I've been thinking about what to read in the holy month of Ramadhan and have decided to repeat the experiment I carried out last fasting month of focusing on what one might term loosely Islamic-themed reading. With that in mind I set out last Saturday to acquire the necessary tomes from the rather funky Wardah Books at Kampong Glam. The result: a tasty pile of four attractive paperbacks that I'm keen to start on right away but from which I am manfully holding myself back. This is not, I hasten to add, out of some obsession about only reading such material in Ramadhan. No, it's simply that I still need to finish The Voyage of the Beagle, A Short History of Nearly Everything and Larkin's Collected Poems, which comprise my highly enjoyable current reading. I've been making slow progress with them, partly the result of being extremely busy at work, and partly because I'm savouring all three. (I read Bryson's Short History some four years back and found myself chortling away almost throughout. This time I'm trying to understand the science a bit more. And I'm very familiar with pretty much every Larkin poem from The Less Deceived onwards, but reading them in sequence feels oddly rewarding.) But now I feel it's time to push on, and the long weekend ahead (for National Day) should afford an opportunity to do just that.
The reading that's intended to follow that will encompass (insh' allah): The Messenger - The Meanings of the Life of Muhammad by Tariq Ramadan; The Garden of Truth by Seyyed Hossein Nasr; Remembering God - Reflections of Islam by Gai Eaton; and Ibn Al-Arabi's On The Mysteries of Fasting, translated by Aisha Bewley. Oh, and I'm intending a swiftish, non-stop reading of Arberry's translation of The Holy Qur'an, the one in Oxford World's Classics.
I've never quite understood why I get a kick out of listing things - but I do, so there you are.
1 comment:
Because, like me, you are 'a lister'. :D
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