Currently Reading

I just realized that I haven't done a "Currently Reading" post in a long time.
I've been finishing up a few books that I had previously started, but never finished.
Now I'm on to a book that I have wanted to read for some time.

I'm currently reading For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway.
I haven't gotten very far into it, but i really love what I have read. Hemingway is the master of conveying wonderful imagery through minimal language. The main character, Robert Jordan is currently en route to blow up a bridge in the mountains of Spain. I love all of his encounters with the residents of the mountains. I was interested to learn that the novel takes place during the Spanish Civil War, a war I'm not at all familiar with. Most of the modern literature I've read deals with the two World Wars, so this should be a nice change of pace.

I have to admit, my primary desire to read this novel arises from my interest in the title. I love John Donne's Meditation 17. Hemingway snagged his title from the famous section of this Meditation.
It's beautiful:

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man
is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if
Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse,
as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor
of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death
diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And
therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee. -John Donne


I wish we all thought about these words a little bit more.



(original text)
(image via Bookpoi)