If you are into the subject, Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals is a good read.

at first I thought you meant the subject of vampire hunting. But looking at it, that does indeed seem interesting. From the book I read, it did touch on Lincoln's management of his cabinet, which given the contrasting personalities of it, was very impressive. I'll have to add that to my to read list.

Just going to write a lot about what I read over the summer since I've been absent. (Went to Europe with my family, then got back to find out my psychotic roommate stole my computer, then moved to Sacramento all within the span of a couple months). But what I've read over the time period, some Henry James ("Daisy Miller", "Turn of the Screw" and The Ambassadors). Ambassadors was the best: a surprisingly funny satire about White People Problems, but while also being kind of sad, showing sympathy for all the characters even though there's not a single one who's not living within the confines of their delusions. The slowly shifting philosophical pov of Strether is fucking masterful within itself. I already talked about my letdown with Oblivion in the Wallace thread. I read Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, which is the main reason I'm posting this huge catch-up thing, because it's hands-down one of the great masterpieces of literature. Like nothing I read about it (before I actually read the damn thing) did it justice. Speaking of Wallace, I'd be very surprised if he didn't read Lowry's novel before composing IJ. It has a similar prologue-epilogue function, dialogues with "—" (like IJ's "…") to note non-responses, uses addiction as its central theme, and functions as a quasi-modernization of classic lit (in UtV's case, Goethe's Faust). And what I'm saying doesn't do it justice. It's fucking brutally tragic, although often hilarious, and one of the most beautifully written works of prose ever. I also decided to check out Faust (the abridged version without a lot of part two) afterward, which is also great. Which brings me to…

Underworld (Don DeLillo, 1997) — C

You know in how White Noise, DeLillo would go on a few sentence-long stretches where he described drugstore items and Japanese cars and fast-food? Would you like a novel where that takes up roughly 30% of the text? Do you want to read a novel with a maddeningly amazing prologue that never fully integrates itself into the novel proper? Well, except to serve as a metaphor for protagonist Nick Shay's failure…and that's not just guesswork either, he tells his friend this much before we even get 100 pages deep. So, with the novel's far-and-away best passage behind, what is there to look forward to? Well, the reason for Nick Shay's failure (a protagonist who, by the way, makes White Noise's Hitler- and death-obsessed JAK Gladney a Mr. Personality contestant in comparison). The reason for "Nick's failure" is actually an amazing passage; only one page, it's full of frenetic energy and despair and absolute rage—a level of emotion that DeLillo held back for 780 pages. The thing is, Underworld does have some great moments, and some great writing. Anything with J. Edgar Hoover is good, as are the Manx Martin chapters and the stuff about the Texas Highway Killer, and I was actually far more touched by the last fifteen pages than I should have been. But the thing is, Underworld is way too fucking long. And this is coming from someone who loves colossal clusterfucks (movin on to Mason & Dixon now). But the thing is, if you took out the whole chapters that lead to dead ends or the pages upon pages of describing garbage (literal garbage…it's the book's other metaphor) it would make a good 300-400 page novel. But the thing is, that novel was already written, and it's called White Noise. WN doesn't have anything quite as good as the insanely out-of-place prologue of Underworld (although I'd say the Airborne Toxic Event comes close), but you also don't have to be let down by inconsistency. I was never the biggest fan of WN before—I liked it, but I didn't think of it much—but after Underworld, my heart has grown fond of its dry humor, its weird pre-apocalyptic atmosphere, its enjoyability and consistency.

Went to the school's library and hired

William Blake - Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Peter Ackroyd - Blake: A Biography
S. Foster Damon - A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbols of William Blake

Pretty excited to start them

Do you use hired instead of checked out in Australia?

From my schools library I got Evolution of Film Styles by Peter and Sandra Klinge

Enjoying Campbell's 'Power of Myth' so far, though it suffers a little from the interview format by repeating itself quite a bit. Found myself agreeing with most of what Campbell says, though.

