According to a LibraryThing survey, these 106 works are the ones most often marked as “unread”, That is, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded.

Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones read solely as a curriculum requirement, italicize the ones you started, but didn’t finish.

Final touch: denote (*) the ones you liked, and would (or did) read again or recommend. Even if you did read them for school in the first place.


Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
*The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel  (I'll finish, I read it when I find a copy lying around)
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
*The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West  (it's in my travel stuff)
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
*A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
*The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
*Dune
The Prince  (the Little Prince?)
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon 
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
**Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers 

May you someday be treated with the same level of care as you are providing my mother.

So, here is the gist of my mid-life crisis (hence the moniker): I'm not going to be immortal. I thought I would have time to try everything, see everything, experience everything. Now I know I won't. Now I realize I have to choose a (very) limited number of things to see, to feel, to be.

(This is a very calm exposition of what for some time now has been, inside my head, more like "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!")

And I'm not independently wealthy, nor ever likely to be, so I have to sip these experiences through the thin straws of "vacation" and "weekend". (Again, Fuck, fuck fuck!)

(So far I have only had the luck of finding one possibly paying thing I loved doing, which was playing music, and then I had the awakening that it would likely never be the way I would make a living... I haven't found another vocation at which I both excel and which I enjoy.)

And I have a deep deep tendency to immediately judge any move toward pleasure as selfish and irrational.

So, when I think "what would I rather be doing right now?"... it's almost always one of two simple things: reading a good book on the shore of a big body of water, having gotten there either by hiking or paddling; or talking about intimate subjects with close friends. (There's food, drink, and shelter implied in both of these scenarios...) And then I think "How selfish, how useless, and how are you going to pay for that?"

[As I was writing this, Orlando the UPS guy just delivered an unexpected gift from a colleague from long ago, the book Get a Hobby! by Tina Barseghian. Quite incredible timing. Larry, thank you!]

Right, because the reason I'm writing this is because it is becoming my focus, my quest: to identify the things I love, and to find ways to do more of them.

I have a few, and they're simple enough and not profound... I love touch, I love sex, I love being with friends (but I value solitude highly as well). I love good food, I love good music. I love sunlight (not directly on me), clean water, crisp air, 67-72 degrees... I love vistas. I love solving problems, when I'm not emotionally attached to the solutions. I love travel, and I love resting from travels. I love being helpful, being of use, but not exhausting myself in the effort. I love learning. I love sleep, but only after I'm so tired that I can't help but embrace it. I love being awake too much to go compliantly to bed at a certain time. I love sailing, paddling, peddling...

It's probably no coincidence that most of these loves are not things for which one can be paid. They are mostly selfish pleasures (see, told you!) for which one needs to pay.

So. How can I make a living, and be happy? Simple questions, right? But first I think I need to get down to figuring out "What makes me truly happy?" I've never really understood how to explore that.

Have you?

-GS

I'll see those of you who gather for the wake today. I'm sorry to have missed those who came and went. And that pretty much sums up my feeling about the whole thing. I'm sorry to have missed those who came and went.

Summer here has been ridiculous. We had two months of 85+, no rain, and many nights it didn't get below 78 to cool off. We started the Spring with a late freeze which killed the blossoms on fruit trees and killed the leaves on small trees like Japanese Maples... I didn't know trees would re-grow leaves if they get killed... they did, but it must be a bit of a stress. So, during the drought I actually watered the trees in my yard, but not the flowers or grass. I haven't mowed since July, nor have I needed to (OK, my neighbors might disagree, but not too much).

My love life is sort of like the weather.

At the end of last year, after 11 years together, my partner and I separated. I moved into a friend's house for a few months, but then I bought my own house (see below). I kept paying my half of our shared mortgage until my ex- could refinance to a 30 year mortgage she could afford alone, which she did. (Our house together is in the perfect location for her life at the university and in the community.)

We're trying to remain friends, and I very much hope that happens. We shared a lot of adventures, as well as a lot of mundane stuff, and I hate losing the shared quality of those memories and times. I love her and respect her and am proud of her. Her new boyfriend seems quite nice, and though bemused, he's tolerant of my continued presence in their lives.

I'm in a V relationship with two women who have been together, non-monogamously, for many years. I hope this is a long term love, it's full of potential and fits my personality. Oh, I'm not the apex of the V! I'm also (laugh all you want!) the new social director of the local polyamorist group, which has 125+ members and about 30 active members. You Californians will think nothing of this, of course. :)

My new house has many nice features, but proximity to the main north/south drag through town is not one of them. By which I mean, I hear traffic noise day and night, which I hate. The yard is beautiful, but if I "tune in", I'm bummed by the drone.

