kot sam, neobremenjen tekst in drugič z dodanimi komentarji. Sam tekst je precej zanimiv, osebno mi je precej bolj berljiv kot npr. biblija. Čudna mešanica splošnih modrosti, nekaterih na robu kitajske ezoterike, in zelo konkretnih napotkov za npr. količine srebra, ki jih cesar potrebuje. Komenterji so še nekoliko bolj zanimivi, saj so k vsakemu verzu dodani komentarji tako starih kitajskih filozofov, kot tudi relevantnih rimskih/grških vojnih mislecov in modernih akademikov. Skratka, 2500 let star tekst, do kosti prežvečen.

Ommegang: Hennepin

Ommegang's Hennepin declares "true Belgian-style saison". Indeed! Hennepin was a Belgian missionary who discovered Niagara falls. Ommegang is a small brewery in upstate New York which focuses on Belgian stuff. And they do make quite good beers that taste of the Old World. A bucolic summer beer, slightly citrusy with a non-threatening light colour.