Readings

[Ralph Howard]

Like several people posting to this tread I have just finished a rereading
of _Moby Dick_.  My Norton critical edition referred me back to _King
Lear_ and _Macbeth_ as sources so I have also just listened to these
and on tape.  (BBC radio did Lear to cerebrate John Gielud's 90th birthday
and it is definitely worth a listen.)  Somehow the group reading of 
GR suggested the rereading of Melville and I was wondering if the same was
true for the others.

Yesterday I finished  Eco's _The Island of the Day Before_ which may
be most boring time I have spent reading in the last couple of years.  I
am sure that there is some Large Point I missed, but it just struck me
as a parable on the tedium of the self-referential post-modern  novel 
(on which terms I guess it was a success).  At any rate I am willing to
forgive Eco his recent transgressions for having produced _The name of the
Rose_ and at least one good book of essays.

Also finished this last weekend was Dennett's _Darwin's Dangerous Idea_
which lead to starting Dawkins' _The Blind Watchmaker_.  This is some of
the most interesting science going on, and in terms of the world we
experience explains much more than getting the physicist's Theory of
Everything to work.  Dennett's book is particularly interesting as he is
philosopher rather than a scientist which leads him to consider questions,
and use arguments, that differ from what I had expected from the title.
But most of it interesting and much of it convincing.  The only down side
is that is prose is not nearly as pleasant as that of Dawkins, Gould,
Eldredge or others writing on the subject.

As a longer term project I have been moving slowly through Runciman's
three volume _A History of the Crusades_ which has a cast of characters
that almost puts GR to shame.  Along those lines if anyone knows a good
biography of Saladin I would love to hear about it.

Final I was recently given a hand me down copy of _The Runaway Jury_ and
can now say that I have read a John Grisham novel.  It did make an
impression one way or the other.

Ralph





-- 
Ralph Howard                    Phone:  (803) 777-2913 
Department of Mathematics       Fax:    (803) 777-3783 
University of South Carolina    e-mail: howard at math.sc.edu
Columbia, SC 29208 USA          http://www.math.sc.edu/~howard/