currently reading...

I finished Status Anxiety before the binding even had a chance to properly crease, a telltale that I've been reading a particular book. Botton gave an interesting look at the causes of what he calls status anxiety through history, things that a particular society will use to determine one's status, and why the quest for it is insatiable. It is not with out the wit and insight that we expect from de Bottonwhich makes the book quite palatable and entertaining. My personal favorite is how he examines how religious indoctrination, namely Christianity but others as well, has been quite useful in society's determination of who's who. Just one more example of how religion is a gimmick or as I have become fond of saying, a racket. Anyhow, de Botton also makes great use of references. The Schopenhauer quote "other people's heads are too wretched a place for true happiness to have its seat." is used in his examination of how philosophy is a solution to the problem that is status anxiety. However the story of Alexander the Great passing through Corinth and seeing the philosopher Diogenes sitting under a  tree in rags with not a penny to his name is my favorite. Alexander is said to have asked Diogenes if he could do anything to help him and was greeted with the response of "Yes, if you could step out of the way. You are blocking the sun."
don't take my word for it. Read the book.

The morning after I began Paul Theroux's The Great Railway Bazaar by Train Through Asia, and already I want to board a train in London and take it all the way across Europe. I went so far as looking at a few websites and books that might be helpful for the modern day rail-trip. I fell in love with trains during my first stint in South Korea and that was it. Give me a train over a car any day. Actually give me anything over a car for that matter. Speaking of trains, I read Alain de Botton's The Art of Travel while in South Korea, and it spoke of trains as "perhaps the best aid to thought" which I found to be true since I did a lot of writing on the train while living in South Korea. More than I did anywhere else. Unfortunately the United States is lacking, among many things, a decent railway system. There is talk of one, but only because years after we have torn up most of our train tracks albeit those that carry industrious goods rather than people (I am aware of Amtrak, but it's a damn racket compared to it's European counterparts), the lot of Europe and Asia is profiting from this mode of transport.