And, it's Fall... night temps are low enough to make up for daytime highs, and that's a situation I can enjoy. It's dryer and crisper. Time to start getting out biking, paddling, hiking, camping.

The Lotus festival is next week, LEAF a month later in Asheville, and I just went to the Cincinnati Celtic Fest, which was surprisingly good, fun, and in a pleasant place. Interesting how some water, some grass, and some trees can make my experience of a big city feel much more pleasant. Of course, that's about all I want from the city anyway, is the greenspace at the edges. I don't really "get" cities.

I haven't gotten away from work much this Summer. I hope to, but it's harder to coordinate (of course, there being 50% more people to negotiate with).

Well... I was unwilling to celebrate it until it really happened... but I now own a new (well, 50 year old) house! Well, I own 20% of it. The usual usurers own the rest.

It's a sweet little limestone mid-century place, 10 blocks from work, 5 blocks from the park, various friends, groceries, 11 blocks from my ex-partner, and... I think it will be a good place to live.

I'm excited about the solidness of it, and about the yard, the mature trees, and the neighbors.

I can't move in for a while yet, but I'm scheming about improvements (attic insulation, radon abatement, maybe an ERV for fresh air)...

If I don't completely clutter it up I'll have a guest room (hint, hint).

I just spent a week in Santa Fe (and the song from Rent plays in my head, having been told about it by my friend Lois: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KppaQ3HwO_k )

It was OK. A smart young friend said it perfectly -- it's like New Mexicoland at Disneyworld.

I'm not sure how people can live there. I could live in places like the valley in Bandelier monument where the ancient Pueblo people lived... where there's water and green and shade. I don't like places that are actively trying to kill me, not so much.

However, as the song from Rent muses, there are a lot of great restaurants in Santa Fe (and they're "projects that sell", along with everything else for sale there).

By the way, I'd avoided Rent as supposedly "depressing"... but seeing the movie with friends who've also seen it live in New York, I liked it quite a lot. The people I'm hanging out with these days are more like the Bohemians than not, only we're all hiding out in a smaller midwestern college town, not fighting many of the big fights, but also not having to work quite so hard to survive and pursue our little dreams.

So... the other big news, related to the earlier news is, I'm (hopefully) buying a house. A 1950s limestone house, set among a nice row of 1920s bungalos, including the Breaking Away house.

It's in amazing shape, the builder/first owner built it incredibly well, and the interim owner is meticulous and O/C like me and like the builder. I think it will be a great place to live. It might even be big enough to have a girlfriend. Which could be good, since my current girlfriend *has* a girlfriend. Which is great, I have to say.

It's Spring in Bloomington -- a bit early. We had 80s three days in a row recently, scares me for August and September. The crocuses came up a little later than usual (long cold spell), but the daffodils are up early (early hot spell). Now it feels like April.

I've been silent because my world has been rocked and rolled for the past few months, in a way that involves the privacy of several other people and I wasn't sure what to say here.

My partner (of 11 years) and I broke up, slowly. I discovered that I am polyamorous. I'm buying a new house. My partner and I seem to be able to be friends, which is always my preference.

More than that I can't say here, now. I can say that if all the women involved in my life are happy, then *I* am happy, and that seems to be the case right now.

Just a quick thought on the breasts of Dr. Diana York Blaine.

http://www.dianablaine.com/2006/05/boring_lecture_from_the_naked.html

Well said! (Better be, she's a rhetorician!)

But also see the comment by Alex (10:03am May 9) and her reply... he poses excellent questions for 'bloggers too:

"What were you thinking? With whom were you communicating? What were you trying to tell them?"

I think many of us 'blog our thoughts within the bubble of an odd sort of denial of the reach of (world wide) web publishing... we write with a much narrower audience in mind: our friends, some friends of friends, our 'blog rolls... but of course our words are now available almost everywhere, may be read by almost anyone with any background except abject disenfranchised poverty or true Ludditiousness(tm). It's sobering and daunting every time we bump up against someone who reads our words without charity or who does not love us for what we say (or who we are). It's hard enough to be known well by those closest to you, let alone those on the other side of the planet.

I think I want my readers to be enthusiastic (if distant) voyeurs to my occasional hopefully coherent pseudo-intellectual exhibitionism.

-GS

Last week someone working at TGI Fridays here lost a part of a finger in a cooking accident. Apparently the injured cook didn't realize that he had cut himself quite as badly as he did, and he cleaned up and finished whatever he was working on.

A patron discovered a piece of the cook in food, and... well, you know.

If you're an HT subscriber you have access to the story: http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2006/04/29/news.new.1146283969.sto
"A patron at TGI Friday’s found a piece of a human finger on a hamburger Tuesday night..."

