“Entertained” is a new category in this web log. I am trying to archive posts about my entertainment interests into one category which will hold posts about what I read, listen to, or see for my entertainment, organized into sub-categories about specific interests like books, folk music, folk festivals, movies. I used to have separate categories for books, folk music and other entertainments, and those categories have survived within the new “top-level” category.
It is basically personal – these are the things I spend my time on, and have thought about, and am willing to write about. However, I am a couple of steps away from simply journalling my own life and hobbies.
The common deeper themes are that literature and the performing arts chronicle perspectives on life and culture, and serve as vehicles for communicating a sense of meaning. I am starting to write more seriously about how I see authors trying to communicate the special quality of meaning, and how people try to extract meaning from what they see, hear, and read. At the same time, part of the meaning in reading fiction is the statement that I am reading to be entertained instead of educated or enlightened. As McLuhan said: “the medium is the message.” Sometimes, that is as deep as the meaning gets.
I won’t keep an archive of posts about books as such. If I read a book for entertainment, and decide to post about it, I will archive it under Entertainment/Books. If I post about a book about cults or addiction, I would put it into a category where I have other posts about cults (eg The Bazaar) or addiction.