19 Ramadhan, 1440
I wasn't optimistic about getting much reading done in this fasting month, and rightly so. I reckoned I was likely to be busy to the point of being overwhelmed by the usual stuff of work and that has proved to be the case. So I didn't plan any Islamic-themed reading. But I have felt a lack in that area such that I'm thinking of making a definite effort to compensate when I get some time off in June.
Another factor in my deliberate lack of planning has been the extremely slow progress I've been making on my 'ordinary' reading. Essentially this has been focused on Joseph Campbell's Creative Mythology, the final volume in his Masks of God sequence. I felt that to put this to one side would prove disastrous in terms of forward momentum and so have been soldiering on in little bits and pieces. I suppose that Campbell's concerns with what might broadly be termed the spiritual element of our experience lends some connection to the concerns of the holy month, but these are tenuous at best.
The problem I'm finding with Campbell's work is a kind of deadening repetitiveness. He's good on Joyce, Mann and Wagner, but the frequent rehashes of Arthurian legend are not doing a lot for me. I had quite enough of that with Mallory, thank you. In fact, I think I'm done with any kind of mythologizing, for now, at least.
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