Here's a rather ironic Fridays' menu... search for the word "finger". http://bloomington.myfridays.com/1833.html

Which made me wonder... if you found a piece of a human in, say, your soup... would you be worried about having broken the taboo against eating humans? Even if you didn't accidentally (or on purpose!!) eat the human part, if your soup was cooked with it in there... would you feel like you had eaten man-consomme?

I'm just curious if how you feel about this depends whether you're religious and if so on how your religion treats dietary matters... on how you view the concepts of "pollution", "corruption", "purity"...


-GS

"...an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When a rock is lifted the earth is lighter, the hand that bears it heavier. When it is thrown the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed. On every act the balance of the whole depends. The winds and seas, the powers of water and earth and light, all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do, is well done, and rightly done. From the hurricane and the great whale's sounding to the fall of a dry leaf and the gnat's flight, all they do is done within the balance as a whole. But we, in so far as we have power over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the leaf and the whale and the wind do of their own nature. We must learn to keep the balance. Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility."
[Ursula LeGuin, The Farthest Shore, p. 87]

When I read that, years ago, I thought that it might be the core reason the author wrote the Earthsea Trilogy -- to engage the reader and then get that point across. It rings as true now to me as it did then. I thought of it when I was having the discussion on astrology and reality mentioned in my previous entry... that it could be read as supporting the idea that the stars influence our lives based on their placement at our birth... but pretty clearly it is meant to be taken in the opposite way... that mankind is special, and so we are especially responsible for our own actions.

It would completely destroy the poetic expression to get into a discussion about how I think humans are only special by degree... individually and collaboratively we've come to a place where we can shape or even destroy the biosphere... but beavers build damns, apes use tools, birds drop seeds (and viruses) from far away... many, if not all species change the planet by their actions, often to the detriment of others... they just do it slowly and less effectively than humans. I don't believe that only humans are self-aware, have language, have a sense of time... I don't think we're very different from other animals with brains... far too many of our actions are instinctual, with a veneer of rationality. Biology and evolution are stronger in us than we like to admit -- almost none of us have much control over our bodies, and our bodies want sustenance, shelter, rest, and sex. We die quickly without the first three, and we are shaped by the fourth.

My SO is in a baby-wanting mode. Again. Even though we've discussed this and rejected it mutually and individually most of our lives. Nature will do almost anything, definitely including life-threatening things, to get us to reproduce. Incredible how strong, tricky, and irrational the urge is! I'm sure she's influenced by the fact the several ecologically minded friend-couples we knew, who also didn't want to add to this problem (looks like two or three more humans are being born than are dying, per second. I'm afraid nature will "correct for this" sometime relatively soon. One way, or another.) are having or have had babies.

Somehow this is related to my argument that, as individuals of a species which has coevolved with all the others, in general most of our daily individual acts in the world are small, localized, and have as little effect as any other species. But, hmmmm, when as a culture we mass produce and use leverage-multiplying tools like cars, pesticides, weapons, computers... there's something there, I just don't have the brain for it right now... something along the line of: whenever we use a tool which increases our strength/influence/leverage, we need to increase the thoughtfulness and care with which we approach that tool in proportion to its power. And something about how we have created and now use so many of these leverage-multiplying tools every day, far, far out of whack with being careful about them... "Sustainable power"? In the long run, I'm certain the ecosystem will repay our hubris. Gotta go read some Bucky Fuller...

-gs

Oy.

I spent several hours trying to ignore a long conversation between my SO and a beautiful, vivacious woman I have a slight crush on, while on a trip. The crush is into astrology. I'm hoping my SO doesn't go there, but she got all excited by the conversation.

Now, I'm a big fan of tools for understanding yourself and others. However, as illogical as I may often be, my belief system is as Carl Sagan talks about in "This Demon Haunted World", that science is the best tool we have for finding what's true and real in the world. It may not be the best tool for finding what's true and real inside ourselves. Probably not.

Anyway, I think astrology is a big load of bunkum. What most people think they understand about astrology is based on watered down mistranslated misunderstood bad 3000 year old "science". Popular astrological readings consist almost entirely of what Thomas Sebeok called "Barnum statements" -- vague, often self-contradictory statements which may be taken to mean whatever the listener wants them to mean.

Here's an example of readings for the sun signs -- which one is yours?

• You have a great need for other people to like and admire you.
  
• You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.
  
• You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage.
  
• While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them.
  
• Your sexual adjustment has presented problems for you.
  
• Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside.
  
• At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.
  
• You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations.
  
• You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof.
  
• You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others.
  
• At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved.
  
• Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic.
  
• Security is one of your major goals in life.
  

