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.