*sigh*

Summer reading

Recently (since the start of the summer):

The Awakening, Kate Chopin: don't know how I feel about her worldview, but it made me feel like writing, which consequently made me want to read it again . . .

Rape, sex violence history, by Joanna Bourke: fantastic, very insightful.

and some other stuff I didn't like as much.


Currently:

Watchmen, Alan Moore: a fantastic second read through. I actually think this will remain on my list for a couple of further re-readings when I'm done. . .

The Lucifer Effect, Philip Zimbardo: constantly feel as if I'm wading through poor reasoning and mediocre writing in search of fascinating information. . . . which is there. This is about the Stanford Prison Experiment and it's implications.


Next up:

Between the Blinds; A Derrida reader, edited by Peggy Kamuf. I'm told it's the good place to jump in to literary analysis, about which I'm excited.

How to lie with statistics, last chapter. It's an ok basic primer, at this point I'm interested in learning a lot more of the math and how it was developed.

And the other fifteen or thirty books sitting on my desk, including:
guitars
a gardening book
a history of the hellenistic societies
music theory for dummies
a small heap 'o classics, to be postponed till after the Derrida (which I expect to take a good while). Some of these I'm half or more through, and may finish first.


Hoping to get out of:

The God Delusion: I'll read the chapter that proclaims to have evidence in favor of atheism. . . as more than one more faith. Other than that. . . Wes can deal with my agnosticism. . . Except that it did kind of look interesting. But there's so much else that I really want to read. . .


Wanting to read, at some point maybe soon:

Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance
V for Vendetta
The trouble with Physics
more Kafka, particularly The Trial


Possible upcoming acquisitions:

Robert's rules of order
Chicago manual of style
Ethics of Ambiguity. . . which, come to think of it, I also want to read again. Wouldn't hurt to have it in French as well.
A complete Shakespeare with decent binding, probably vintage riverside.
My own copy of QED?
Some particularly good board books to read to Gavin
Lolita, as a gift for a young fashion designer. . .


Math and science reading shall be interspersed, and is at this point somewhat less planned.


By the way, if anyone has comments or recommendations, I'd particularly like to hear them on this.

So I've always been into the cheesy library summer reading programs; something about the deadlines and the prizes and the artificial gratification has been very appealing to me; it's one of those times grown-ups can reasonably behave like six year olds. This summer, I started out with the goal of five books a week--sort of reasonable, since I have a lot of reading time at work. . . and then I got caught up in the sort of books I can't cut through nearly that fast(aka most everything but young adult fiction and pop nonfiction). It's been really great--to realize that I'd rather be reading something more substantial, and to be enjoying it more than my (still) beloved silly prizes. I think my attention span is growing. :)