Mags, Musset, Ellis, Connally

Since my last entry,I've read an issue each of Royalty, Majesty, the National Enquirer and the National Examiner. It was, in case it's not obvious, trashy light reading. I've also read The Partnership, by Charles Ellis, about Goldman Sachs, and Fatal Misconception, an anti-Malthusian essay by Matthew Connally. I've read 3 of the 19 plays by Alfred de Musset that I have slated for myself this December break. After Musset, I have Claudel, whom I've never read, and the last six volumes of Voltaire.

Odds and Ends

I read two books by Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad and Understanding Terror Networks. They were interesting as political sociology, I thought, and were revealing of the social conditions surrounding terrorist individuals. I also read all of Goethe's plays, translated into French. I had read Faust, so this was a top-up, about 40 plays. I found some of them very light indeed, for someone who called Shakespeare 'the master of us all.' Today Harold Pinter died, so I suppose I'm thinking about playwrights a lot. I also read Trillion Dollar Meltdown, by Charles Morris, a book published last February about the housing bubble bursting. I suppose the author must now think he had no idea he would be so right. I just finished Georg Simmel's Philosophy of Money, which is an interesting analysis of currency. It puts me in mind of that early French sociologist who wrote on suicide, Emile Durkheim. Finally I also read a history of alcohol, Drink by Iain Gately. Resting on my dining room table is the oversize book about ants. That one is next, interspersed I suppose with the plays of Alfred de Musset. I also read an issue each of the New Yorker, OK Magazine, New Scientist, The Economist, Utne Reader and three issues of Eclectic Reading.

Food Adulteration and Magazines

Since my last post I've read three issues of Eclectic Reading, one issue of The New Scientist, one issue of OK Magazine, and one issue of The Economist. I also read a number of Goethe's plays -- the early ones don't betray the grandeur of the later works -- with about ten to go before I'm done. I also read Bee Wilson's Swindled, about food adulteration in history. It was only occasionally nauseating! I also read Vesaas' Spring Night. This was a leftover from my reading the UNESCO list, which I though I'd finished. Well, this was a boring novel, as all Vesaas' were -- not to my taste.

The last of the UNESCO list!

I have read the last of the UNESCO list of representative literature, The Uprising, by Liviu Rebreanu. I wasn't captivated, I liked his later novel more, but I was ecstatic to be done at last with the list! Talk about traveling inside my head!

I also read Agnes Humbert's Notre guerre, a French museologist's account of her suffering at German hands during World War II, including deportation, for being in the Resistance. I read Rose Lee Goldberg's Performance, an update of her earlier book on performance art, filled with color pictures this time. I also read Madeline Levine's Price of Privilege, which turned out to be a simple argument that rich kids can be suffering emotionally too. Money is a great way to neglect children without seeming to be doing so. I also read Vol. 2 of La pleiade's Theatre du XVIIe siecle, about 30 plays in all. I was hoping for something political during the Revolutionary period, and I got it. Otherwise, the farces and tragedies are full of silly country people or noble titled people.

I also read three issues of The Economist, an issue of Hello Canada, and one issue of The New Scientist.