R E A D I N G S

This is a list, in chronological order, of books, short stories, etc. that I've read or am currently reading. (The date in paranthesis refers end of reading.) Too often I can't recall the title of a book I've read that sometimes I would like to reread or sometimes to avoid. This list serves to help me keep track of what I have read.

editor: Asti Hustvedt, The Decadent Reader (Zone Books, 1998)

Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence (North Point Press, 1998)
Not much of a book for D.H. Lawrence biography-seekers since its mostly about Mr. Dyer really. Quite a feat of egotism though not without some humor.

Riane Tennenhaus Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade: our history, our future (Harper & Row, 1987)
Fascinating book about history before and into patriarchy; like finding a buried secret. I must read this again.

W. Somerset Maugham, Christmas Holiday
I love this book; very different from the short stories by him I've read. It reminds me more so of Orwell, particularly Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying, but its not entirely him either. I keep rereading Christmas Holiday over the years and this book is almost like an old friend to me. This book won't appeal to Disney-loving feel-good types.
(December 25, 2000)

Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: the Unity of Knowledge (Vintage Books, 1999)
I previously picked this book up and got side-tracked, but I'm attempting to read it again and I don't know if I'll get through it. So far its not as I had expected it to be - a treatise against what I consider artificial divisions between subject matters and a call for their unification in teaching/thinking/practice. Instead its more about how science can lead to the discovery of the holy grail.

A rather masculinist ideology pervades the book including outdated usage of the term "he" to refer to a person in general rather than a particular person. I dislike some of the underlying ideologies of this book. In describing ants assisting one another by giving help signals to one another or leaving trail substances towards food the author discusses how the trail molecules insure privacy of transmission so that predators would not lock in on the trail and follow it back to the colony. Then the author states: "In War - and Nature is a battlefield, make no mistake - one needs secret codes." One could just as easily view the paragraph in reference to the ants as cooperation in a system to ensure peace in the ant colony. I don't see that that ants are at "war" with other creatures, rather they are just ensuring their own survival. Nature does not need this bogus masculinist interpretation.

Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (Harvard University Press, 1989)
I don't like the author's style of writing. Dada, Situationism, and Punk are all swirled together and specious relations (which the author admits) are made. I wouldn't recommend this to someone who isn't already familiar with Dada, etc. because it probably wouldn't make much sense.
(May 21, 2001)

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Insulted and Injured
I love how Dostoevsky makes the characters feel so real, you can see people you know and yourself in them. I really couldn't stand Alyosha however and that Natasha should waste such time with his shallowness. Prince Valkovsky reminds me of a character in another novel I've read and I'm trying to recall if it is a Dostoevsky novel, but my memory is vague.
(June 9, 2001)

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