I finished Foucault's The Hermeneutics of the Subject and I am beginning Montaigne's Essays.

I picked up this book that combines the Cossacks, War and Peace, and Anna Karenina into one volume. In addition to reading, I could also use it to bludgeon baby seals to death.

Finished When Christ and His Saints Slept by Sharon Kay Penman (was a reread). Exceptional (8/10).

Penman does an excellent job taking historical events and figures and bringing them to vivid life. This book in particular deals primarily with the civil war between King Stephen of England and his cousin Maude the only daughter of the English King (or Matilda) whose throne Stephen usurped with some context thrown in the front and end (begins 1101 and ends in 1154 with most of the actions occurring between 1130 and 1154) She also does a good job keeping narrative flow and pace while keeping the reader anchored firmly in time even when jumping forward by a significant amount. She also does a very good job with her descriptions of her scenes with a keen eye for small details of setting and small details about people while also maintaining an excellent sense of what I'll call blocking when staging scenes with lots of characters. And while it helps having the absolute insanity of real history to work with (in that events in real life are often stranger than those in fiction) she is at her best staging the major historical events and unleashing bursts of crackling dialog to fill in the gaps of history.

This is actually probably one of the lower ones on my overall favorites of her books mainly because she introduces a non-historical character in a major role who in later books is more interesting but in this book often takes too much center stage and pulls the book away from the more interesting figures.

Pierre was strange. Not as overtly difficult as The Confidence-Man but definitely as thematically obscure (if not more so). Perhaps I'll find something online or at the library that will shed some light, but right now it was just a novel with some at times gorgeous prose (as to be expected) but a bewildering story.

And now I'm going to work my way through the Gospels in between other, longer works.

Ok so I bought and read all the books in the trilogy. I was just about ready to call it my favourite trilogy of anything ever and then that goddamn last book happened. The worst possible conclusion to this series was to make one that's conclusive. I really wish somebody had warned me of that and I'd never read it. Anyway rankings:

1. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Easily my favourite out of all of them. It makes sense that Douglas Adams really started out to write sketches because that's what I remember segments of the book as. The sketch with the willing cow, the sketch with the elevator scared to go up, etc. And that gorgeous reveal that was the final answer. The first four books are one of my fav experiences of any sort of media. All genuinely hilarious and the one with Fenchurch was also genuinely sweet.

2. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
3. So Long and Thanks for All The Fish
4. Life, the Universe and Everything
5. Mostly Harmless

Agreed on the best in the series. I actually read LtU&E first. I went to the beginning of my middle school's library and was just looking for cool shit, and what could have a cooler title and cover than that to a middle schooler? Didn't realize it was actually part of a series until I was a ways into the book. Shortly made my way through most of the rest of the series with great glee (stopped with So Long and Thanks). Very formative experience for me, reading those books. I should make a summer project of returning to at least some of them.

Over the past two days, I read B.F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity for the class I'm TA-ing. Skinner is very philosophically confused (or at least lazy—it is one of his popular works) but very cocksure. An annoying combo. Not a fun read.

Also reading Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy. Will probably start another book soon.

Friedrich Nietzsche - Untimely Meditations

Reading the first three for my seminar on the human/animal boundary (only the second is required, but I'm taking this as an excuse to read the others, since I haven't yet). I might skip the fourth since it's supposed to be less good. Who knows.

Friedrich Nietzsche - Daybreak

I walk about 1.5 miles to campus every morning, and I've decided that I'll take one passage from this book a day to mull over as I walk. We'll see how long this lasts.

B.F. Skinner - Walden Two

Ugh. For the class I'm TAing. Haven't started it yet, but need to read the whole thing by next week. Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh.

Friedrich Nietzsche - Daybreak

Really sustaining my morning and evening walks to/from campus.

Emily Dickinson - Final Harvest

Simply the best.

Gay Wilson Allen - Waldo Emerson

Very good.

Jean Piaget - The Psychology of Intelligence

For the class I'm TAing. Interesting but frustratingly written (or translated).