Julien Green, Sunstein, Bottigheimer, Mackenzie

I have completed reading the works of Julien Green. I have found that his diaries were fascinating and his writing there, so alive, was like learning French all over again. His novels and plays, however, I find his plots psychologically improbable and his characters curiously flat and lifeless. I suppose it is with good reason that his journal is considered his masterpiece.

I also read three essays -- a history of fairy tales by Bottigheimer, which was interesting for the sake of the preservation of culture through folkways; and Infotopia and Rumours by Cass Sunstein. These latter two books tread on ground I'd covered before. He seems to write books about topics that others have written about more, and in greater depth, a recapitulateur, we would say in French.

Finally I read Lewis McKenzie's Soldiers Make Me Look Good, his autobiography. I didn't much like it. It seemed to me a book written by someone who lost his professional status and never got over it, never quite found his place in the world.

James VI and I, Sunstein, Mantel, Crawford

I read three biographies of James VI and I, because I had read several times that he was unlikeable. I read his biography by Antonia Fraser, David Mathew, and by David Wilson. I found that his manners were poor by the standards of the English court, and that he was some sort of bite problem that made him an ungracious eater, but so what? I also read a history of the end of smallpox, which was written by one of the workers in the trenches who insert himself too much into the story, and a book on Shop Craft as Soul Craft, by Matthew Crawford, which I found unconvincing since the author has given up the manual labor. I also read three of Cass Sunstein's works, Why groups go to extremes, Going to Extremes, and Worst-Case Scenarios. I was reading them to try and figure out what students do when they use the Internet, but these books were about a different topic. I also read Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, which I didn't find enthralling.