Here's somebody else who's beat me to this rant more effectively using almost the same words... I guess we share a belief system!. And here's a page about Barnum statements . A good resource: Astrology & Science. Just searching a bit, Barnum Statements, and
Debunking Astrology


So, then I get into a discussion with another passenger about yoga, spirituality, reality, energy... and here're two things I'm thinking:

First, belief systems evolve. Surviving systems have evolved to the point where they appeal to some near universal human emotional/psychological need. They are symbiotic with the host human. The best systems increase the survival chance of both the host and the belief.

Second, while I personally believe that we don't know near enough about actual reality to dismiss cosmic vibrations, psychic aura's, telepathy, etc., I have a feeling that if these things exist, they are mostly entropic... is that the right way to say it? I believe that a person's psychic (or physic) energy is dampened by natural forces and fades to near-nothing in a way similar to the gravitational forces exerted on us by heavenly bodies. In general. I can shout as loud as I want, if you're a mile away, you won't hear me. Maybe your dog will. If I'm five miles away, neither you nor your dog will hear me. If I shout at you, I may create a psychic effect which travels with and near you and ripples outward much farther than my own physical proximity. But a hundred million Chinese people shouted really loudly today, I'm certain of it... and they had no discernable effect on my life. That's the general case. Somewhere in some piece of clothing I will own, there's a tiny spec of blood from the pricked finger of a young Malaysian woman who was distracted by how angry her mother was this morning (which was actually last night, in my world). Somewhere in Thailand, women are being given birth control pills to suppress their menstruation so they can't get pregnant and miss a day's work at a sweatshop factory which exists because the university at which I work can't be bothered to make sure that the logo'ed t-shirts they order are sewn by people who make a living wage.

On the other hand, one Chinese person in a position of power could move one finger a quarter of an inch and destroy human life as we know it... my whole day would be ruined, but chances are pretty good that the orbit of Jupiter wouldn't change by even a millimeter... even the orbit of our own moon wouldn't change...


As local cartoonist Joe Lee put it, if the gravitational influence of a body is inversely proportional to the square of the distance, then I was born under the sign of Dr. Kavanaugh, who, being rather hefty, and very close to my mother as I came out, was exerting approximately 6 times more gravitational influence on me than Mars.

Kavanaughs are warm and considerate but occasionally insensitive to the needs of others. We are inventive, but don't always follow through with our ideas. We love water, but sometimes wish we could fly like we do in our dreams. When we don't get enough sleep, we tend to get cranky.

-gs

I took my first Claritan(tm) just now. (Actually, a generic version.) My eyeballs are about to itch out of their sockets (with a little help). It's late Summer in Bloomington.

And, I need glasses... about half the day. Especially at night or in low light.

Dammit, I'm getting old. Hate that.

-gs

Long time no write. Finally back from the combination of

1. preparing to leave for Australia


2. being in Australia


3. recovering from Australia

News on various reproductive rights issues tweaks me to write about something I learned about Kangaroos.

Did you know that female 'roos have almost complete control over their reproductive system? They can:

• determine the gender of their baby (they tend to choose females first, and after bearing a couple, then bring a male to term -- females stay with the mother longer and need more attention -- perhaps they have to take reproduction lessons!)


• decide whether to allow a fertilize egg to implant


• delay implantation of a viable fetus for up to three years


• abort a fetus


• significantly flex growth rate of joeys in the pouch (separately in the case of more than one), by altering the formula of milk delivered to each nipple


• choose to abandon a joey if threatened or if poor conditions persist for several years
  

Apparently most of these controls are used to deal with draught or other environmental conditions. Many animals increase or decrease the number of offspring they have in response to environmental pressures, but this is very interesting!

Puts a kink in what's considered "natural", doesn't it?

-gs

This Terri Schiavo thing, hoo boy! I believe it is ridiculous, hypocritical, impolitic, misguided, stupid, and, in the large scheme of things, idiotic, that congress and the president have stepped into this... however, I can understand why it is an issue that everyone is thinking about and talking about, and one that most congresspersons should have thought for a while about, and then decided against stepping into... look at all the serious issues that the case touches:

• sanctity of life
  
• hope after devastating accidents
  
• hope for medical miracles
  
• state of scientific and medical knowledge
  
• science / faith / belief / logic
  
• fear of being killed while incapacitated
  
• right to die
  
• right to life
  
• definition of life
  
• right to control ones fate
  
• suicide, sin

  
  

• brain damage, humanity, life, emotion, expression, reaction, CT scans, diagnostics, similar cases, “miraculous recoveries”, god, heaven, death
  

  
  

• right to medical care, access to medical care
  
• money, medical costs
  
• medicaid, medicare, insurance
  
• best practice, malpractice, best care vs covering your ass
  
• living wills
  

  
  

• starvation - Terri's
  
• starvation - mine/yours
  
• starvation - anyone's
  

  
  

• poverty
  
• race
  
• special treatment
  

  
  

• long term/